Visiting Cats and Musical Instruments

Whew!  It's Friday!  We have had a very busy week.  (I don't think I've ever posted 5 articles in one week before!)  This morning B.'s mom brought in his 2 cats for Sharing.  They made themselves right at home, as you can see below!

In Music, the students had their first chance to play the barred instruments (glockenspiels, xylophones and metallophones).  Ask your child to sing "Lucy Locket" and pretend to play the pattern on their knees that we played on the instruments.  Have a great weekend and keep warm!

Shining Willow Books and Visualizing

This morning Mrs. Arlene Low (one of the Learning Coaches  in our division) visited our classroom to introduce the Shining Willow book nominees for this year to our class.  She told a little about each book and then read one (The Busy Beaver) to the class.  We will be reading all the nominated books in a few weeks.  Students then get to vote for their favourite book.  Children from all over Saskatchewan vote and the book that receives the most votes wins the Shining Willow award.  For more information about this year's nominees, go to:  http://www.willowawards.ca/nominated-books/2012/shining-willow

Students listening attentively to the The Busy Beaver

We continue to work on the Visualizing reading strategy.  Yesterday I read a book to the students called The Magic Fish by Freya Littledale (without letting them see the pictures!)  We discussed different kinds of mental pictures they might have about different parts of the story.  Today  I read it again and stopped to allow students to draw their mental images on a "thinking strip".  They then used these pictures to help them retell the story.

The children are drawing their mental images for different parts of the story The Magic Fish.

Using clipboards is fun too!

A completed thinking strip

Students using their thinking strips to retell the story to a partner.

Guided Reading, Music and Self-Portraits

This week we have been doing Guided Reading Groups.  Students are placed in small groups (4 or 5 students in each group) and I guide them through a new book that they have not read before.  The lesson usually includes a "picture walk" (we look at the pictures in the book and discuss new vocabulary) and a purpose for reading.  Students then read the book at their own pace while I listen and help students who need a little extra assistance.  This is a good opportunity for me to see how students use the different reading strategies that I have taught, such as:  using picture clues, getting our lips ready to say the first sound, looking for word chunks, etc.  Students who are not reading with me, work on independent activities such as writing and word work or they Read to Someone (including checking for understanding).

Guided Reading Group - each student reads the text at their own pace

Read to Someone - students practice reading the books from their book baskets to a partner to develop comprehension and fluency 

This student is doing Work on Writing

Word Work - using stamps to practice printing words that begin with the "wh" digraph

In Music we've been listening to selections from Camille Saint-Saens's "Carnival of the Animals".  Today's selection was called  "Tortoises".  Students enjoyed moving to the music like turtles.  (Here is a link to a YouTube video where you can hear the music!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mRJfMi3xYw)

Here are the  self-portraits from our recent art project:

Estimating

In Math today we started practicing how to estimate.  We learned that when we estimate we try to make a good guess.  One thing that helps young children estimate is to think about referents.  In Grade One we use the referents of 5, 10 and 20.  Since we have been working a lot with numbers to 20 (on ten frames, two part mats, etc.), students should have a good number sense of what 5, 10 and 20 look like.  When we estimate a quantity, we think about whether the amount we're estimating is closer to 10 or 20.  Estimates are never wrong - just too low or too high!

You can practice this at home too!  Show your child a collection of objects between 5 and 20 for a few seconds (not long enough to allow them to count!)  Then cover it up and ask:  "Do you think that it's closer to 5, 10 or 20?"  Then ask them to tell  you what their estimate is:  "My estimate is ______."  Then  count to see if the estimate is too high, too  low or just right.

Our Social Studies lesson tomorrow is about how many people are in our families.  Students will need to know how many people are in their family and how many brothers and sisters they have.

Self-portraits

Our Art lesson this afternoon was on self-portraits.  We talked about what portraits (and self-portraits) are, looked at some famous portraits and then started to draw!

We began by making a U-shape in the middle of our paper.  We felt how our neck is narrower than our head and our shoulders are wider than our head.  We added facial features:  eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hair.  It was fun drawing and colouring with oil pastels.  The pictures below show some of the works in progress.  Not everyone got finished so when all the portraits are hung in the "gallery",  I'll take a picture and post it as soon as possible.

In our Word Work lessons, we've been learning about consonant digraphs (two consonants that go together to make one sound, like: sh, ch, th, wh.  We also call them "buddy letters" or the "h brothers".)  Can your child tell you what sounds these letters make?  Try reading words that begin with these letter combinations and belong to the word families we've learned.  (E.g. shop, chat, then, when, shin, ship, chop, etc.)
Here is an interactive website that your child might enjoy:
http://www.learningtoday.com/player/swf/PH_consonant_diagraphs_L2_V1_t1a.swf

Artists at work!

Guess My Number!

In Math today, we learned how to play a game called "Guess My Number".  You can play it at home too!  Make a number line from 0 to 20 on a strip of paper.  Make two triangles (one large and one small) and print the words Too Big on the large triangle and Too Small on the small triangle.  Play with a partner.  One person thinks of a number between 0 and 20 and writes the number on a piece of paper (so the other person can't see).  Then the partner starts to guess what the number is.  If the guess is too big, move the large triangle over the number and if it's too small, put the small triangle above the number.  (See picture below).  See if you can guess the mystery number in the smallest amount of guesses.   This game will help to develop number relationships and how the number line represents these relationships.  Use math words like: more, less, bigger, smaller, between as you play together.  What kinds of strategies will help you play this game? What is a good number to start with?

Remember to listen to your child read his poem in the poem duotang.  Next week we are begining a unit in Social Studies on Families.  Watch out for a yellow note coming home on Wednesday about some special homework.

Have a great weekend!

50th Day of School!

Today was the 50th day of school.  Each 10th day of school (20th, 30th, 40th, etc.) Zero the Hero comes (during the night, we think) to leave a special treat (usually shaped like a 0) for the boys and girls.  He somehow manages to get onto the Smartboard and leave a message too!  Today he left chocolate chips - 50 for each student.
We used the chocolate chips to do some counting - forwards and backwards.  We also did some problem solving to go with our current math outcome (ways to show numbers in equal groups).  Some very quick-thinking children discovered that we could make 5 equal groups of 10, 10 equal groups of 5 and 25 equal groups of 2!  Here are a few pictures:

Students counted 50 chocolate chips and placed them on their 50 chart.

We used the Smartboard to help us think about how we could show 50 in equal groups.

Students with their 50 charts and yummy chocolate chips!

Everyone was anxious to do some eating after the pictures were taken!  Students had to find certain numbers on their chart before they could eat the chocolate chips.

Making Mental Images and Problem Solving in Math and

We have been learning all about Visualizing in Language Arts.  Readers often create images in their minds to help them understand stories.  We use our senses and think about what the words or pictures remind us of.  Yesterday, students listened to several poems and then chose the  a poem that created the most vivid image for them.  (Lots of children chose the cat poem!)  Then they drew a picture to show the image they had.  We learned that everyone's mental images are different because we have all had different experiences and we have different schema in our heads!  (See if your child can tell you what schema means.)

Today we listened to another poem ("Five Little Mice") and used our mental images (or visualizations) to create a dramatic interpretation.  Students worked in groups of 4 to act out them poem.

Mice crawling into the hole to escape the cat!

There were some very ferocious cats!

It was lots of fun to watch and see all the different interpretations the students came up with from listening to the same poem!  A yellow note was sent home today with suggestions about how you can help your child practice visualizing or making mental images when you read together.

We were solving an apple problem in Math today.  (There are 13 apples in a bag.  Some are red.  Some are yellow.  How many of each could there be?)
We first used real apples to solve the problem.  We sorted and counted how many red and yellow apples there were.

Students quickly realized there could be more than one way 13 apples in the bag, so we used 2 sided counters to "pretend" that the yellow side was a yellow apple and the red side was a red apple.  (See picture below.)

Another important part of this lesson was to figure out a way to show our thinking on paper. 

This picture shows a student sorting the 2-sided counters to represent the yellow and red apples.

We showed our thinking by drawing pictures, using numbers and words.

There were 6 red apples and 7 yellow apples in the bag!




You can try problems like this at home!  Here is an example:  There are 15 people at a party.  Some are girls and some are boys.  How many of each could there be?  Draw a picture to show your thinking.