October 17, 2019

Hello Families,

I am really excited about SeeSaw and so are the students! Right now, we have about half of our parents connected which is great! Students are loving SeeSawing their work and sharing it with all the people at home. Also, they love seeing your comments and feedback.

Currently, we have been doing lots of small group work in math. Our work has focused on graphing and data collection, learning how to represent numbers through tallying, even and odd numbers, and a more formal math assessment for the grade 2's. I will be sending home two odd and even games to be added to your home math games folders. The "Heading Home" game is the beginner game, and the "Off The Board" game is more advanced as it targets counting forwards and backwards working with numbers up to 100. Your child should know the version that is "just right" for them.

We also continue to work towards self assessment in our drawing. We are still working towards using feedback to improve our work. Earlier in the week we used our peers and sticky notes to give feedback to one another. Since receiving this feedback, we have been attempting another draft of our leaf artwork. Tomorrow, we will visit our big buddies in grades 3/4 for a second round of peer feedback. I am excited to see the final product as the work continues to improve!

We are finished all of our letter and sounds! It is always a great idea to review these sounds and letters at home for the grade 1 students! :) This week, we introduced the blend "th" and talked about how the sign is that we are th, th, th, thirsty. Students have been acting as word detectives to identify words that contain th sounds and adding them to a classroom chart. We will be working with one blend sound each week and I will keep them posted on my blog. Here's the word detective words from this week. If you'd like to practice reading, spelling, or finding these or other th words in books (based on where your child is at) to extend your learning this would connect nicely to our work in class! Please remember that spelling is not included in the grade 1 curriculum, and we are encouraging all grade 1's at school to work on writing the sounds they hear, even if they are incorrect. 

We have also learned about generous people in our world, specifically Maria Montessori, Anne Frank, Terry Fox, and Mother Theresa as they connect to our Circle of Courage work for Generosity!

Take care,
Lindsay Brown