Pizza Party!

Today we were very fortunate to have a surprise pizza party from donations that we had planned back in December! But here we are getting to enjoy them now and oh boy, were students happy with their surprise lunch. Thank you to our wonderful community to put the smiles on these kiddos faces with a little pizza and milk!! 

Easter Egg Hunt for Ronald McDonald House!

 

We are so excited to say that our Easter Egg Hunt for Ronald McDonald House was a great success!! 

We made the treat bags for all the participants, prepared posters to advertise in the school and created announcements to share. The students were so excited to help hide the eggs, pass out treats and go on our own hunt as well. 

Donations rolled in this past week and helped us reach over our goal. We raised just over $320! We are very happy with the amount we are donating to the Ronald McDonald House! 

A BIG thank you to the volunteers, Kendra Eckel, Pam Ford, Heather Elgie, Joanne Carr and Michele Ivanouski that volunteered to help run the event! 

We might have a small school but we have really BIG hearts and it shows when we put our efforts in to share with those in our community! 

Thank you to everyone for making it a big success!!!

Wishing you all an amazing Easter weekend!

Phonics Lesson 83 Review of /ar/, /or/ & /er/ & Phonics Lesson 84 ai, ay - long /a/: Mar 30 - Apr 2 (Reading Practice Book)

Phonics Lessons - Mar 30- April 2

Lesson 83: Review of /ar/, /or/, /er/

We spent the start of this short week reviewing all of the r-controlled vowels we have learned so far. Review and practice has been perfect with this short week as we focus on putting all our learning together. 

In this week's text called Fishing At the Port, students are looking for all the words that have any of the r-controlled vowels. They are listed at the top of the page but are ar /ar/, or and ore for the /or/ sound, and the use of the four spelling patterns of /er/ as er, ir, ur and w+or. Remember we are careful to only highlight the words that have this pattern. Students are also asked to illustrate the story to demonstrate their understanding of the text.

Lesson 84: ai, ay - long /a/

We have already learned that the letter a can spell the long /a/ in silent (or super hero) e words like in cake. We have also learned that a spells long /a/ in open syllable words like in baby. 

ai - The vowel team ai spells long /a/ and it usually comes in the middle of a word like in bait and mail. But ai sometimes comes at the beginning of a word like in aim and aid. 

ay - The vowel team ay also spells the long /a/ and always comes at the end of a word like day and say. 

In this week's text called, Sunday Fun, students are looking for all the words that have the long /a/ sound based on the ai or ay spelling patterns to highlight (the whole word that has that spelling pattern). Be careful for spelling patterns that are included in the story that just include any letter a in the word - we are specifically looking for the ai and ay making the long /a/ sound. Students are also asked 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:

• other
• another
• mother
• brother

This week's new words:

• father
• water
• today
• very

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 or stories in their Reading Practice book this week 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 two lessons so there will be two stories to complete in their white Reading Practice booklet after the clip. 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!

March Estimate Jar!

 

We were so excited to get to do our Estimate Jar for March to wrap up our month! Nothing says we love math like getting some treats to go along with learning!

Each student wrote down their estimate on their white board of how many chocolate gold coins were in the jar after Lucky the Leprechaun stole some of them! We have to wonder how many were really there before?! 

We decided today we would count by 2's because we know counting by ones takes us a long time! 

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 the chocolate gold coins.

Tom E was our lucky winner!! He was two off of the 28 treats we had in total! And since we knew our tradition is to share the treats with everyone in class, we all got one! Students may have brought home their treat (if they didn't eat them out of their lunch today)! And Tom got to take home the leftovers! 

What will be in our April?

April Newsletter & Calendar

April Newsletter

Please take some time to read this hearty newsletter when you get a chance (as we know families are extremely busy) and access if there are any questions that should arise along the way.

April Calendar
This is our April class calendar of events for Grade 1/2! Although we can send home a paper copy, this blog has the most up to date information! Check out the blog calendar regularly for upcoming dates and information or the Homework & Reminders page.

April Reading Room

This month we are exploring fiction and non fiction books relating to Easter, Spring and honesty. Here are some read aloud books that we will read in class and some additional books for students to enjoy about the topics. Click on a book to listen/watch the story! 

Happy reading!

More Mental Math...

    

We are learning more addition and subtraction mental math strategies!! We have been reviewing the 15 we have learned up until this week! We had sent home a package including all of these previously, but also posted below for reference. Please use these at home to help with our math work that comes home and to practice these strategies when you get a chance to build our skills of our math facts! 

'Seeing' these strategies in various number sentences (equations) show students understand the concepts of addition and subtraction with all the daily practice we do with this concept. Number sentences are very abstract but we have been learning what they mean all school year. The important part here is that these strategies are little 'tricks' to help us quickly solve addition and subtraction problems with smaller numbers. They are to be mental math and while the strategies are becoming more complex, we do want to be able to see them, name them and use them with efficiently rather than using materials. These strategies can also be applied to larger numbers and that will be built on in the next school year as the expectations do build on previous year's learning.  

The past week, we have been introduced to a new subtraction strategy called Reverse Doubles. This is a very special Think Addition strategy we worked on previously, where we use the inverse relationship between those tricky subtraction sentences and turn them into addition sentences as part of our Fact Family learning. Reverse Doubles are those special doubles addition facts that we can automatically recognize that inverse relationship when applied to their subtraction counterparts! We have been really focusing on doubles lately with our strategies and how they can quickly help us with several different math facts (doubles, monkey in the middle, doubles plus one, reverse doubles). 

After the long weekend, we will focus on a new addition strategy called Bridge to Ten. This strategy is one that will begin to help us break numbers apart and manipulate them to make adding numbers mentally easier. If we know our Make 10 facts, that we have been practicing all year, this one is the next step to apply to leap over a group of ten. This will come in handy especially for larger numbers after lots of practice!

Count On and Count Back are really if no other strategy is available but still need a plan B! We will use Count On and Count Back more and more as we explore larger numbers and able to use various materials to help us. 

We continue to focus on one strategy per week but sometimes we spend two weeks if we need some extra time with learning these new concepts. Then we will review all strategies on Thursday and then on Fridays we will have our 5 question quiz to see how we are doing as we continue to learn and apply these strategies.

We are becoming math whizzes!!