Welcome!!

Welcome to the Grade 1/2 Busy Bee classroom blog!! We are so excited you have joined us in our learning journey! Mrs. Herbert is super excited about all the wonderful learners buzzing in our classroom! You are welcome to comment and join in our learning conversations and share our blog with family and friends! We can't wait to share what we are doing in our class with everyone! Here we go!!

Friday, December 5, 2025

More About Our Word Work

We are now into our next focus of our phonological and phonemic awareness! Students are really showing a lot of growth in understanding word knowledge as we complete these daily activities! 

The focus of this next newsletter below and is all about final sound manipulation. This will be our focus for the next while in our class oral activities to really build our strengths in letter sound knowledge within words. Included below is some information and activities to work on at home to compliment our learning in the classroom.  


Christopher the Elf


Our elf, Christopher, has been up to some fun since he has arrived to our class. The students love to see what he gets himself into each day as they arrive in the class. He has been learning lots with us and from us. Ask your child what Christopher has been learning about! 

Thursday, December 4, 2025

Phonics Lesson 64 -ed: Dec 1-5 (Reading Practice Book)

Phonics Lessons

Lesson 64: -ed

A verb is an action word, or a word that tells what someone or something is doing. Jump and yell are examples of verbs. We use past tense verbs when we talk about actions that already happened. We can add the ending -ed to verbs to make them past tense: I jump, I jumped. I yell, I yelled. 

There are three ways to pronounce the -ed ending: /d/ /t/ or /id/. We can figure out how to pronounce the -ed ending by thinking about the sound that comes right before it.

If a voiced sound comes before -ed we say /d/ like in called and tamed. 

If an unvoiced sound comes before -ed we say /t/ like in sniffed and helped. 

If the sounds /d/ or /t/ comes before -ed, -ed makes two sounds /i/ and /d/ where the e is pronounced with a schwa sound where e makes the /i/ like in landed and shifted. 

In this week's text called, Will the Whale, students are looking for words that have the -ed ending in a verb. They are looking to highlight the whole word that has these exceptions. Be careful for spelling patterns that are included in the story that include those letters that aren't part of this spelling pattern. Students are also looking to illustrate the story to demonstrate their understanding of the text.  

Heart (Irregular) Words of the Week
Heart words are words that do not decode or follow the spelling rules that we have been learning. We have to know them by 'heart'. However, once we learn more spelling rules, they may be only temporary heart words and the rules will come along later! In the meantime, we have been focusing on reviewing and learning the words below with focused in class practice. These will eventually (if not already) be on spelling word lists or word rings. 

This week we are reviewing:
  • by
  • my
  • see
  • one
  • once
  • two
  • does
And we are introducing as new words:
  • many
  • any
Fluency Grids
With each lesson, there is a fluency grid with the lesson focus that is intended to help students recognize the phonics rule and assist in reading it with accuracy and automaticity. At home, challenge your young reader to read the word (aim is to decode/read each word within 3 seconds) and then recall it each time they see it within the grid of mixed up, repeated words. A couple minutes of practice is all they need. This acts as a warm up before reading the text that also applies the same skill while building on all the previous skills as well. Each week we are building on the previous week to become more fluent readers so we can focus on what the text is sharing rather than spending all the time decoding the words.

Homework Reminders 
Students have been working on the story in their Reading Practice book that will come home each weekend. At school, they work with a partner to complete their fluency grid, read with someone their story and highlight the focus words. Following, they are illustrating a picture for the text to show their understanding. At home, students are to finish the above tasks and read to an expert the week's lesson(s). After completing, parents are to initial at the indicated spot at the top. This week, we are have completed one lesson so there will be one story to complete in their white Reading Practice booklet. Please see the information letter in the front of the book for more, detailed information about this weekend practice book coming home. Please return on Monday (or Tuesday if there is a no school day on Monday). 

Happy reading!

Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Welcome to Christopher!

 

On Monday, we were greeted by a special visitor in our classroom! We welcomed our elf, Christopher. He snuck in after the snow storm and did some little things around the classroom to let us know he was here. Christopher says he brought us some treats for our Estimate Jar from the North Pole so we are excited to find out what that is since we have finished our Estimate Jar from November today. He also brought us an advent calendar to share. We have already figured out how to make that work with out class friends. There was a book about him that we got to read and can keep on our book shelf while he is here. He also wrote us a letter. We have some things to teach Christopher about writing. We hope Christopher learns lots with us and we are so excited that he is here! Welcome to our class, Christopher!

November Estimate Jar

 


Our final school day of November was a little mixed up for Estimate Jar and then our first day of December had so much excitement of its own, we completed our November Estimate Jar math activity today. Each student wrote down their estimate on their white board of how many candies are in the jar.

We discussed our rules for counting objects. We decided that counting one item at a time would take us a long time so we did groups of 5 to speed things up and practiced our counting by 5's today.

Then for the big moment...we all took a turn going around the class and sharing our estimate. We compared numbers and how far away our estimate was from the actual total we had of candies.

Fateh was our lucky winners!! He was the closest with being 14 away from the 74 candies total! He was super kind to share the candies with everyone in our class and students may have brought home their treats (if they didn't eat them out of their lunch today)! And he also got to take home the leftovers! Score!

Students are really excited to see what is going to fill our estimate jar next for December! Christopher, the elf, said he brought some treats so we are excited to check that out! 

Monday, December 1, 2025

Grade 1/2 Bake Sale for the United Way

 

WOW!! Thank you so very much! The families of Grade 1/2 that contributed to our Bake Sale just simply...rock! We couldn't have done it without all of you! The Bake Sale for the United Way was an overall, incredible success! 

Our Bake Sale tallies are in!! We raised just a couple dollars over $800 for the United Way!!

The students are so very proud to run an event and know they are making a difference in their own community by helping to give (& of course they got some treats too!) Lots of big smiles and excitement buzzing in our class (& the whole school)! So once again, THANK YOU Grade 1/2 Busy Bee families for all your support to provide this opportunity for these little learners! 

We also want to say thank you to Krystal Leppington and Mandy Martin for their generosity in their cotton candy preparations. These added treats were also a big sales feature in our event.

A big shout out to Krystal Leppington, Jaclyn Horenberg, Rachel Dundas, Mrs. Johnston, Mr. Steinmann and Ms Burdon that came out to run the show! We couldn't have done it without their time, patience and hard work. We also want to show our gratitude to all SPCPS staff that helped to set up, clean up, provide funds to ensure all students had a treat at our Bake Sale and were flexible with the event schedule. All of you make events like this a breeze when we have such a supportive school community.  

And of course all the shoppers and SPCPS community who sent in donations to help our little Bake Sale become a big one! It was incredible to see students sharing, buying for other students and/or family members and just the overall excitement of what special school events bring! Creating memories and supporting our community all in one event! South Perth simply is the best!

We hope everyone enjoyed all the treats and weren't too wired for their learning for the remainder of the day!  




Sunday, November 30, 2025

December Reading Room

This month we are exploring fiction and non fiction books relating to compassion, Christmas and New Year's, Here are some read aloud books that we have read in class for students to enjoy and some additional books for students to enjoy about the topics. Click on a book to listen/watch the story! 

Happy reading!