I have also been asked to remind everyone about the upcoming clothes and book sale! We are asking people to donate old clothes and books to the school and we will be selling them to raise money for charity. If you would like more details about what we are looking for, Ms. Yukiko has sent out an email outlining everything. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
This was a bit of a mixed up week as I was away on the ski trip. I came back very stiff, sore and resigned to the fact I'm not as young as I used to be...... The good news was that G1B got glowing reviews from both Mr. Yoon and Mr. L which was very pleasing to hear. We tried to keep on schedule as much as possible and started a few new units this week. I have also been asked to remind everyone about the upcoming clothes and book sale! We are asking people to donate old clothes and books to the school and we will be selling them to raise money for charity. If you would like more details about what we are looking for, Ms. Yukiko has sent out an email outlining everything. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. We finished our work with length and measuring this week. We looked at measuring things with informal units and standard units. We started with the importance of finding the start and end point of the objects we are measuring. We then measured things in our classroom in informal objects (blocks) and talked about what objects were easier/more difficult to measure with these units. We then moved onto estimating lengths using different objects as guides. We also spoke about how having an idea of how long something is makes it easier for us to use it to compare and estimate other objects. In the final lesson of the week we looked at measuring crocodiles! We looked at, 'How many kids could a saltwater crocodile eat' and estimated then measured them. We used this as a discussion starter on how informal units are not as accurate as centimetres and metres due to the fact they can be different sizes. For the record, an Australian saltwater crocodile can eat 3 students and half an Emma Li. We started our new unit on creative writing this week and we will be focusing on short stories in the coming weeks. To start with, students were asked to identify story features such as the main characters, settings, the problem, the beginning/middle/end and the solution. Students used this research as a springboard in creating their own characters for their stories (which were quite diverse! We even had a story about a talking rainbow.) At the end of the week we looked at writing about the setting and the, 'problem' that the characters will have to try and solve. This writing unit will be a little different to the others as the students can write as much as they want in comparison to the paragraphs that they have written to date. I look forward to sharing some of the weird and wonderful stories that come out of this unit! This week in reading, we looked at reading strategies to use when we come across difficult texts. We will be reviewing some of the reading strategies that we covered earlier in the year but will be focussing more on making meaning and comprehension in this unit. For this week, students were working on making sure that their reading 'made sense.' This involved them being able to identify mistakes using their phonics and the pictures to make sure that they 'make sense.' We also looked at rereading sentences once they have identified a mistake and using the corrected words one more time. These strategies will be very helpful in the upcoming reading assessments as the students begin to read more and more challenging texts. Our new science unit has started and we are going to look at air and weather this term. The students have begun this unit with an investigation into the properties of air and looked at the key question of, 'What can air do?' The students experimented with air pumps and various objects to see how air can push, move, expand and fill things. The students then were asked to do an engineering challenge by designing a parachute to deliver supplies to a person who was on a desert island (surrounded by man eating sharks and crocodiles no less!) Panna volunteered to be the stranded person and students designed parachutes to get her food and water without falling too quickly and making her a Panna Pancake! We tested our creations and finally used them (with Panna underneath) to see if they are effective. The students did discover that parachutes have some problems and tried to work around them. We will continue this next week as we look at the physics of WHY the parachutes help the supplies fall slower and some of the other problems that could be encountered due to air (hint: the wind!) We had our prize winners for the week and this time Yui won the prize draw and chose to have no homework next Wednesday! Emma won the cleanliness and responsibility award and chose a gacha gacha to take home! Well done to both of them!
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Another eventful week with our squad day and Valentines coming in quick succession! For the squad event, we made valentine bookmarks that we gave to all our squad mates on Friday. A big thank you to all involved for making our bake sale a roaring success with all sorts of goodies being sold for a good cause. This week we also managed to take advantage of the slightly warmer weather to spend more time outside at the park. There will be a big change for next week however as I will be going on the ski trip with the year 2 and 3's so G1B will have Mr. Yoon for Monday and Tuesday and Mr. L for Wednesday. I will be returning to school on Thursday. Mathematics. We started our unit on measurement this week and we spent most of the week comparing objects using the correct comparatives. We used: tall - taller - tallest long - longer - longest short - shorter - shortest (being the opposite of both tall and long.) We also discussed the importance of starting points when comparing length or height and looked at making sure that we start at a common point when comparing objects. Next week the students will start to measure using irregular units (blocks, handspans, pencils etc.) and regular units (centimetres.) Writing. We finished our persuasive writing this week and most students managed to finish their publishing for their summative assessments. For those who finished early, we started another persuasive text about toys the students think we should have in our common area. I am hoping that in the coming weeks (usually in the morning) that students will be able to write a letter to Ms. Natasha to try and persuade her to buy some new toys for our play area! Next week we will start our creative writing unit (although the poetry unit also touched on this too) and students will be learning how to write their own short stories. Reading. This week in reading, we looked at our literacy groups and how to communicate effectively in a group. I decided to spend a little time helping the students work more effectively in groups after being inspired by a recent professional development run by our Grade 6 teacher Ms. Wood! I learned about Kagan collaborative learning (Kagan being the bloke who came up with the research) that is currently being used in the United Kingdom. So for this week, we looked at how to take turns, ask effective questions and give praise to our classmates when working in groups. I am hoping that these exercises will help set the students up for later years when they will be expected to have these social skills already in place for group work. I am also trying to organise a time with Mr. Ronchetti to visit his year 5 class so we can see how he runs his reading lessons! Social Studies. It was the last week for Social Studies this term. We looked at different groups we can belong to and focussed mainly on Family, School and Community groups. The students brainstormed different kinds of groups that they belong to and what kind of group they were. For example: Family Groups: immediate family (Mother, Father, Siblings), Extended Family members. School Groups: Classes, Desk Groups, School Council. Community Groups: Girl/Boy scouts, choirs, sports teams. By having students think about groups they are part of, the theme of, 'being different but also the same' was introduced and it will be continued next term! Prize ticket winners! This week Mahana won the prize draw and chose to take home one of our gatcha gatchas. Reo won the cleanliness award and chose no homework for the week. Well done to both of them!
A really wonderful week this week as we had some special events come up! Firstly we had our field trip to the Edo Outdoor Architectural Museum in Musashino. Apart from a fairly long drive to get there, the students had a wonderful time exploring the different buildings from the past and how it compare to their lives today. We also managed to get a fair bit of playtime and a rare chance for the students to practice hide and seek and catch outside near the plum blossoms. We also didn't have time to see all the museum either and I would heartily recommend it for a family trip on a weekend! We also had special guests on Thursday, a real rock band from Sydney, Australia! Ms. Erin had asked them to come in and demonstrate their instruments and perform some of their songs for the students. The students were very enthusiastic asking them questions and even got a band sticker at the end. Mathematics.We focussed on subtraction this week in maths as well as how to answer maths stories (with a focus on showing your working out.) A big thank you to parents who helped out with the homework this week as it was really tricky! For the subtraction this week, we looked at taking away a single digit number from a double digit one (up to 20). This involved breaking up the double digit number into it's tens and ones and then choosing which on to subtract from. For example: 17 - 5 = We break the 17 into 10 and 7 (10) (7) -5 = Because the 7 is a larger number than 5, we can just minus them first. 7-5= 2 Then we add on the remaining 10! 10+2=12 This gets a little trickier for when the 'ones' are smaller than the number being taken away. 15 - 7= Break the 15 into 10 and 5 (10) (5) -7 = A common mistake here is students reversing the 'ones' to enable them to subtract them, here it would be 7-5= 2. The correct number would be to subtract from the 10 as it is larger! 10- 7 = 3 Then we add the remaining 5 to the 3. 5 + 3 = 8. Mastering this strategy prepares the students for using the substitution method covered later in the year (where we 'borrow' tens from the ten column). We also looked at maths stories and I have been very strict with the students as far as working out is concerned. I have taught them that most questions in tests are worth 3 points and one of them is for the answer. The other two are for working out. For maths stories, I have asked them to follow 3 steps: Ms. Allison caught 6 pikachus in the Viridian forest. She then catches 8 more the next day. How many pikachus does she have now? (Ms. Allison likes pokemon......) First step: Students will identify the numbers they need to manipulate, here it is 6 and 8. Second step: Students will then decide what the question is actually asking them to do. For now it is addition or subtraction. In this example it is addition so students should write the sum: 6 + 8 = Third step: Solve the problem! And of course, write what the answer is (not just the number!) Ms Allison now has 14 pikachus. A lot covered this week! As stated before, these strategies help the students later on so if you have any questions on how these strategies work, please feel free to ask me. Writing. We resumed our work with persuasive writing this week and started our next topic. Students will be writing about books they believe that all G1's should read. This week, students have begun prewriting and drafting their work. They have brainstorm at least 5 or 6 reasons (their opinion rather than the reasons or fact), choosing 3 of the strongest ones then planning the structure of their paragraph. We have already had a lot of good ideas and a wide spread of books the students want to recommend. The trick will be supporting their opinions with facts later on! Reading. This week in reading, students continued their work with reading groups (I call them literacy circles) and asking questions. We focussed on some standard questions that the leaders of the groups can ask to get some really well informed answers from the the group members. One question was to ask if the readers can see any patterns in the text at all which tied into our work last week in reading. We reviewed the different patterns we looked at (patterns in the writing, pictures and the characters feelings.) We also continued our work with readers theatre and had some of our reading partners start to practice performing their books to the class. We are hoping that we will be able to present a few of these to G1A and perhaps even the school in an assembly sometime! Social Studies. For social studies, we reviewed comparing the past and present and looked at some examples I had taken photos of from the museum we visited. We students had to brainstorm what the objects were and what they were used for. We also talked about grandparents and how they can help connect us to the past as they often have stories to tell and photos to share! We looked at one example of a person that was 99 year old talking about how travel had changed throughout his life. Next week will be our last week of social studies before we start our next science unit! Prize ticket winners! We had two prize days this week to make up for the one we missed last week. On Monday, Mateus won the cleanliness award for the week for a massively improved cubby and desk while Osuke won the prize raffle draw. On Friday, Sophie won the cleanliness award while Panna won the raffle! Well done to everyone!
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