Writing is a gift!

I've been so lucky to have some wonderful stories coming into school that have been written at home. These are wonderful pieces of writing that have been written for no other reason other than to bring in and share with the class. I'm making sure that we find time (usually in the morning) to read these. Wow! We've come such a long way!

We continued to read our story, 'You're a Bad Man Mr Gum!'. What a laugh! A great read aloud from the United Kingdom. I needed to buy it off amazon as it wasn't available in our library. As its a chapter book its given us great opportunities to discuss the images we have in our heads about the book - we refer to this as 'visualising'. We especially liked to imagine what the fairy who likes to hit Mr Gum over the head looks like, when he doesn't look after his garden. We've also been making some great predications about what is happening next and using the story to help our writing. We use the phrase, 'I predict...' when we're making predictions in class.

 

We practiced our measuring today with paper-clips. We had to make sure that when we measured something we placed the paper-clip down on what we wanted to measure. We then needed to make a mark before moving the paper-clip along and then make a mark again. We talked about why it is important to measure carefully using the, 'make, mark and move' method so that we can measure by repeatedly placed end-to-end without gaps or overlaps a unit such as a paper clip. Some of us found these easier to do than others. We'll keep practising our measuring over the year.

 

A few days in the life of 1T

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!

Fantastic Friday

Today is the last day of the week but it certainly isn't the quietist!! We started the day with reading groups and had Jill and Mrs McInerney come into the room to help us this morning. We read, did some sight word work and built our stamina writing. We have to practice our reading and writing everyday. Last year at the end of kindergarten we aimed to write four sentences when writing. Now we're in year 1 we're trying really hard to build our stamina for writing and are trying to write more than four sentences! Mrs Taylor has been so impressed with how we're going!

Some of us wrote so much that we got to take our reading to Mrs Stanford to show her. We got gold principals stickers! We felt so special and Mrs Taylor was so proud!

 

On Thursday we read for 7 minutes 13 seconds and now, can you believe, we can read independently for 8 minutes and 38 seconds! Mrs Taylor is so proud of us! Most of us have brought in books from home and Mrs Taylor has bought some phonic readers from Aldi's to use as well. We are really good at finding a nice sensible spot to read, get comfy and then read with our whisper phones or out loud. We know that we can't interrupt anyone, get up and walk around the room or chat with our friends. We also know that during our reading sessions to build our stamina we're not allowed to get a drink of water or go to the toilet. We even know the difference between fake reading and real reading. And do you know that we're all doing real reading for all that time. We're so clever!

 

 

After reading groups we heard back from our pen pal school in Toronto. I've copied and pasted the letter below so you can see what they wrote to us! How exciting to get a reply to our letter! Their school has three breaks which we all thought was a lot! They also call things different names. They call excursions, field trips and biscuits, cookies. They asked us how we get to school so we tallied up the ways we travel. We love learning about graphs and data too!

 

Have a read below. What was your schooling like? We'd love to hear about how your school life was different from what we do.

Dear Year 1’s at Boronia Park Public School, 

It was nice to hear back from you! 

We find it interesting that it is summer there and winter here. Although we get to play in the snow, we are jealous that you have summer all the time! During the summer we like to swim outside, play in the pool, play at the beach, go on field trips, go to the park, play baseball, go to the zoo, play different sports and go to amusement parks.

We’ve discussed how you are on the other side of the world. Right now, it is daytime here and nighttime where you are. 

When we have birthdays in the classroom, students usually bring in cupcakes or cake to share with the class. We might bring in snacks like fruit and cookies. We celebrate by having a party in class. During the party we sing a special birthday song and have a dance party. The birthday person gets to wear a special pin on their birthday. 

We have 3 breaks a day, which are 2 recesses and a lunch. Our recesses are 15 minutes each. We go outside and play and eat snacks. If the weather is bad, we have to stay inside to eat our snack and play. We get an hour for lunch from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. We eat inside in our classrooms, or in the daycare which is located in the school. We eat for 15-20 minutes then go outside for the rest of lunch to play. We start school at 8:43 a.m. and finish at 3:20 p.m.

In our class, we all drive or walk to school since we live very close. In the summer, we ride our bicycles to school since it is nice outside. 

In school we learn about math, science, social studies, health, art, language (reading, writing), computers, gym, music, drama, dance and library. We learn French in school here, but only when you are in grade 4 and up.

At the moment some of our favourite stories are Ready, Set, Go! By Robert Munsch, Elephant and Piggy by Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, books about animals, Pokemon and Lego books, Spiderman and superhero books.

Recently we went two field trips to The Science Centre and to watch a concert. At The Science Centre we learned about energy and structures. There are different rooms and areas where you can explore and learn about science. We were able to go to the caves, a kids park, build structures, take shadow pictures and go into the rainforest. On our second field trip, we went to a concert to see Jack Grunsky perform. He sang happy kids songs.

Some questions we have for you:

-Do you have daycare?

-What time do you finish school?

-How do you get to school?

-Do you have extra-curricular clubs?

-What subjects do you learn in school?

-Do you have a Science Centre?

-Do you live near a lake?

-Do you have any special fairs during the year?

From Ms. Gibbon’s Grade 1/2 Class

After recess we did some sentence work. We're working really hard to work out what a sentence is. We now know that a sentence needs a capital letter and a full stop. It also needs to have a verb and it needs to make sense. We had to pretend we were teachers today and change some sentences to make them make sense.

We had some more of our story, The Twits. The monkeys had escaped! We really don't want Mr and Mrs Twit to eat them like they do the birds in the garden. Mr Twit is so mean that he puts glue on the branches of a tree and then the birds get stuck on the glue and he turns the birds into a bird pie. He doesn't even take their feathers or feet off before cooking them. We decided that was really gross! We all like chicken but we don't like to eat chicken heads, beaks, eyes and feathers!

Next we did some more about measurement. We had to find items around the room that are less than a metre, the same as a metre or more than a metre. We did a great job of measuring the items around the room using a metre ruler. At the end of the lesson we even got to see if we could step or jump the distance of a metre. We tried really hard to jump a metre and most of us could do it. We were having so much fun that it didn't even feel like we were learning. 

 

Our last session on Friday afternoons is now spent with Mrs Stephens. Mrs Taylor has to help some of the other teachers in the afternoon and we won't miss Mrs Taylor so much then. We still get some Taylor time to finish off the week though!