RamsayRowland

May 23 -26th    We had a great week coming back after the long weekend highlighted by a visit from the Little Red Reading Van and our community walk on Thursday! Here is a look at our week -  Phonics: this week we looked at the diagraph - nk found in words think, bank, sunk. The high frequency words we focused on this week were - very, after, thing, our, just.  Science -  We continue to focus on living things as we explored the needs of both plants and animals to survive. As part of this we have examined seeds, looking at their parts and what they need to grow. Then we planted bush bean seeds and have enjoyed watching them begin to grow. Using the Medicine Wheel as our template of understanding life, we created Bean lifecycles.  On Friday we also began looking at another group of living things - Caterpillars! After having an opportunity to learn about these little creatures when we visited the zoo, we now have them up close and personal in our grade 1 class...

May 15-19th It was a somewhat long week due to being kept inside from the wildfire smoke but we powered through and had some great experiences.  Here is a look at our week-  Phonics: this week we looked at two different sounds. The first one was /c/ - when the c says /s/ when there is a /e/ following it. Words such as ace, place, race follow this phonics rule. The second one is similar but is the soft/g/ sound in words such as huge, cage, page. The high frequency words we focused on this week were - live, me, back, give, most.  Writing - this week we focused on how to write a friendly letter. We looked at the purpose of writing letters and the parts of a letter. We completed a shared writing experience where we wrote a letter together and then students worked on writing letters independently. Here is a look at a few samples and our  letter writing success criteria.  Math - this week we moved onto measurement. We began examining what it meant to measure, why we w...

  May 8-12th Chicks - We had such an enjoyable week learning about and from our chicks. We enjoyed observing, cuddling and loving our little chicks . Students spent time documenting their appearances, their movements and their habits. We also enjoyed reading about chicks, watching videos about how they grow and spent time looking at identifying different breeds. Here are our chicks and the breeds we believe they are: Black Copper Maran lightbrown Leghorn This experience with the eggs/chicks was such an engaging,  enriching time to study living things. It brought the Ramsay community together rooting for the chicks to hatch and survive as well as to enjoy the little fluffy peeping chicks!  We are very grateful to have had this experience and to have created these memories. The chicks are off to a farm in Didsbury with other chicky friends!  Math - this week we continued our look at 3-D shapes and their attributes. We examined faces of 3-D shapes by looking at the diff...

  Egg Watch - Day 2  I arrived at school today and Ms Paradis was giving love to our little chick friend before moving it to its new enclosure! Just before she left we  gave the eggs one more look and noticed another one getting started. While waiting for more progress on egg #2 - I had some time to bond with our chick and it is doing great! Eating lots, drinking water, moving around and leaning in for cuddles and attention. Every time I left the room, chicky would peep very loudly!  https://drive.google.com/file/d/14xCbHCHdzQg1gejmg4DfhgTsiLoHfJQd/view?usp=sharing Unfortunately I had to leave but egg #2 had a larger crack in it. Hopefully we will have another chick hatch! Stay tuned for updates . . .

One of our eggs has hatched!! Click on links below to see videos below: (turn up sound to hear the sweetest sounds!)  https://drive.google.com/file/d/12N8aKWY1jslMcVLncg1Ps5uILxXbRu1R/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CI8BSFB1Et-pBJJ7F3X-SpL0QP0E30_Z/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fyIoG-KhUrRXtFdnbyicx6gIjeoNK7JP/view?usp=sharing Here are some additional pictures from Ms Paradis -  This morning I came into the classroom and could hear sweet little chirps. After looking really closely I could see a small crack at the top.  I went to join the other teachers for a meeting and came back during a break and could see some pieces of shell on the cloth. When all my meetings were finished I came back and saw the chick had been hard at work. The little chick worked and worked at getting out.   The chick was hard at work breaking the shell in a line around the egg. Soon we could see body parts coming out - feet, wings, a beak.   Fina...

May 1-4th  It was another eventful week in grade one! We feel so grateful to have all these wonderful experiences together. Here is a look at our week -    Eggs!! - We continued to observe our chicken eggs as they make their way through their 21 day cycle. Every few days we candled (shine a bright light to see inside) our eggs to see what we could observe. On Tuesday we put our eggs into lockdown (day 18) for the last days of their development. We are very excited about the possibility of chicks hatching over the next number of days. Keep an eye on our blog for further posts!! As we have continued on with our egg inquiry we have learned that many different types of animals, insects, fish, birds and reptiles lay eggs. We have also learned about the different types of nests that these creatures create. As a challenge we set upon creating our own nests using natural materials we collected. Here is a look at some of our creations! On our community walk this week our intention...