Learning About Fractions With Cake!!

 

We have been introduced to the math concept about fractions while we also happen to be learning about fairness in May! Mrs. Herbert baked a rectangular shaped cake this week and iced it to share with the class. She started by sharing with the leader and 'cutting' one SMALL piece for them and the rest Mrs. Herbert got to eat. The students were pretty quick to realize that that was not fair for more than one reason (a: there are more students in the class than just the leader and b: the leader didn't get an equal piece compared to Mrs. Herbert's).

So we tried again (really we only scored the icing so we didn't make a mess of the cake!) We shared it equally and learned the name of one 'half'. When we divide something into two equal pieces, we call that one half.  

We decided that was too much cake for two people so we demonstrated about what the size would look like if 3 were sharing and 4, to include others. However, they were catching on that not everyone was getting one and we needed more parts. Well the pieces definitely got smaller when we added more and more people to get a part of the cake. It can also be tricky to got into equal pieces on our first try! 

And to be FAIR, we wanted to make sure everyone got a piece of our cake so we figured out how to cut the cake into 20 equal pieces and served it up as a special math treat today! 

This was a tasty introduction into parts of a whole, called fractions. We will be learning more as we explore and investigate the concept of fractions this week! Test out our knowledge of the fraction names! 

Choose Not To Use Challenge Wrap Up Day

This past month, the whole school had been challenged to 'choose not to use' as part of way to understand how to positively support our mental health and wellbeing. The school's Mental Health and Wellbeing Team challenged each class to take the pledge and choose not to use devices (as much) as it impacts our body in many different ways. We learned some pretty interesting facts on how screen time impacts our heart, lungs, eyes and brain! We made a commitment and hope at home, we can be held to our promise to reduce the amount of time on devices. We discussed other ways to spend our time and engaged in some really great activities at electives and with some activities planned and ran by the school's Mental Health and Wellbeing group. 

Today, we wrapped up our month long challenge and enjoyed some outside time together as a whole school with some additional play time and a treat! What a beautiful day to enjoy our successes with our challenge! We challenge you to keep it up and make a conscious effort to continue to choose other activities that are better for your mind and body than screens! 

 

Phonics Lesson 101 Suffix -ly: June 1 - 4 (Reading Practice Book)

Phonics Lessons - June 1 - 4

This week we continued expanding our knowledge of morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Morphemes are the word parts that change a word's meaning. A suffix is a morpheme we add to the end of a word. This week we are going to focus on the suffixes -s, -es, -er and -est. 

Lesson 101: Suffix -ly

We already know a few suffixes: -s, -es, -er and -est.   

The suffix -ly is pronounced with the y making a long e sound like in the word slowly.

-ly means like or manner of. Words that end in -ly are usually adverbs. Adverbs are words that describe actions or things that are happening. For example in the sentence "Tom drives slowly,' slowly tells us how Tom drives. 

In this week's text called, Rollercoaster, students are looking for words that have the -ly suffix on adverbs. They are looking to highlight (the whole word that has that spelling pattern). 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:

• about
• answer

This week's new words:

• honest
• honour

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. 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 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!

May Estimate Jar

  

This week, we did our May Estimate Jar since May school days have now disappeared!   

Each student wrote down their estimate on their white board of how many fruit chewy candies were in the jar. 

We decided today we would count by 5's because we know counting that way takes less time and it was super close to lunch time as well!  

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 candies. We are getting much faster at comparing numbers!

Fateh was our winner (funny enough he won last year's May estimate jar as well!) and was the closest estimate to the 66 treats we had in total! Our winner knew our tradition is to share the treats with everyone in the class. We had enough for everyone to have 3. We created our first division sentence with 66 divided by 20 to be introduced to that type of number sentence. Since there were 6 remainder that was Fateh's winnings! Some sweet math on a beautiful, sunny day to wrap up May! 

Fair is Fair - Learning About The Character Trait of Fairness!

Throughout May, we were learning all about fairness as our character trait of the month. We have read books, poems and watched videos all about this concept to help us understand what this big idea means. We caught on pretty quick but certainly expanded our thinking too! We brainstormed all the ideas we have been learning about and have posted in our classroom:

We have read these books:

And some great songs and videos we watched about fairness are:

We are working hard on focusing on making good choices and going to be learning more about integrity in June! 

 

June Class Newsletter & Calendar

June Newsletter

Our last newsletter of the school year! Please take some time to read 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.

June Calendar

This is our June 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.

June Reading Room

This month we are exploring fiction and non fiction books relating to Father's Day, Summer and integrity. 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!