Balanced literacy continues to be a daily part of Grade One. I'm really trying to get the kids to write more and we've been concentrating on writing complete sentences. I think I should just put my voice on a loop that repeats "start with an upper case letter, put spaces between the words and a period at the end" all day long! It's OK we will persevere!
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Learning to tell time can be tricky, especially when we start talking about 'half past' or 30 minutes past the hour. That's where really understanding what a HALF is, and being able to count by 5's, comes in handy! We have been using individual clocks and many activities to help out.
This will be a loooong post since I haven't uploaded any artwork in a while! We'll start with these lovely kites, which we did when we were studying fractions. The kites are divided into four equal parts or quarters. We also learned how to make a legend or key to explain our fractions. What could these be? Totem poles? Strange creatures? Well, look closely and while you're looking be sure to admire the symmetry! And now on to some artwork in the style of early Picasso. . . And then this final project to finish off this delightfully artful post! We used a collage method with ripped tissue paper to create the background for these dandelions. As the saying goes. . . some see a weed, and some see a WISH! We've been exploring the built and natural features of a community and talking about how they meet our needs. Through books, online resources, videos, nature walks and discussions we've learned a lot. Part of this unit includes mapping (as discussed in a previous post - mapping involves spatial awareness which is an important math skill) and last week we worked on a magnificent collaboration! While I acted as the scribe to write down their ideas, the children certainly came up with all of these things on their own. As part of our art lesson, we incorporated our mapping skills to create a community map. The kids were super excited and we extended the lesson to three periods, but I think they would have gladly continued. After we put the map in the hall, they started coming up with ideas for things that should be added (like a Shoppers!) but we had to call it finished! I mean, my goodness! They've got a water treatment plant, landfill, recycling truck, power lines! I was very impressed!
Windsor firefighters visited our school to talk about fire safety and fire prevention, which we also incorporated into our social studies unit. More than half of the children in my class brought back finished fire safety plans and I am pleased to think that those families are prepared for an emergency. We learned about how to recognize fire hazards and also what to do if our clothes catch on fire: STOP! DROP! ROLL! As promised, a couple of weeks later the firefighters were back and they brought a fire engine. Does your child know his/her full name, address and telephone number? It's important!
Congratulations to Camden, our student of the month for March! The character trait being recognized is RESPECT. Well done to this respectful little guy - he's polite to adults, takes good care of his own and others' belongings, and treats his peers as he would like to be treated. Camden is especially helpful with our friends who have special needs. He's dressed up as a ninja here I believe! He also has good school spirit!
I've posted about the importance of spatial reasoning (or spatial awareness) before in regards to math, but it also plays a role in other areas of the curriculum - and life (just try to parallel park without it!) In social studies, we've been studying the community and as part and parcel of that we've been looking at a lot of maps and learning to read them. I think the kids all have a good understanding that a map is a representation of an area of land showing physical features such as roads, bodies of water, etc. The spatial awareness comes into play when you consider that you are looking at a vertical representation of a horizontal plane, and then you have to orient yourself and the map to the direction (north, south, east or west) too. That's where our little geographers are running into difficulty.
We all worked together to make a large map of the classroom. I had the kids place objects around the room by pointing to a spot on the map and saying, "Go put this over there." They loved that! Asking them to make their own map produced some interesting results! As can only be expected, there was a scale issue and many of them got disoriented transferring what they saw in the 3D world to a 2D representation. Still, I think we had a really good introduction to maps. We spent a lot of time on Google Earth and used the SMARTboard to overlay the satellite pictures we found there, then 'cut' the pictures to reveal. . . a map! Cason was very keen and asked for his own large piece of paper to make a map during his free time when he finished his work. I was happy to oblige, and snapped this picture of him. I then 'tweeted' it out and, to my amazement, because I mentioned the word 'mapping' in my post, it was 'retweeted', 'liked' and commented on by some very interesting people and places including GeoCo. GeoGO is a global non-profit initiative, promoting precise-first mapping in Austin, Texas. There's nothing that shows understanding better than when a child takes a concept and uses it in a new context to explain their thinking - and that's exactly what happened here! We have been working on fractions and discovering that a fraction is a part of a whole. We've also been doing a lot of adding and subtracting. The other day I gave pairs of students different word problems to solve. I was looking to see if they would know which operation to use and I'm happy to say everyone 'got' that, but then. . . this happened! These two pairs expressed their answers as fractions! I 'tweeted' it out - let's see how far it goes! I think this is amazing!
Everyone loves to play tic-tac-toe, the venerable game with the 'X's" and "O's" and 'three in a row' to win. The kids were keen to play, but there was a twist! Instead of "X" or "O", they had to use the patterns on the hundred chart! We did it all together a few times, then they happily went off in pairs to play. Excited and impressed with my students, I immediately "tweeted" some pictures. I was soon amazed by the number of 'retweets', 'likes' and comments that popped up from near and far, including a university in the States! We had our fifteen minutes of fame!! Obviously I was not the only one who was impressed! |
About Mrs. C.Mrs. Cuckovic, or "Mrs. C." as she's called, is a retired educator who spent a long and varied career with the Greater Essex County District School Board in Windsor, Ontario. Archives
November 2020
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