Here's our blast from the past! Celebrating the 50th day of school!

Last Wednesday afternoon, as part of our 50th Day of School celebration, we pushed all the desks out of the way and learned how to twist and jive and have fun dancing in the style of the past.

Can you find your little bopper in the crowd?

They were such good sports, and tried all the moves we saw on the little videos that I showed them, except for the ones where the girls were getting thrown over the boys' backs!

How low can you go?

The boys learned that dancing with girls is kind of fun!

This little guy helped me demonstrate how to twirl a girl around.

Wouldn't we all love going for a ride in a pink cadillac?

I'll want to know where these two are in about 10 years!!

(SOOOOOO CUTE!)

Waiting for a turn at bowling.

Learning how to make the hula hoop go around!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you to the mom who rescued us and took these wonderful pictures with her phone!

What a week!

Our 50th day of school was on Tuesday.  I can hardly remember the first day, how about you?

Because of the choir recording for the CBC contest, we pushed back our special celebration until Wednesday.  I forgot my camera at home AHHHH!!!!!

Good news is that a very helpful mom took photos for me and I'll put a few on the blog this week.

I know it seems that the 50's day was just a whole lotta fun,

but in reality, there was a whole lotta learning going on.

We did tons of math, lots of writing and even a little bit of craft time was thrown in for good measure!

One of the new experiences for the students was learning how to write steps or directions in correct sequence.  They can tell you how to make a root beer float!  We used the opportunity to also create a graph and you can see by the results, that almost every student in the class liked them.

Yummy!

We also had our 'new to our parish' priest come and visit.  Father Jim absolutely loves kids!

Actually he loves people, and it shows!

If you haven't met him yet, you really need to!

The Good Shepherd....following Jesus' message

I think Father announced this past Sunday that it was the 33rd week of ordinary time.  Just one more week, and we begin a new liturgical year.  Advent starts on the first Sunday in December.  Before our class moves onto the second unit in Religion, the children have heard about David, who was chosen to be the King of God's people while he was still a young boy, tending his father's sheep.

Today, the children heard how Jesus called himself "The Good Shepherd", and the connection was made that we are like the sheep who trust the voice of Our Good Shepherd, who keeps us safe.

I read this lovely book to the students.  The illustrations are amazing!

My favourite page is one in which we are reminded that God knows us so well, that he knows how many hairs grow on our head!

Each child made a sweet little cotton ball sheep, which we added to our Religion board.  I heard one little one say "Our board about Jesus looks so lovely."  It melted my heart!

Do you remember seeing the 'WWJD' bracelets about 20 years ago?

I thought they helped many people make the connection to Our Lord in a real way.....stop and ask "What would Jesus do?" and then make your choice based on your thoughts.

This week, our afternoon stories are focusing on making the right choice be the first choice.

Where do most of our little ones have to make good choices?  Usually, the choices they make about being like Jesus are made as they play on the playground.  Yesterday's story was "The Recess Queen" by Alexis O'Neill, about a girl who rules the playground with an iron fist, until a new girl comes to the school and helps Jean to see there is more fun when you play with others.

This led to an opportunity to sort some situations into two categories, those in which your choice makes you a recess friend and those which do not make you a recess friend.

Here are a couple of the answers that the students provided as we brainstormed

which they then copied onto their pages.

Today's story was the kids' version of the bucket filling story.

We chose some ideas from these two stories and put them onto some cards to that they can be displayed and referred to our the next few weeks.  Sometimes we as adults forget, that it takes some teaching for our little ones to learn how to be a good friend.  It is easier said than done!

Our board is getting more and more full of great connections.

Independence Day

Here are a few shots of the kiddos at work, independently, during the week before the Fall Break.

They are learning how to listen to directions and then work on the task all by themselves, trusting that they can do it!  This week the reading strategy of looking at the letters in a word and using the sounds of those letters to read the word was being practised.  Some might call it 'sounding out' but in our classroom. we use the stretchy snake to pull the letters apart slowly the first time, a little quicker the second time and then saying the word the third time.  It might sound like this:

llllllll - iiiiiiii - ppppppp

ll-ii-pp

lip

There were small drawings of pictures that had the consonant-vowel-consonant pattern taped up onto the walls in the hallways of the area near our classroom, and in small groups, students went out to practise the Stretchy Snake strategy.  When these papers come home, you may notice that your child was printing the first sound or maybe the first two sounds, that he or she could identify.  This means that your child is successful at that level and may not yet be ready to put three sounds together just yet.  Please see me if you have any concerns.

While the students were outside of the room, some students were working in small groups with me,

and others were 'listening to reading' using my iPads.

Still others were practising spelling the words for this week using the rolling the die game,

and printing the word that was attached to the number that was rolled.

There are many, many 'games' that the students work on, to practise the new learning

that is taking place.

This coming week, November 20 to 25, the students will be practising the last five weeks of spelling words.  The words that they have been working on are considered sight words.

Here are some very interesting statistics about sight words and why so much emphasis is placed on them.  Knowing sight words will set the foundation for reading!

12 sight words make up about 25% of those we read and write.

100 sight words make up about 50% of those we read and write.

About 300 sight words account for 75% of those we read and write.

When we teach sight words strategically, specifically and consistently, we build readers who are confident and fluent!

At this point, the 'pre-primer' Dolch list has been introduced to your child and I believe that means that if your child can read them all, they have got around 40 sight words under their belt.  HOORAY!

Be careful though!

Sight words are just that...words that the child will know by sight....they pop up in their books in every sentence they are reading, so sometimes we call them popcorn words....they keep popping up!

MANY of the sight words are not decodable with early phonics skills.  

For example, sounding out the for a child, t/h/e does not work.

Beginning and struggling readers may not understand how to use the th digraph and the schwa sound to sound out the word the.

To clarify, we sound out other words like CVC words, but we do not sound out sight words.  In addition, students need repetition and practice reading the word in context to help them master the word.  That is why the students are given books with these sight words 'popping up' all the time.

Within a week or two, the students will be introduced to some of the sounds of digraphs and blends and other groups of letters.  They will be learning these sound groups with more movement and song....phonics dance style!

Happy Halloween (and we built a zoo!)

In Language Learning, we are focusing on hearing the sounds in a word (most are 3 letter words with a consonant vowel consonant CVC pattern) and then writing the alphabet letters that make that word.

I found this sweet Halloween tie in, where the students used the vowels to make three different words.  It was a good observation lesson as I could see (and hear) if the students knew the difference between the three short vowel sounds)

The students came dressed for the entire day in their costumes.  Princess Peach asked is the Paperbag Princess could be in a photo with her.

Here's the whole gang!

In the afternoon the students worked their way around the room and visited a number of stations, such as

Bat Toss

Alphabet Stamping

Counting the Characters

Putting Spiders onto the Webs

Ghost Bowling

and reading the recipes to make a Witch's Brew

On Friday afternoon, we had our final Building Things activity as Mrs. Wiebe, from Teacher's Pet

came to our classroom and helped us build a zoo!

Each student got to choose the animal that they wanted to put into an enclosure.

Each student had $20 (they kept track by crossing out the coins on their planning page) that they could use to buy items for their animal's enclosure.  They wanted to put up a fence, create a shelter, add food, water, a toy and even trees.

That's where our parent helpers came in.  The students had to go to the 'store' to choose the items that they wanted to build.  Really, they did not have any adult help in putting their enclosures together.  They were free to make decisions, plan, fail, and have to try again all on their own.

We had talked about fasteners earlier in the unit so they were well aware of what the different types were and which would do the job the best.

The best part was that each child had the creative freedom to make their animal's home the way they thought it should be.  No one told them they were wrong....because they weren't!

There was great pride in being able to make a tree,

or a fence,

or a bed,

or a toy

or some food....just the way they wanted to!