This week we finished on a high note. We read for 3412minutes!!! Our top three readers were Harlow, Bennie and Gaius. All G1b students each read for 100 minutes or more so our total really was a group effort. I am very proud of everyone for their effort and enthusiasm! G1b worked hard as a group to read everyday for our school read-a-thon. Children can be proud of their effort. It was a great success in many aspects - raising money for a good cause, building stamina, becoming better readers and setting and reaching goals.Thank you all for your encouragement and support.
Our Spelling words focused on words with -st at the beginning and end. Throughout the week we practiced spelling these words. We are really encouraging children to start including these spelling words in their writing by checking the word wall or dictionaries.
Reading - In Readers Workshop this week students did pair reading and encouraged their reading buddy to "try another strategy" and not get stuck on a tricky bit. Students brainstormed strategies they knew. Our next unit with look in greater detail at these strategies as they all move towards becoming better readers. In another lesson pairs worked together to find parts of the story that evoked different emotions.
Writing - This week we went through the steps to write a paragraph about one topic. In the "traffic signal" method of paragraph writing students used colour coded strips of paper to write about an afternoon club they attended. The next day students practiced moving through the steps of the writing process to write a simple paragraph about a topic of their choice.
We continued to explore and manipulate plane and solid shapes this week and introduced different types of repeating patterns. Students also enjoyed mading their own 3D shapes by tracing templates, cutting and folding paper. Children built simple models with solid shapes and then practiced drawing them by trying to make their shapes look 3D.
Addressing the Big Question of How do people get what they need? we moved on to talk about the need to make choices when things are scarce. Children reflected back to a time where they needed to make a choice between two things and thought about the trade-off that needed to be made in order to get something else. We also watched a small video and discussed goods and services. Goods are things that people make or grow and services are jobs that people do to help others.
SCIENCE
This week we wrapped up our unit on the Design Process and Materials with review and an end of unit test. Next week students with work on a performance assessment to put together all the ideas from this unit which has been enjoyable.
Have a great weekend,
Larissa