What a beautiful weekend! I hope you were able to enjoy some outdoor time! I told the class that Sadie turned 2 this weekend. A picture is below for them - I talk about her so much at school!!
Dewson's annual dance-A-thon is coming up in a few weeks, so our fundraising envelopes came home today and the kids attended an assembly explaining everything. Donations can be made in cash or online and kids can also request their favourite songs through the website. This is one of the main fundraising events for parent council and I'm sure you already know that this is how we pay for special things like Artist-in-School, skating and swimming excursions, guest speakers and so much more for our very own students. All envelopes are due April 19th and the event is Friday the 21st. There is a prize for the class with the best participation, so even if you don't feel like you can raise that much money, or if your donations were all online, please return your envelope by the due date so that our class can be eligible! Our goal as a school is to raise $25,000!!!
I hope you all had a chance to look over the math rubric from last week, including the side that I filled in, which was a little more detailed. I will use the same rubric again at the end of next week, when we complete this unit, so that we can see our improvements. I've also talked with the mathematicians about how that rubric was a reflection of only one task that they worked really hard on. We need to work just as hard on our math everyday in order to improve.
Last week, we worked with partners to tackle a very challenging question about animals and legs. Not everyone ended up solving it, but many amazing strategies were tried and shared. Here's the question, in case you'd like to tackle it again at home (or change the numbers to keep the fun going!!).
Brandon and Vanessa visit a farm. They see only chickens and pigs. Vanessa notices that there are exactly 18 animals all together. Brandon isn't sure how many animals there are, but he does count 52 legs in all. How many animals were chickens and how many were pigs?
This week we will work with money and introduce an algorithm for 2 digit addition and subtraction. Next week, before leaving this unit, we will look at some simple division problems.
Today you are receiving the dictée rubric for March. I'm so glad that we are all using mostly lower-case letters within our sentences now - usually at the beginning of grade 1, we have the opposite problem. My overwhelming take-away was that we need to work on using capitals!! Almost nobody used an upper-case letter to begin their sentence, despite me reminding them before we began. Let's make this our goal for next time!
Grade 1 students brought home a note Friday afternoon explaining that we are going on a short walking excursion this Friday afternoon during our social studies periods. Tomorrow, each grade 1 student will draw from a hat a place in our community that they will look further into (ask about their special place tomorrow evening!). On Friday, we will walk along College Street a short distance to look for these places. There is no additional form to sign for this trip, but if you have any concerns, please email me. If you'd like to come with us, that would be great. You can meet us at precisely 12:45 pm in our classroom on Friday.
Words of the Week
Grade 1: Which day of the week does not end with ‘i’? Between last week and this week we
have covered them all. Ask your child to sing you the song that helps us
remember the order of the days in a week! Note: In the word “fille” (like
“famille”), the final ‘lle’ are not really heard. You may remember the grade 2s having this sound earlier this year.
souris, gentil, fille, triste, tigre,
lundi,
mardi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche
Bonus words: coccinelle, je lis un livre
Grade 2: As the grade 1s review 'i', we are adding 'ien' to our repertoire. You may remember "rien" and "bien" being on our lists when we did 'en' (I think), but many other words contain this sound as well. It can be deceiving because the 'en' does not make the sound we expect. Instead of thinking 'i + en', think of 'i + in'. That's closer to how it sounds. The word "chien" will surely help you with the others.
martien, viens, rien, bien, revient
Bonus word: chien
