Dancing Bees!

We took our bees outside today for some dancing in our beautiful fall, Friday afternoon weather! We are learning about dance steps, rhythm and movement! And a perfect song 'Better When I'm Dancing' by Meghan Trainor! Watch for more of our dance moves coming soon as we start our weekly dance lessons! Next week will be Halloween themed!  

 

 

Art in Nature Outdoor Learning Workshop

This week is Take Me Outside Week! 

Thursday, we welcomed Julie from the ABCA (Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority) in Exeter. She has never been to South Perth and absolutely adored our amazing school yard for all the learning she could lead us in! We certainly lucked out with a beautiful fall day to enjoy our outdoor learning activities. We were exploring different concepts in art and finding fall tints and shades in nature, learning about symmetry in nature and the biggie, using nature to create the perfect 3D art! Check out our art we created on our Seesaw digital portfolios! We had some amazing master pieces that will come home as soon as they are dried!  

We want to thank the School Council's fundraising efforts to make these workshops possible for no cost to families. We definitely loved our visit and can't wait to see what else we can take outside for outdoor learning activities! Not all learning is done inside the school!  

Phonics Lesson 49: Digraphs Review ck, sh, th, ch: Oct 19 - 23 (Reading Practice Book)

Phonics Lessons: Digraph Review ck /k/, sh /sh/ , th /th/ & /th/ and ch /ch/ 

We have learned that when we put letters together, they can make one sound. This is called a consonant digraph because it is two letters that come together to make one sound. 

ck /k/

We have already learned that the letter c and the letter k both can spell /k/. When c and k come together to make the same sound. The grapheme ck is only used at the end of a word or syllable immediately after a short vowel sound like in the words duck, black and rock.    

sh /sh/

Although students have learned some double letters making one sound, this is the first double letter that represents a sound that is different from either if its letters. This consonant diagraph can come at the beginning of word, such as ship and shop. The consonant diagraph sh can come at the end of the word, such as fish and wish. 

Voiced th /th/

The voiced th spells /th/ like at the beginning of words like this, them and that. To make the voiced th sound, stick your tongue out just a little between your front teeth and both air out with your voice on. When you make this sound, your tongue might tickle. The /th/ sound is a continuous sound that can be stretched out. 

Unvoiced th /th/

The th sound can also be an unvoiced sound and is the more common pronunciation of the th diagraph. The unvoiced th spells /th/ can be at the beginning of a word like thin and thick. It can also come at the end of the word, such as with and path. To make the unvoiced sound, stick your tongue out just a little between your front teeth and blow air out with your voice off. The unvoiced th sound is also a continous sound that can be stretched out.    

ch /ch/

When the two consonants c and h come together in words, they make the one sound /ch/ and is a stop sound. It can come at the beginning of the word, such as chip and chin. It can also come at the end of a word, such as such and rich. 

In this week's text called, Snacks for Pets, students are looking for words that have one of our consonant digraphs (ck, sh, th, ch). They are looking to highlight (the whole word that has that spelling pattern). 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.

This week we are reviewing:

• your
• want 
• what
• said
• no
• go
• so

We are introducing as more review words:

• says
• goes
• she
• we
• they
• their
• were
• talk
• walk

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!

Learning Through Play and Discovery!

We don't always get as much play time in Grade 1 as we like but we certainly enjoy it when we do!! Learning through play with materials they may not even know they are learning from! 

More About Our Word Work...

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

This week's focus newsletter for families is below and is all about phonemes. This will be our focus for the next while in our class 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. 

Learning Buddies

We certainly get excited when our learning buddies come to hang out with us! Today, our big buddies were helping us with our Reading Practice Book. This has been a new activity that we jumped into last week. They were there to practice our fluency grid, our story and some got to highlighting all the words with the -all, -oll and -ull phonics rule we were learning about this week. We are lucky to have some big experts that come to visit and be our mentors!  

Learning All About Respect

 R.E.S.P.E.C.T

Our character trait that our school has been focusing on for the month of September, and into October, is Respect. The class had created 5 agreements (aka classroom rules) and the first one is 'Bee Respectful'. It's hard to learn about what that means when it's not something that we can see or touch. However, it is something that we can feel. Our class explored the concept of Respect by reading, singing and brainstorming. We are reminded every day that our actions and words need to be respectful in our classroom, school, home and communities. Respect is best!!

We read these books:

We also watched this video about respect:

Our song that we listened to about respect:

As we have been learning new ideas about what respect looks like, feels like and sounds like, we added our ideas to our brainstorm:

We continue to grow and learn every day to be the most respectful BEES we can be!