Saturday 27 October 2012

Take- Home Reading Opportunities

Today our class began Raz-kids.com. Raz-kids is a terrific online reading program that allows your child to read "just right" books at their independent reading level. The program allows your child to listen to the book, to read and to record their reading for teacher review, and to take a brief comprehension quiz. I have placed each child in a level from A to E based on their Fall Reading Assessment results. Please let me know if your child is struggling in any way. If your child feels the books are too easy, encourage them to continue on, but they may access harder books through the bookroom option. The children last year loved to read on Raz-kids, especially since they earned star points to buy items in the Raz rocket store. The best part about this program is that you can access books at anytime in the day, at anyplace in the world through your laptop and you don't have to worry about lost or late books! For those that prefer the traditional Take-Home Reading Program, look for a post this week outlining what you can do to support your child at home.

To log on, go to raz-kids.com and type in 1jhughbeaton and press enter. There is no password needed, simply click on your child's name and you are ready! Enjoy!

Thursday 18 October 2012

Sight Word Day

Yesterday we had fun with sight words.  Each week we get a list of 5 words that we need to learn to be good readers and writers.  Usually Mrs. Jinks gets the words from our weekly shared reading poem or from words we use a lot in our writing, or from the Dolch high frequency word list.  We now have 30 words on our word wall, and we are practicing them each week at home and at school.  Today we changed our names and became a sight word for the day.  We all got a name tag with a sight word we have studied on it and we called each other by those new names only. Mrs. Jinks was Mrs. With, and Mr. Konrad, our Vice Principal was Mr. At.  It was a lot of fun and we were able to have lots of mini lessons on words.  We found words that were part of the same family, (e.g., me and see, by and my) and talked about how words may be spelled similarly, but sound differently(e.g., to and go).  We talked about words that have a magic e (e.g., like) and those that don't follow the regular rules and you just have to remember their spelling(e.g., you).  We learned a lot and had fun doing it!  We graphed whether people enjoyed having a new name at the end of the day and most people enjoyed the experience.  Those that didn't like it said they liked their name better, or didn't like the feel of the name tag on their clothes.  A wonderful way to review!



Wednesday 17 October 2012

Our Pumpkin Glyphs

We did pumpkin art and graphed the results. We are getting better at comparing our results and adding a "So what" sentence to show that our questions can be useful in planning our next steps! We enjoyed creating them!

Monday 15 October 2012

Anti-Bullying Month

October is Anti-Bullying month.  We have spent a great deal of our time in September and October discussing what appropriate behaviour is at school, and what to do if someone bullies you.  We started the discussion by reading the story "One" by Kathryn Otoshi.  It is a wonderful book that talks about the importance of standing up to bullies, and that together we can all "count".  We created a chart promise to stand up for ourselves and for others, to not bully(only put ups, not put-downs), and to treat others the way we want to be treated.  We will say "No! I don't like it" to someone who tries to bully us first, and then if we have difficulty solving the problem ourselves, we will ask for help from an adult.





We also read "How Full Is My Bucket"  and discussed how we all have imaginary buckets that empty or fill depending on our interactions with others and our feelings.  We need to do kind things for others to make ourselves feel wonderful.  We wrote about ways to fill the "buckets" of others and therefore, our own.  1J students are bucketfillers!

Sunday 14 October 2012

The Pumpkin Patch

We had a wonderful experience at Pepe's Pumpkin Patch!  We give 19 thumbs up for this fieldtrip!
 We had studied the needs of living things and the lifecycles of apples and pumpkins at this school, but this trip really helped us to relate our learning to real-life.  Thank you so much to the staff at Pepe's for an interesting, informative, and action-packed fieldtrip.  We especially liked the witch who guided our corn maze/corn information session.  We have all had the wonderful Essex County sweet corn that is grown here, but what we didn't realize how many things are made from field corn!  We knew that cereal and other foods are made from corn, but car tires?  That is what I love about fieldtrips, all the incidental learning that occurs! 

We had our faces painted with pumpkins, spiders, ghosts, cats and tigers, oh my!  We went on a hay ride and learned more from Pepe about the pumpkin plants, and saw the vines and a few pumpkins and flowers up close.  We played a "hot potato" pumpkin-themed game where the winners received an apple to eat- and boy were we hungry from all that learning!  We had D.P.A. (Daily Physical Activity) to one of our favourite songs, the chicken dance.  We picked a pie pumpkin to take home as well.  We are thankful to all the parents who chaperoned and to Mrs. MacLeod who organized the fieldtrip.  We can't wait to see what we learn on our next fieldtrip!


Friday 12 October 2012

Learning Through Sharing: A Quadblogging Journey

Our class is very lucky to have started quad blogging with three other classrooms in Canada and the United States. We each take a turn commenting on each other's blogs and learning about what excites and interests us about learning. We are very fortunate to have Mrs. Horst in Burlington, Ontario, Mrs. Sather from Montana, U.S.A. and Mrs. Simmons in Columbus, Ohio participating with us. We have already visited two of their classrooms as a class, and we have already learned so much!

We learned that despite how far away our classrooms may be, there are many things that we have in common! We are all "kind kids" and learning "experts" like Mrs. Sather's class, and "artists" and "heroes" like Mrs. Horst's class. We can't wait to visit Mrs. Simmon's class at the end of the month and to see what connections we can find with them as well.

This is a journey that will help us to become better readers, writers and communicators. This opportunity allows us to open our doors to become more comfortable learning from others from afar. We are widening our circle of friends and we all know that some of our best learning comes from our experiences with friends! 

Please read Mrs. Horst`s thought-provoking blog about the importance of learning through technology.

Visit the wonderful blogs of our new friends:
Mrs. Horst's Grade 1/2
http://www.chatt.hdsb.ca/~horstm
Mrs. Sather's Grade 1
http://room6kindkids.blogspot.ca
Mrs. Simmon's Grade 1
http://www.1dkids.blogspot.ca

Thursday 11 October 2012

Thanksgiving and Sharing

Thanksgiving is celebrated in Canada each year on the second Monday in October.  It coincides with the harvesting of crops.  We take time with friends and family to reflect on our lives and we give thanks for loved ones and all we have.  Thanksgiving is a perfect time to discuss sharing as well.  We are very proud of our work!  We shared apples and learned about their lifecycle.  We will also be learning about pumpkin lifecycles and we will visit a pumpkin patch on Friday!

http://smilebox.com/playBlog/4d7a4d314d4459344e44513d0d0a&blogview=true



Wednesday 10 October 2012

Our Alphabet Book

We have been reviewing alphabet letters, sounds, and words that begin each letter.  We are becoming experts! Good writers write about what they know.  We searched our houses and brought in two objects which begin our assigned letter.  We recorded our voices on our Book Creator app, but the audio seems not to be working.  Please enjoy anyways!

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzgASXsWaezrdFo0OEoyMEZDWms

Monday 1 October 2012

We Know A Lot About Numbers!

Today we brainstormed everything we know about numbers. We worked in our small groups to present out thinking about the numbers 3, 6, 7, 5 and 8. I overheard great conversations. "If I have six circles and I cross one out, I have five." "An octopus has eight legs." "I can write my name three times." and "I read the story of the three bears."
What we know about numbers comes from our experience with the world. We hope to expand on what we know this month!

Our Morning Alphabet Review

We start our day with a few minutes of alphabet sounds while we finish up our agenda message. We love to use the smart board!