Hooray! Assessment week is over and we can get back into routine again! We started this morning with reading groups. There were a few changes in reading groups and we had to change some of our books into our new boxes. Then we got going on some reading tasks or reading to Mrs Taylor. We are all doing such a great job and have all been trying really hard, making great gains in our reading. Way to go 1T!
We also learnt about the long 'i' sound today. We worked out that ie, y, i, and i_e all say the long 'i' sound. Look how many words we knew that said 'i'!
We listened to a little bit of the book, 'You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum!' By Andy Stanton. Mr Gum is a man that doesn't like children, animals, fun and corn on the cob. He has an angry fairy who lives in his bathtub and makes Mr Gum keep the garden tidy or hits him with a frying pan. It gave us lots of ideas for our own stories! We had a great writing session and got to listen to some stories read to us by our peers. You can see by the smiles that these stories were very funny!
We did some graphing and position in the afternoon. We had to draw pictures on the left or right of a tree. This was a little tricky for some of us!
The day included some stamina reading. It's wonderful to see the excitement 1T had at reading their own chapter books! We made it to nearly ten minutes which isn't too bad on a Monday.
Everyday is a learning day! So here's a little glimpse into some of what we're doing during the day!
We've been learning to create mental pictures while we read. This is called visualising. 'Visualising' is a strategy we use to help us think about what might happen next, to remember details about the text we're reading and it helps us get really involved in the text too. We've been learning that this helps us to understand what we read better.
We've been trying really hard to write more content. Our parents coming to see our work was just the inspiration we needed to write a page! Look at these books!
We have been learning about 'grammar' which caused a few giggles as many thought I was talking about 'Grandma'. We're working on nouns, verbs and adjectives, what they are and where we use them. Camille asked if the word 'slowly' was a verb, so we had a great class discussion about adverbs and got to walk slowly and think of adverbs to add to the verbs, write, run and walk. There were lots of slow motion walkers in our room.
We've been learning about length and the terms longer than and shorter than a metre and today we used our feet to measure. We got to go outside and with a partner measure the length and width of the basketball courts. We then came in and compared our measurements. We discussed why the measurements were all different and how we could get around that. We decided that we needed to measure items with the same item and that our feet are all different lengths so we can't use them. What a wonderful discussion about length and the importance of regular units of length in measuring items. We also talked about the importance of measuring by placing their foot one in front of the other rather than just normal steps. Lots of thoughtful discussion!
Here you can see some of the lengths we found. And below some of us in action!
Our stamina reading is almost at 10 minutes. We are really good at reading by ourselves. We now get a few books, get comfy in a quiet spot and then read out loud, use our whisper phones or read in our heads. Don't we look like we love reading time! It's just lovely! It's just a pity Mrs Taylor only has four cushions!
This afternoon we sang along to our assembly song for the week, Mr Clicketty Cane's 'Wash your face with orange juice' which is definitely a favourite. After we sang that we then sang, 'The Ants go Marching'. What a great way to end the afternoon!
Today we got to graph our friend's names! Now that was so exciting! We had to copy their names from their desk and then work out who had the name with the most and least letters out of the names we chose. The word 'least' is a tricky one. We found out it meant the smallest amount. In our class the people with the shortest names are Max and Sam.
We finished our class novel, The Twits today. It had twenty-nine chapters! That's a lot of book! We then created lots of ideas about stories we could write using the book as inspiration. We are really working hard to write more than 4 sentences, read our own work back to Mrs Taylor and use capital letters and full-stops. Some of us are writing a whole page! Wow! I love the stories we are beginning to write and some of the illustrations that accompany them are fabulous!
Here's Leith's story:
Once I was sitting under a tree and had an apple. Just when I had finished my apple the tree shrunk into the ground. Then I was underground. I dug and dug until I saw a larva world. I saw a sign that said the first person who discovers this can own this place. I saw a larva car. I tried to drive it in the larva.
Sophie wrote about Frozen. She wrote:
On Friday I was having a play date at Elsa's place. I was playing with Anna and Elsa. I love Elsa and Anna. I went to Anna's birthday.
Xylah wrote:
Once upon a time I went to bed. I heard a BOOM! There was a monster. I said, aaaa. I was very scared. I ran to my mum and I did not get sore. I was lucky and then the monster got sick. The monster went home.
And Jackson's story:
I saw a house melting. It was a hot day. I saw a house made out of an ice-block. It melted. The world was freezing. After that the cars melted. After the people melted.
And finally Sam:
One day I flew across the land. I flew across the school. It was so cool! But one day I crashed into a wall and banged my head. But I still liked it. I am so excited I am going to perform magic tricks on a stage. It is going to be cool! I'm doing it right now. But I'm still a bit nervous.
I love all the stories and I love seeing everyone trying so hard to sound out the sounds they know. I can't wait to see where we are at the end of the year. I think we're just going to fly! We're working so hard at writing more and having a go! Wow! One proud Mrs Taylor!!
We've been graphing birthdays and the number of boys and girls in our class. We've been talking about tally charts and using tally marks to count the number of what we're graphing. We know that we have to write four lines and then one line across when we get to five.
Today we got to use our tally skills to count how many smarties we had in each colour in our own mini snack sized smartie box. How exciting to get to play with chocolate while we're learning!
