Imaginative Stories, Earth Day and Angry Verbs

We are right in the middle of our imaginative story writing unit and I have to say that our stories are pretty cute. A typical story writing activity begins with a class discussion on how we can create a great story. A story must have a main character, a setting, a problem and a solution (beginning, middle, and end). Next we create a planning page where we brainstorm our thoughts and ideas and sequence our story parts in the correct order. After completing our planning page we write our stories. When our stories are finished, we use our writer's eye to edit our work for any missing words and errors in spelling and punctuation. Finally, we complete a published copy by typing our stories in the computer lab. The whole process usually takes place over a few days. Take a look at what we've created so far.

Here are few examples of our stories.

The Mushroom by A.M.

Once upon a time there was a talking mushroom. She had purple polka dots and was brown in colour. She said to herself that she wanted to be eaten by someone, but no one liked mushrooms around where she lived. One day when a chef put a pizza on the counter, she hopped in it. Then she hid in the cheese pizza. When the pizza came out, the mushroom got eaten by some people and they didn't taste her because she was under the cheese and her wish came true.

The End

Friends by N.C.

Once upon a time there lived three sisters. They were in first grade and they were six years old. They wanted to be in second grade so bad but they were still too little. They decided to put on a pair of shoes to look taller so they could go into second grade. This did not work. At the end of the year they turned seven years old and they got to go to second grade and lived happily ever after.

The End

Santa by H.B.

Once upon a time there lived a Santa that was so hungry. He wanted lots of cookies and milk but he couldn't find cookies and milk. So Mrs. Claus gave him cookies and milk. After, Santa was so full that he was fatter than a pig! He was happy and he lived fatly ever after.

The End

The Hunter and the Bow by C.L.

Once upon a time there was a hunter with a bow and arrow. He wanted to kill a grizzly bear but the grizzly bear was too strong. So the hunter set a trap with a big cage that would trap the bear. Then the bear was caught and the hunter killed the bear. He used the bear's fur for a carpet and the bear's head as a picture for the wall.

The End

The Little IPod by A.H.

Once upon a time there was a little IPod. She wanted to go to school but she was only two years old. So the little IPod snuck into her big sister's bag. Then the little IPod got to spend her whole day at school.

The End

Earth Day

This week, our class celebrated Earth Day by learning about the three R's:

REDUCE

REUSE

RECYCLE

Since the sun was shining, we took the opportunity to walk to Port Kells Park and explore nature. We recorded the things that we saw, smelled, heard and felt. In keeping with the Earth Day theme, we also helped clean-up the park.

The Life Cycle of a Bean

You may have notice that your child brought home a bean plant this week. Over the past 3 weeks we planted a little bean seed and observed it's life cycle. Here are a few photos of our observations.

Day 4

Day 7



Day 9



Day 12

We are observing a few other plants in our classroom , as well as some potato plants that Mr. M's class have planted outdoors.

Verbs

Finally, we've been learning all about verbs. A verb is an action word. We created these cute flowers and wrote our favourite verbs on each of the petals. Then we wrote a sentence on the stem and underlined the verb in our sentence.

 We also created an Angry Verbs bulletin board display. Each of the students chose their favourite Angry Bird and wrote another sentence which contained a verb. Once again they underlined the verb in their sentence. We are getting pretty good at recognizing verbs.

Enjoy your evening!

Mrs. Singh

Place Value, Penguins and Hula Hooping

SNOW DAY!

 We spent a few extra minutes outside today to enjoy the small amount of flurries that accumulated on our school field. Wow, was it ever cold outside. Don't forget to bring your snow gear to school tomorrow,this includes your mittens and toques, just in case the cold weather keeps up.

Last week, we started making some New Years goals. They are all on display outside of our classroom. We will be working hard to accomplish these goals throughout the year.

In Math, we have been working on place value. We have been completing many hands-on activities to help us strengthen this important skill. One of our favourite and engaging activities we have completed are creating our initials with base ten blocks and recording the value.

We have also been learning a whole lot about penguins and non-fiction text features.

We are also creating our own non-fiction penguin reports. So far, we have written about how penguins look, where they live, what they eat, and about penguin families. My students favourite part has been learning about how the adult penguins regurgitate into the penguins chick's mouth to feed their baby. Totally gross but awesome at the same time!

Our non-fiction reports should be completed by next week and I can't wait to display all their learning and hard work.

Along with our study of penguins, we've been reading some works of fiction from the Tacky Penguin series. So far we've completed a Tacky the penguin craftivity, a Tacky descriptive writing assignment (adjectives) for the stories Tacky the Penguin and Tacky in Trouble. Tomorrow we'll be reading Three Cheers for Tacky and completing a few more writing activities based on the series.

Finally, in gym, we are learning to improve our hula hoop and skipping skills. I  was able to capture a few short videos that showcase some of our amazing hula hooping accomplishments. These kids are ROCK STARS!

The next two are some of the awesome tricks we have been practicing. The first one is hula hooping around the knees and the second one around the neck.

I cannot figure out how to change the position of the last two videos so you will have to view them sideways. If anyone knows how I can change this please let me know. I have tried everything.

Enjoy your evening. See you tomorrow!

- 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