We had a busy week with all our preparations for the science fair and art show. We still managed to start a few new units and get through a lot of work. We've also been translating our recent experience at the field trip to our playtime and the students have been spending a lot of time looking for bugs at the park (they certainly are much less squeamish when confronted by insects.) We started the week with an assessment on mental mathematic strategies. Then we moved onto numbers to 120. We have been introducing new activities for our maths groups around sorting numbers from 30 - 90 in tens (in both numerals and written form), counting in tens and ones and using two, 2 digit numbers to add together and reach a target number. The main focus of all the activities is getting students to differentiate between the tens and ones mentally and this will help prepare them for the upcoming addition and subtraction to 120 unit! We finished off our formative assessments for our report writing this week. We also started to look at research strategies using both a library's book catalogue and the internet. The main skill we practiced was searching for a very specific key word then expanding our search until we found books or information. We choose to research tiger sharks as a class and to start off we entered the phrase 'tiger shark' into the school book catalogue. There were no matches so we decided to expand the search to 'sharks', which also had no hits (which is untrue as we have a few books all about sharks.) We then expanded to 'Ocean Creatures' and then we were able to find some books to research. We finished our unit on non fiction books this week (fairly early on) and I used this time to have some reading conferences with the students before they start doing the reading assessments in about a weeks time. One area of focus in the conferences was answering comprehension questions effectively and avoid giving opinion unless asked specifically for it. An area that students found difficult was, 'Why did the author write this book?' and I was able to spend some time explaining what exactly is expected. Hopefully this leads to students zipping up the reading levels to get to those chapter books everyone is looking forward to! We resumed our social studies unit this week but unfortunately, a lot of the time was taken with our science presentations! We still managed to get through some work and we looked at how there are different groups within our lives and how we can belong to more than one. The main groups that we tackled were: Family groups (and they can belong to a lot of different kinds), School groups and Community groups. The students sorted different activities that each group would participate in and compared and contrasted different groups to each other. Our class itself turned our to have a lot of different groups inside it but we all belong to one big school group of G1B! This week Amai won the prize raffle and chose to bring in a toy for 1 day. Shinnosuke won the Ms Lindsey prize and is going to chose where he sits next week.
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We were very busy this week. We were wrapping up our science unit, finalising our first report writing and finishing up our mathematics unit. That means next week there will be a lot of new units to get stuck into. We also had our field trip to Abio farm which was a roaring success! We spent the time looking at insects in their natural habitats and learning how to harvest vegetables by locating their nodes. The students have voted it to be the best field trip this year! Mathematics. In mathematics we looked at subtraction this week. The first two strategies we looked at were the reverse of the addition strategies studied last week (subtracting the ones/tens depending on the sum.) We also looked at number bonds and 'making ten' first to solve subtraction problems. For example: 14 - 6 = 14 - 4 - 2 (we split up the six to so that we can take away the 4 from the 14 to make ten)= 10 - 2 (from here we can use our 10 number facts to arrive at the answer quickly) = 8. We also revisited using addition to solve subtraction problems by finding the difference. If use the example above, we know that 14 is the whole number we have to reach and one part of the sum is 6. We can then count upwards from 6 to find out what the other part is. We will be having our summative assessment for our mental strategies on Monday next week as the field trip stole one of our maths days! Writing. We continued with our report writing this week and most students have finished their second draft and have started editing their work for the publishing. We had a lot of confusion on how to set out our report properly with a lot of students forgetting to start a new line for a new paragraph and not indenting the start of the paragraphs. This will be a focus for the next week but it is understandable as this is the first time the students have written more than one paragraph! Another area that will be looked at is revising our writing as the some of the extra information that was added in from the first draft was not based on research from our non fiction titles. Reading. For reading this week we continued our work with non fiction texts. We looked at reading two texts in pairs that have a 'big idea' in common. Students researched their books and compared the two based on what ideas they shared or had different. The pairs have been presenting to the class about their books on three main topics: What do they have in common? What information do they share? What do you think of the books (and why.) We have also been doing reading conferences to help the students prepare for our reading tests later in the term. Science. Our science unit wrapped up this week and we ended it with designing a terrarium for some of the bugs that we found on the field trip. We first of all looked at or cuttings and prepared the mint for planting in our terrariums (the potosi is not looking that good at the moment.) We had a design competition for the best terrarium which we chose on Friday and we based our decision on the variety of insects and creepy crawlies we collected. We finished off the week with a class discussions on animal needs (food, water, air, shelter) but this is by no means the end of our investigations as we will continue to monitor and record the growth of our plants, cuttings and insects throughout the rest of the term! Prize box winners. This week Sumiaki won the prize draw and will be choosing a new spot to sit in for the week. Reo won the Ms Lindsey prize for the cleanest locker and has chosen to have no homework on Wednesday.
We started a lot of new units this week so there was a lot of information to cover. Luckily for us the weather held out (apart from a dreary Tuesday) and we spent a lot of time at the park. Unfortunately it seems the mozzies (mosquitoes) have come back so could students start bringing in some bug spray to avoid getting eaten alive. We also went on our eco patrol on Thursday and managed to find two big bags of trash to take out of the park. Mathematics. Our new maths unit is all about mental maths. The students have been trying to figure out addition in their heads using a couple of different strategies. I have even banned the use of fingers! The first strategy we worked on was reviewing our double facts and doubles +1. For some students we managed to get to double of doubles! The next strategy we worked on was 'adding ones'. This is primarily used for adding a single digit number to a double digit one. For example, 24 + 3 = __ For this strategy, we can actually separate the tens and the ones (so 20 +3) and just add the ones together (3+4=7) then put it on the end of the tens (20+7 =27.) The last strategy we worked on was adding the tens. A similar strategy which involves just adding the tens together. This works when the second number is a round ten (10/20/30 etc.) For example, 38 + 20 / 30 + 8 + 20/ 30+20 =50/ 50+8 is 58. We will be incorporating some new games that will help the students practice these strategies into our maths centres in the coming weeks to help them practice until it becomes familiar. Writing. Our new unit is all about report writing. We have tied it into our reading unit for this month as well (also about non fiction books.) For the beginning of this unit we started to plan out work by answering four key questions about our chosen topics. - What do they look like? - Where do they live? - What do they eat? - What other interesting facts do we know? We started our class report (which is done altogether) on Great White Sharks. We worked on our beginning sentences (which are designed to capture the reader's attention) and the first paragraph. Here's what we've come up with: Great white sharks are deadly predators. They are very big and are grey and white. This helps them camouflage into the sea. All students have researched their topics based on these questions and have started their first drafts. I am hoping to have our reports finished by the end of next week! Reading.We continued our work with non fiction books this week. We began every lesson with 10 minutes of research in our reading groups for our report writing. We then did our minilessons which have been focussing on finding information and provide evidence for the facts that we find. We have also been doing some individual reading for the last 20 minutes of lessons and I have been having reading conferences with students with a focus on the harder reading comprehension questions that they will come up against in the upcoming reading tests. Science. This week in science we were looking at other ways we can grow plants. We looked at taking cuttings to 'clone' the plants and learned that with all cuttings, we have to pay attention to where the node of the cutting is as this is where the new roots will grow, followed by new leaves. We also looked at potatoes which are a tuber which is where the main part of the plant is the stem (the main body of the potato is actually the stem, complete with it's own nodes!) We are hoping the our cuttings start to take root soon as we will be transplanting them to terrariums very soon. If our investigations are a great success, the students may even take their cuttings home! In another note, I was very happy to see that the students are able to identify some of the plants we have been dealing with in the outside world. Well done to Lyla and Mina for finding that we actually have mint in the park we go to for lunch! The whole class came over to verify their discovery (without eating any of course) and they are correct! Prize box winners. Our prize winners for this week are Amai, who chose to change his seat next week. Mina won Ms Lindsey's prize for having a clean cubby. Well done to both of them.
We have a double week this week as we lost 4 days from the 2 weeks. Everyone has come back form their holiday relaxed and ready to work through to the end of term. We finished a lot of units this week and set up or started some new ones as well. There has also been gorgeous spring weather this week and we took full advantage of it at the park. Mathematics. We finished of our unit on addition and subtraction to 40 this week. We spent some time reviewing our strategies for both addition and subtraction. From recent observations, the students seem to be very capable adding 2 digit numbers together using place value and regrouping but regrouping in subtraction is still causing some problems. There will be another unit on subtraction later on in the year (up to 120) and this will be reviewed to help clear up any misunderstandings. Next week we will be working on mental math strategies to help students solve problems quicker. Writing. There were a lot of students that were able to complete their expository writing tasks very quickly and I have got a good selection to choose from when constructing our 'How to draw' book for the third floor playroom. I am also pleased to see our recent work with grammar, proof reading and spelling is now paying off with some very high quality work coming through. It is also pleasing to see that most students have grasped the idea of using sequencing words for expository writing in their first drafts (rather than having to be reminded to include them in later revisions.) Next week we will start our new unit on report writing and it will be tied very closely with our work on reading! Reading. Our new unit for reading follows along with what was studied last month and will be focussed on reading for information in reading groups. These groups will then research subjects and use this information to write reports in writing class. This week we organised our non fiction library into big ideas then further refined them into subsections. In the beginning the students will be studying the set topic of animals. They then chose their own group depending on which animal they wanted to learn about. The final groups that were elephants, insects, wolves, horses, big cats and reptiles. I expect that these will be further whittled down as we progress through the unit. We also looked at how non fiction texts are constructed and how each chapter covers a branch of the big idea. I have been impressed at the enthusiasm that has been shown by all students about non fiction books and we have had many interesting classroom debates and presentations based on what we have read. Science. This was a big week for science! After the holidays, we discovered that our grass samples had finally germinated and grown. Unfortunately it was not enough to for us to cut for our regrowth lesson so we had to go to the park on Friday to mow some of the lawn there! We will observe the grass everyday we head to the park to see what happens but the main idea we are hoping the students learn is that grass is one plant that can survive being cut without suffering too much damage, unlike most other plans where if they lose a lot of foliage tend to grow slowly or die. We also learned about leaves and the parts of a leaf. We used this knowledge to sort and catagorise some of the leaves we found in the park and try to match them to the plant. Winner of the prize draws! This week Hanna won the prize draw and chose to change her seat for 1 week. Kole won the Ms Lindsey prize for this week for working very hard this week. He chose to take home an awesome rubber band plane!
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January 2022
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