This Week in Room 108

A close shave: Check out your beautiful kids sporting moustachios, pencil thin moustaches and other funny facial hair. Thanks for the money. Our class raised over $15 for cancer research! P.S. Check out the tree stump that Kyra's family donated to our class. It's become a new fixture.

This week's post is brought to you by the excellent TV show Horrible Histories. I believe this is on BBC Kids. Check out Charles II's mo.

This week we're working on the following:

Reading: Guided reading and shared readings will focus on looking at the middle and endings of words when decoding. We will be looking for little words inside bigger words and breaking words into chunks, for sounding out. We will also begin discussing context clues and how looking at the whole sentence, or surrounding sentences can help us read unfamiliar words.

Writing: We will begin planning our procedural writing. As well, we'll be working on our printing skills. We'll also work on short vowel sounds in phonics.

Math: Measuring - capacity and mass. Lot's of hands-on learning.

Social Studies. Houses around the world. How does water get to a house in Toronto and other cities around the world? We'll also begin talking about the Jewish celebration Hanukkah with a craft and writing activity.

Science: Grade 1s will learn a bit about rocks as part of Living and Non-living Things. Grade 2s will begin learning about food chains, particularly those of aquatic animals.

* We will be working on our performance for the holiday concert. Depending on how smoothly that goes, we may or may not get to everything planned for the week, but we'll keep pushing forward.

Homework:

- Read a book a day or keep reading a chapter book. Record the book in your Reading Log.

- Spelling words: Grade 1s will be working on word family -ug: mug, bug, slug, chug, and tug. Grade 2s will work on - ain: train, pain, chain, rain, and drain. Don't forget the extra words on your list!

- There will be a different capacity activity for both grades to do. Please read the hand-out. Ask your child to tell you in their own words what "capacity" means.

- This week's expression is "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." We'll discuss it in class and come up with some examples. Please make sure your child creates a cartoon to illustrate this expression.

Have a great week!

Erin Hawkins

P.S. Please send in the field trip forms as soon as possible. Kindly send in the money in an envelope or baggie with your child's name on it. It's very hard for me to deal with loose money in the morning. Thanks for your understanding in this matter. P.S. If you can't send in two TTC tickets, please send in the cash for the TTC. We're also looking for parent volunteers. Let us know if you are able to come.

Thanks again!

Below, check out the photos from our water investigation last week.

CO was the winner of our first capacity estimation activity, so she was the bucket filler for our next activity: Guess how many measuring cups it takes to fill a bucket?

Here are our estimations. My estimation is at the bottom and was WAY off the mark.
MA was our trusty tabulator. Check out the tallies.
We took the bucket outside to get a sense of what it might be like having to carry water long distances in some areas of the world.
While this was going on, students had a go at water dowsing.
NJ was the winner of the bucket estimation activity. He guessed 15 cups of water and was the closest. Bravo!
Getting closer to water. We had a fascinating discussion about ground water and I heard many intelligent ideas about why water would just sit on the field and not drain down.



BK was determined to find water. A circle marks the spot.


Found it!

Student Made Books

Children can write - even if they're just learning to write. I was so happy last week when BK brought me this booklet he'd made at home, completely on his own steam. His mother had brought home some chicks for a couple of days and BK documented the experience in his book, making connections to germs and water - two things we've been learning about in class. Bravo!
Encourage your child to write about things that are interesting or important to them. Encourage them to sound out words and have fun writing, rather than worrying over spelling too much.
A germ-covered hand. E coli alert!




Thanks again, BK! I'm happy to document student work on our blog if you send it in.

Capital I

Since you've been to our room, I've taken down our Eid bulletin board and have begun boldly stapling up completed recounts written by your children. If we spend any more time writing recounts after this week, you'll find me curled up in the fetal position singing Gregorian chants.

The good news is that the recounts are great. I believe that all children can write, regardless of their age and the proof is in the pudding. Hmm - maybe that should be our expression that we learn about next week.

Anyway, the recounts will come home before the holidays for your enjoyment. In the meanwhile, I thought I'd share this golden oldie from Sesame Street. Many children still use a lower case i when referring to themselves. Let's work on this at home and school!

All the best,

Erin Hawkins

Here's more vintage gold about "I." Go girl!

Water Dowsing

I've been gathering Y-shaped twigs so that our class can go dowsing for water in the school yard this week. As outlined in my previous post, we are looking at many aspects of water right now. I thought it would be interesting for the class to have a go at this ancient craft. I'm not entirely sure of the scientific principal behind it. My folks are pretty sensible, but they told me they used a water diviner (dowser) to locate the water source for our well at our cottage when I was growing up. Apparently it worked!

Watch and marvel!

This Week in Room 108

Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink...

Hello there,

Thanks to all the awesome families who came out for interviews last week. I am as proud of your kids as you are.

This week, we're launching into our investigation of water. It will connect to both Grade 1 and Grade 2 Science as we look at the impact of water and sanitation in our lives, the lives of other people in different countries, as well as plants and animals. This will overlap into our Reading, Writing, and Social Studies.

Reading: We will carry on with our guided reading groups. As well, we will be reading poems about water, learn a song about the water cycle, and our read alouds will include Margaret Wise Brown's "The Little Island," and "The Water Witcher." I found an online version of this story set in the Australian outback. You'll find it below.

Writing: Last week, we began looking at examples of procedural writing. This week, we will begin sequencing existing texts into the correct order and begin planning our own procedural writing. We will connect procedural writing to water conservation e.g. how to brush your teeth without wasting water. At home, you can encourage your child to practice explaining how to do something sequentially, starting off with the materials or tools needed. More on this later. Several students still need to complete their written recounts. The journey is slow, but we're getting there. We will continue working on our printing skills and spelling.

Media Literacy: Students will continue working on their final drafts of our hand washing and germ posters.

Math: Measurement. We will continue working on linear measurement and hopefully begin capacity. We will go on a water walk at the end of the week to connect Science and Math to the social issue that many people in developing countries face: having to walk long distances for water.

Science: We will see how our pop bottle plant terrariums enable plants to survive without ever receiving additional water. We will focus on the words: evaporation and condensation. We will also attempt to do some water dowsing in the school yard.

Social Studies: Students have been learning about different designs of houses around the world, by creating booklets of houses they've drawn themselves. This week, they will focus on houses that are designed with water in mind.

Homework:

Grade 1s

• Borrow a book a day and record it in your Reading Log. Parents, please encourage your child to retell the story to you. Ask them if it is a fiction or non-fiction text. How do you know?
• Printing sheet.
• Measurement activity.
• Spelling words. This week, we're looking at word family - ay for the 1s.
• We're starting a book of expressions this week. I will be sending home a duotang with a sheet in it. Each week, they'll read over what the expression means with a parent and draw a cartoon with characters using the expression in a speech bubble. This week, we're starting off with our class favourite "You stole my thunder!" Students use this when they've put up their hand to answer a question and someone calls out the answer. Have fun with this.

Grade 2s

• Borrow a book a day and record it in your Reading Log. Parents, please encourage your child to retell the story to you. Ask them if it is a fiction or non-fiction text. How do you know?
• Measurement activity around the home and filling in the blanks on a hundreds chart.
• Spelling words. This week, we're looking at word family - ell for the 2s.
• We're starting a book of expressions this week. I will be sending home a duotang with a sheet in it. Each week, they'll read over what the expression means with a parent and draw a cartoon with characters using the expression in a speech bubble. This week, we're starting off with our class favourite "You stole my thunder!" Students use this when they've put up their hand to answer a question and someone calls out the answer. Have fun with this.

This Week in Room 108

Hello there,
This week will be a continuation of what we worked on last week, so please scoll down to see what we are doing.

Homework can all come in on Monday, since our four-day Canada's Food Guide graphing activity will run into Friday and there's no school that day.

Homework:

• Borrow a book a day and record it in your Reading Log


• Spelling words for Thursday


• Math measuring sheet (non-standard units and standard units)


• Canada's Food Guide activity.

Thanks,

Erin Hawkins

I'm looking forward to meeting everyone for parent interviews.

Have a great week.

Measuring Snakes

Your kids LOVE to measure. Today, we looked at a problem involving the lengths of three different snakes. How do you measure something that isn't straight?

Our "minds-on" activity on the carpet had the class figuring out how they can prove something is bigger than something else. Two different sized pieces of yarn acted as snakes. Using connecting cubes, Alishan and Faith told the class that the smaller snake was 18 connecting cubes, while the bigger one was 23 connecting cubes long. We counted the difference and discovered that the big one was 5 connecting cubes longer. See, we're still adding and subtracting!
Next, children were put into pairs and asked to show how they know three snakes had different lengths. Each group was given a length of yarn, scissors, and access to rulers and any concrete materials they wanted to use.

They got busy.

Students put yarn on the snakes and cut the yarn to the length before measuring the piece.


Some students used fingers and hands as non-standard units of measurement.

Others used rulers and meter sticks.

Afterwards, students reflected on what they learned in their math journals. Tomorrow, we will have a congress to share problem solving strategies. Awesome!

This Week in Room 108

Where do all the animals go for the winter? They can't all hang out at the Bluffs. Please have your child collect beautiful fall leaves this week. Press them in a book you don't love (not one of our class books!) and bring them in Friday for a craft.

Hello there,

Sorry for the lack of posting last week. It was a crazy week that included Progress Report writing, Halloween, and a cold that left me in a zombie-like state for the best part of the week. Nevertheless, we did a lot of work in class. I'm hearing all kinds of wonderful feedback about how your children are adding and subtracting like there's no tomorrow. It's so nice when the light switches on and kids get it. Bravo to our twos who are tackling double digit numbers for the first time.

Here's what we're working on this week:

Reading: Guided Reading groups took the back burner last week. We will resume this week and I will be conducting running records to check in on where reading levels are currently at. We will be reading recipes and other forms of procedure writing to support our unit on procedure writing, which will begin as soon as students have completed their personal recounts.

Writing: 1. Students are at various stages in their recount writing. Some have completed their recounts, while others are still in the planning stage. I'm hoping that we'll all be done by the end of the week. Students who are done will be given other tasks to sharpen their writing skills. 2. Both grades will be working on printing the letters M and N. If you notice your child is reversing their letters and numbers, please take note and point it out to him or her. I'm seeing a lot of 5s and 7s printed backwards. 3. Spelling words this week look at the -og family and the 2s will be working on -own. I'm massively impressed with the results on the weekly spelling quiz.

Oral: Students will be reading lyrics by the awesome Bobs & Lolo - two spunky Canadian singers who sing about educational matters in funny, sweet ways. Dig!

Media: We will be completing our germ/handwashing posters this week.

Math: While we will be chugging along with addition and subtraction, as well as problem solving, we will begin our new unit on measurement.

Science: We will be looking at growth and change of plants and animals in the fall. What makes leaves turn such beautiful colours? Where do animals go when it gets cold outside?

Social Studies: We've had a very interesting time learning about Eid. Thanks to our Muslim students for sharing their celebrations and traditions. This week we will be learning more about Diwali, which continues into November. Grade 1s will be exploring the roles of community helpers in greater depth.

Homework: I have had some students ask for more homework, so there is a little more than usual this week. Please let me know if it is too much and I can allow for completion in class on Friday.
Don't forget to keep those reading logs rocking and studying for the spelling quiz. The full list of homework is in your child's homework bag, coming home on Monday.

Have a great week,
Erin Hawkins