September News

Welcome to Grade One and to our classroom blog!  We've had a busy month with the kids getting to know each other and starting to learn the classroom routines!  They have already gotten into the habit of handing in their agendas all by themselves first thing in the morning!  This will become even more important when the home reading books start coming home in October.

 We have started diving into a program called the Daily Five and the kids have built up their reading "stamina " from 3 minutes to 12 minutes! WOW! They have learned that there are 3 ways to read a book 1. read the pictures 2. read the words and 3. retell the story!  I LOVE THIS PROGRAM. What better way to become a great reader than to spend more time in the day practising!  This year I'm going to teach the next lesson as a song- if you want to practise at home follow along with this link..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfecFjBHfc8

The lesson is choosing a "Good Fit Book" using the IPICK system:

I-I choose a book
P-purpose-why do I want to read it
I-interest-does it interest me
C-comprehend-am I understanding what I read
K-know- I know most of the words

In Science we are starting a colour unit and Math is number sense/printing 0-10 review.  Social Studies is all about friendships and rules this month and in Health we are learning about Terry Fox including the Terry Fox walk Friday September 27th.  If you would like to walk with the class, please email or send a note. A letter went home Friday with all the details of the walk. Our class buddies up with their Grade 3 (Mrs.Burke) book buddies for the hike to Nicholas Sheran. I will be sending home some Terry Fox tatoos and name badges on Thursday night for you to do with your child in preparation for Friday's Walk. 

A HUGE thank you to everyone for returning library books on Monday. Getting to take home the school library books for a whole week is a new experience for the kids and they LOVE the excitment of checking out their new ones every Monday.  If there is ever a holiday, we will try to reschedule our library day for Tuesday or Wednesday.

Our art day is always on a Wednesday and we often choose to do our really messy, goopy, colourful projects on this day! Bearing that in mind, I will do everything possible to keep clothing clean (we do have a few art shirts available) however, you may want to avoid the "brand new" outfits on this day. Here are a couple of the beautiful fish rocks that we made a couple weeks ago to go with our story "Only One You".  The story is about a little fish Adri who goes out into the world but first gets some pretty great advice from his parents including "treasure your family and friends."  My family and I collected the rocks for this project on a hike and the kids created some incredibly unique designs....take a look!

That's about it for now! Thanks once more to all who volunteered for the many, many jobs available! You are appreciated! I will email dates/times individually for home reading and art helpers!