The class was busy this first full week of school! They played math games, learned to read, understand and spell some word wall words, collected acorns, made art and much more!
Writing: The children glued photos of their Lego structures in their journals and wrote about what they made. We practised listening for the first sound in words (called the "onset" sound) and how to use this information to help read and write a word.
Word Wall (spelling): Each day the children work on reading, understanding and spelling some high-frequency, irregular words. English has so many words that are not spelled as they are pronounced and the spelling of these words must be memorized. This week, the children practice reading, spelling and writing: the, saw, book and school (bonus). At the end of the week, these words go on the class WORD WALL, for the students to reference as needed.
Later in the week, the children counted how many acorns she/he used in his/her acorn art and then wrote about this in their journals.
Reading: The students now receive formal phonics instruction. Phonics is the matching of letters to the letter sounds. Phonics understanding is fundamental to reading and writing skills. The class is learning a program that uses American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet signs to match to the letter sounds. This week the children learned and practised the letters and sounds from A-O.
During our read aloud time, we talked about the ways to read a book. Children can "read" a book by looking at the pictures, by reading the words or by listening to books read aloud. Since this year, children cannot touch the books that I read aloud, I will list the books that I read aloud, along with videos of the books being read aloud at the end of these postings every week.
Printing: The students are practicing the correct formation and correct printing of capital letters, ("always start your letters at the top"). This instruction is integrated with the phonics lessons and the class reviewed the capital letters A-O.
Math: The children practised counting orally from 1 to 50 each day following a 100 number chart, to increase fluency and the 1:1 matching of the number words said aloud to the written numbers. We played lots of games to help the children understand the concepts of "before", "after" and "in between". For example, "What number comes before the number 24?". The class had a chance to create little math books where the children wrote and drew representations of the numbers 1 to 10. Each child now has his/her own grade one math workbook. The students learned how to find a particular page number in the workbook. The class learned the written number words that go with the written numbers from 1 to ten, for example, 3 = three.
Oral Communication: On Monday, I introduced the "star student" program in my class. Each day a child has the chance to be the "teacher" and lead the class through the 10 minute morning message routine. This week, students volunteered but eventually everyone will have a chance to do this job. Our stars this week were: Robert, Krishna, Monet, Bradley and Owen.
Science: As we continue our understanding of living things, the class took a nature walk around the field, looking at trees, tree stumps, grasses and flowers. We wrote a letter to Mrs. Farrelly for permission to go to the front of the school to collect acorns from the oak trees there.
Visual Art: The children each have an art journal that they can use during free time when their formal lesson work is finished. The students created art sculptures using the acorns they collected, white glue, black marker and recycled cardboard boxes. At the end of the week, the students created name art using white crayon on big, black paper. This name art is now on display on each of the children's desks.
Finally, our principal, Mrs. Farrelly visited our class this week to give us a small branch from an oak tree in her backyard that still had 6 of the acorn "caps" attached, as a connection to our science unit.
Books read aloud this week:
The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
Do Not Open This Book by Michaela Muntean
I Wish That I Had Duck Feet by Dr. Suess
Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya
A Fly Went By by Mike McClintock
Here are the links to the read aloud videos:
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