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!

Phonics Lesson 43: Irregular Vowel Sounds with ll: Oct 12 - 16 (Reading Practice Book)

Phonics Lesson 43: irregular vowel sounds with ll/l/ -all, -oll, -ull  

We have learned that we use ll to spell after a short vowel sound as part of our flsz lesson last week. Sometimes, when ll comes after the vowels a, o and u, the ll changes the vowel sound. It makes this sort of a group of heart words but we can be prepared by recognizing it could be one or the other with our vowel sounds. 

-all: These letters spell /all/ like in the words fall, call and small. 

-oll: These letters can have the short o sound like in doll. But the o in -oll is usually pronounced with the long o sound like in the words roll and troll. 

-ull: These letters often have the short u sound like in dull and skull. But the u in -ull is sometimes pronounced /oo/ like in the words pull or full.   

In this week's text called, Let's Golf, students are looking for words that have one of our special ll words that change the vowel sound. 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.

This week we are reviewing:

• your
• want 
• what
• said

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!

Mental Math

    

Our Busy Bees are learning all about numbers!! We started the year thinking about numbers, reading and writing numbers we learned about last year, reviewing counting, introduced place value and are currently working on comparing numbers. Counting on one more or one less of any number (Grade 1's numbers up to 50 is one way to help introduce our understanding of more or less. Knowing our numbers at any point (without having to count starting at 0 to our number) to know what is more or less is an essential skill to practice. We spent a couple weeks working on this practice daily and completing our little worksheets that we call our 'Mental Math Quiz" to show what we know. We continue to build on these number sense skills. 

We are going to apply our understanding of numbers through addition and subtraction mental math strategies!! Understanding what more (+) and less (-) means is a concept that we are working on and how that is represented in a number sentence. We are learning that when we add 1 to any number in a number sentence, we just count on from the other number it's higher neighbour. This is the 'One More Than' strategy to help us pick out quick mental math (rather than using manipulatives or our fingers to help us). We practiced this all last week and completed our Mental Math Quiz for this on Friday. 

This coming week, we are going to be introducing the 'One Less Than strategy' in subtraction sentences.  

A collection of these strategies, along with an information letter, are coming home today. Please use these at home to help with our math corrections that may come home. These are also great to practice when you get a chance to build our skills of our math facts! Students are beginning to really accept math as a positive challenge and should be proud of all they are learning already in Grade 1! 

Word Work: Syllables & Isolating Phonemes

We are now into our next focus of our phonological awareness! Students are really showing what they know with these mini lessons and we are super proud of their dedication to learning. It's amazing to see their growth in just a few weeks of focused training on certain areas!

This week's focus newsletter for families is below and is all about syllables and isolating phonemes. We have done many lessons on this throughout the school year so far but here are some activities you can do at home as well just to see what we have been up to and strengthen understanding!