January 22-26

Hello families, 

What a week! We've been busy with lots of learning and finally enjoying some nicer weather! 

I know students (and teachers!) had quite a scare this week when we had a medical emergency in the classroom. We've chatted lots about this and I've done my best to calm nerves and ease worries. I want to assure you that everyone is ok! 

Here's what we got up to this week! 

Literacy

This week we continued learning about digraphs during our UFLI lessons! We focused on the two sounds of "th" this week which we call the voiced and unvoiced sounds. We enjoyed using our new Word Work mats that were put together by parent volunteers during Worker Bee! Make sure to follow our school's Instagram account so you know when the next Worker Bee session is (and of course other updates!) @Montessori_LBS. We worked on brainstorming words with sh and th. Grade 2s had to write a sentence for their words. We also talked about the difference between the "th" and "f" sound as this can be confusing for young children! Speech support in school is very limited so I reached out to our speech language pathologist for some information about speech development and will share that with you in next week's blog. I've included a resource below for "th" and "f" minimal pairs. We talk a lot about how our mouth forms these sounds very differently even though they sound similar. 






ELA Resources

Here are our high-frequency words for next week! Our grade 2s have been doing quite well with reading and spelling these sight words! I wanted to provide another option for grade 1s who are finding this task too challenging. Grade 1s will be able to choose between their regular 5 words, or they can choose high-frequency words that are grouped by a commonality - next week they will be all voiced "th" sounds. It is always important for students in our class to choose their "just right" levels! 

We are going to be starting Guest Reader in February! If you're child was interested in participating, they would have brought some information and a calendar home this week. Some children may want to watch their classmates for the first month to understand more about it. Each month I will send out a schedule for those interested. Students will receive feedback from their peers and will watch a clip of themselves reading to do some self-reflection. We will use the "Two stars and a wish" format. This information will be sent home to help them improve for the next month. Thank you in advance for helping your children prepare for this opportunity! Please send me an email if you know your child will not be attending school on their scheduled guest reader day so we can arrange a different date. If you're child is sick on their reading day, we will find another time for them to read.

Math

We've been learning about addition! We did a diagnostic assessment to see how students are able to represent addition and recall facts - I'm excited to see how much they learn! We read the story "If You Were a Plus Sign" and practiced using math racks to solve addition problems. Grade 1s practiced addition to 20 and grade 2s practiced addition to 100. On Friday we had fun playing addition bingo! 



Social Studies

We wrapped up our learning about the Seven Sacred Teachings by learning about the turtle which represents truth. Students designed a turtle shell that incorporated all of the teachings. 

Science

We've been exploring the question: How do animals survive the winter? We started by talking about how our human needs change in winter. This led to a bit of a conversation about people who do not have warm clothing and shelters in the winter - I'm not surprised with this empathetic group of kids! 

We then briefly learned about the three ways that animals survive the winter - hibernation, migration and adaptation. We started with exploring hibernation and learned about what hibernation is, which animals hibernate, and where they hibernate. Next week we'll move into migration! 







Physical Education

We're continuing to practice our floor hockey skills! This week we learned about passing to our team mates, how to get "open" for a pass, and how to communicate with our team. 


Costumes should not include props, swords, gore, etc. 

Upcoming Learning
  • Math - addition with strategies including: counting on, counting back, decomposition, compensation and making tens (gr 1) two-digit addition (gr 2)
  • Social studies - Studying self and family history
  • Science - Earth Systems - how animal behaviour changes with the seasons - landforms, water, air
  • ELA - digraphs and sentence writing 

Upcoming Dates
  • Tuesday, January 30th - Report Cards Available Online
  • Thursday, February 8th - Chopped Leaf Fun Lunch
  • February 15 & 16 - Teachers' Convention - No School
  • Monday, February 19th - Family Day - No School
  • Thursday, February 22nd - Edo Fun Lunch
  • Thursday, February 29th - Fish Creek Field Trip - Please email me if you're interested in volunteering!
  • March 21st (PM) & March 22nd (AM) - Student-Led Conferences

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