Hi Families,
This week, we have continued looking at parts of speech, and detailed writing, through our poem "The Perfect Cup of Cocoa" (available in Google Classroom --> Literacy --> Poetry Study). Students have been involved in step-by-step writing about their own perfect cup of cocoa, developing adjectives, verbs and adverbs for the mug, the cocoa and two toppings of choice. In the upcoming week, we will compile our writing, and add some mixed media art.
We have started looking at addition and subtraction connected to number line models. Even if students have automaticity for basic facts, using a model supports being able to communicate their understanding of both equations and word problems.
In addition, we continue to build and develop efficient counting strategies, learning about our subitizing super power, skip counting and counting on or back. Ask your child about subitizing, and get them to walk you through one of our thinking routines with these dot patterns:
 |
| Can you subitize each dot pattern? If you can't subitize, how does your brain see the dots for efficient counting? |
I have uploaded several new games (available in Google Classroom --> Math --> Math Games) that can support various math skills at home.
An additional activity for skip counting at just-right levels: https://www.abcya.com/games/number_bubble_skip_counting
With our writing, we have been taking our journal writing this week and working towards building our understanding of revising and editing. Step-by-step, we added additional details, checked for capitals and punctuation, then targeted spelling, to improve our work. We will be developing grade level criteria into checklists for students to self-monitor and edit their future writing.
This is a great activity from ABCya to practice conventions of writing : https://www.abcya.com/games/fun-factory-punctuation-capitalization
We are also doing some collaborative, ongoing learning on:
- reading a weather forecast
- the digraph /ph/ (we don't have a character/story/visual for this one, so we are creating one together!)
- Perseverance (mini lessons from favourite picture books!)
 |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLdAXyZ7_iQ Mini lesson: Be brave! |
 |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy3JCNBgb94 Mini lesson: Get ready to make mistakes! |
Some important dates next week:
- Wednesday, January 27th: Family Literacy Day
- Thursday, January 28th: Crazy Hair Day
- Friday, January 29th: PD Day, no school for students
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Ms. Thomas
