My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks

Wow, two blog posts in one night!

Today I reminded the students that we are working on writing that invites our readers to make connections.  Our writing topic last week and this week has been "Connecting to a Special Grown-up".

Last week we shared a number of anchor books related to our topic. We also discussed how the use of adjectives and similes can make our writing more interesting and different from anyone else's. One of my favourite books to introduce our writing topic and the concept of similes is My Dog Is  As Smelly As  Dirty Socks by Hanoch Piven.

You can watch an online video version of the book if you click HERE. After discussing the similes that were introduced in the book, we brain stormed a few of our own using our wonderful public librarian as inspiration. Here are just a few that we came up with:

 

Ms. Judy is as sweet as sugar and as smart as Albert Einstein.

She is as beautiful as a rose and as bright as the sun.

 

Afterwards, we made her a giant poster with our similes and presented it to her after our Thursday book club talks. I think she loved it!

 

On Monday, we completed a planning sheet and chose another special grown-up to write about. Many students chose their parents, aunts and uncles, or a family friend. We brainstormed memories, adjectives, similes and information for our special grown-up. After viewing a variety of writing samples, the students then wrote their own stories about the special grown-ups in their lives.  Here is one example from one of the grade one students:

 

My favourite part : "My mommy can cook really fast. She cooks like a wolf and she likes to take naps on Saturdays".

 

Wow! That must be some fast cooking. I  am sure anybody would need a nap on Saturday if they cooked like that all week longt! Too cute!

 

Next we'll be editing our writing for errors in spelling, punctuation and missing words. Then we'll begin publishing our stories by adding illustrations to our written work. Phewwww! It is a long process and a lot of hard work but I can already see so many improvements in our writing skills.

- Mrs. Singh

Fun With Frankenstein

We completed our Frankenstein adjective writing activity today.

Last week, each of the students used their imagination and creativity to make their own Frankenstein picture. The one and only rule was that he had to be interesting enough so that they could each come up with  a bunch of adjectives to describe him. The kids were super engaged and let me tell you, I could have heard a pin drop in the classroom, that's how hard they were working. After we finished our Frankenstein pictures everyone was given a piece of writing paper. The students came up with a number of descriptive sentences to describe their very own Frankenstein.

 

Today we revisited our Frankenstein writing. First we used our writers eyes to edit for appropriate upper and lower-case letters, fingers spaces between words, and appropriate punctuation. When our editing was complete, we used our highlighters to underline the adjectives in our sentences. Finally we partnered up with a classmate and read our work aloud. Overall, I think they did an amazing job!

 

 

 

In Math, we started our FACT FAMILY unit. A Math fact family is a group of addition and subtraction number sentences that are alike in some way. Each family has two addition facts that have the same addends and sum.Addends are the numbers you add together and the sum is the answer. If you switch the addends to the problem, the sum stays the same. The fact family will also have two related subtraction questions.

 

Here is an example:

 

2 + 3 = 5      and     3 + 2 = 5

 

5 - 2 = 3   and    5 - 3 = 2

 

I explained to the students that the largest number is like the Dad. He always goes at the end of the addition sentences after the equals sign. However, in the subtraction sentences the larger number or "Dad" always goes at the beginning. Here's a little visual I introduced to help them understand the concept a little easier.

 

 

After our group lesson, we went back to our desks and worked on our own individual fact family activity to demonstrate our understanding and learning.

 

 

We'll be continuing our Math fact family study over the next couple weeks so that we can really grasp this concept.

 

Speaking of families, we also discussed word families today. The grade ones are focusing on the short /u/ vowel pattern in their spelling this week. We brainstormed a huge list of short /u/ words and then sorted them into the different word family endings. Here's what we came up with:

 

 

Wow! What a lot of words! We'll keep adding to the list throughout the week.

 

Have a great evening!

 -Mrs. Singh

 

 

 

 



Math, Singing, and Adjectives

The last two days have been jammed packed with learning. To begin with, I'll write a little bit about our Math program. Part of the grade one and two curriculum's include counting by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10 forward and backwards to 100. A great way to practise this is to connect counting with our different Canadian coins. Yesterday, we joined with division 3 ( Mr. Mallinson's class) and broke up into small groups of about 6-8 students. Each group was assigned a different Canadian coin. The groups worked together to create short skits counting by the value of their coin (for example, the nickel group counted by 5's, dime group by 10's etc.) The students did an amazing job working cooperatively and they came up with really creative ways to present their skits. We also had a lot of fun. After our skits, we listened and sang a song by Canadian song writer Michael Mitchell called "Canada In My Pocket". It is a great song to teach students about the symbols of Canada as well as make connections to our Canadian coins and counting. If you would like to listen to it at home, click on the link below.

 

We have also been working on strengthening our basic addition and subtraction skills. So far, the grade ones have been working on addition and subtraction facts with answers up to 6 and the grade twos have been reviewing addition and subtraction facts with answers up to 18. Since it is October, the grade ones were given a bunch of spooky addition and subtraction facts. Their job was to sort the math facts into two groups (addition or subtraction questions). After sorting, the grade ones solved each of the questions. This activity focused on the importance of not only recognizing addition and subtraction symbols but also had them choosing their favourite strategy to use to solve each question. The grade twos had a similar activity but rather than sort into addition and subtraction groups, they were required to sort their questions into groups with answers that equalled 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, or 18. Our addition and subtraction skills are improving everyday.

 

 

And onto ADJECTIVES....

 

Today we read a book called "We're Going To The Witch's House". This story uses a lot of amazing vocabulary to describe different Halloween creatures you might see while trick-or-treating. After listening to the story, we made a class chart with all the adjectives we heard throughout the story. We also brainstormed a few of our own by looking at the pictures and describing what we saw.

 (Ooops, I don't have any pictures of our chart-sorry)

Afterwards, the students wrote down several different creatures they might see on Halloween night and independently chose their favourite adjective to describe the creature. I quickly circled the room and helped them fix their spelling as well as correct any words that weren't actually adjectives. We'll save this resource for some future Halloween sentence and story writing that we will be working on next week.

 

We are definitely not finished with our noun and adjective study and the Halloween season is the perfect time of year to improve our skills.

 

That's all I have for now. I hope everyone is having a great week.

 

- Mrs Singh