January 9-13th 

Welcome back, hope everyone had a wonderful break. We Had a wonderful week back together, reconnecting and sharing stories and adventures from our break. 

Here is a glimpse at our week together - 

Literacy:

Grade 1 reviewed words with four letters such as CVCC or CCVC words (last, fast, trap, flip) through different tasks such as building words, writing words in sentences and reading passages.  We also introduced the diagraph  /sh/ and examined how it is found in the beginning, middle and end of words (shop, dishes, fish). A diagrph is a when two consecutive letters work together to make one sound. 

Grade 2 also reviewed phonic skills that they worked on prior to the break and were introduced to the diagraph  /ph/  - phone, graph.

We continued to build on our writing skills through narrative writing. Students wrote in their journals using the following sentence starters - 

Over the winter break I  . . . 

My favorite activity was . . 

The best thing I ate was . . 

I am grateful for....

Success criteria for both groups included-

3- 4 sentences (grade 2) 1-2 sentences (grade 1)

Beginning capital, end punctuation.

A 'who' and a 'doing' in each sentence

4 star picture

Edit/look for sight words

This week we also had fun focussing on the choral reading of poems and passages. Students generated groups and were given short poems/passages to practice reading fluently with focus on voice tone, volume and pace. Students enjoyed adding loud/quiet, soft/hard tones to their reading as well as adding actions for the audience. All groups shared their passages with the group at the end of the week and it was a valued experience for all. 

Math - 

Grade 1 continued to build their fluency of numbers from 1-100 and grade 2 continued on numbers from 100- 1000. Our focus continued on having students build their understanding of place value, the value of the digits in numbers and building numbers using representations such as base 10 blocks and pictures. We also worked on expanded notation - 

358 = 300 +50 + 8.

We also focussed on  using doubles as a strategy for addition. Students spent time quizing one another, playing games and learning songs to help them understand and remember doubles from 1-10. Here is an example of a song that they love singing - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At0quRa90rs&ab_channel=Hopscotch