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!
Wow, what a busy day! Congratulations to the Pirate Crew on reaching 8 minutes & 38 seconds. Great stamina!
ReplyDelete