Week 27

A spectacular start to the week with two KIDS UP FRONT!! On Monday, KIDS UP FRONT was presented by Wilbur and Marina on CNY celebrations. The children loved finding out all about the festival and some of the traditions involved. The children devoured the food treats and watched how to make a flower using ang bao red packets. Unfortunately, we ran out of time so we couldn’t make our own; instead, we gave the children red packets to make their own flowers at home. Thank you to Wilbur’s mum and Marina’s mum for your help! GONG XI GONG XI!

Our second KIDS UP FRONT was presented by Tilly and Natalie (also called Tilly). This was all about Valentine’s Day. Tilly and Tilly shared the story of Mr Valentine and his sweetheart and how Valentine’s Day became a day that is widely celebrated around the world. Ask your child to tell you all about it! Following the presentation, Tilly and Tilly introduced a beautiful class activity where each child cut out a heart shape out of paper and pasted a statement (this was made ahead of the activity) that were tasks of kindness and love. The hearts were collected in one box. Every day, we will pick out one card and try and follow what’s written on the card that for the day. For example, on Thursday, we picked a card that said, “Say something kind to your friend” and on Friday, “Draw a picture for your buddy”. This is such a wonderful activity. It has also seen an instant connection to our current unit, “Service Starts With Me.” Thank you Tilly and Tilly and their mums and dads who supported them in this!!

This week, we started thinking about our new unit, “Service Starts With Me.” We began with our existing understanding, sharing whether or not we agree with the statement, “We do enough Service in Grade One.” Playing "Lay it on the Line" to illustrate our thinking, we discovered that people have very different opinions about Service. Next week, we will begin unpacking our "Essential Questions" and sharing our responses.

We also started new units in Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop this week. Children have started bringing in non-fiction books already! In Reading Workshop, we will be looking at “Non-Fiction Books,” exploring a wide variety of informational books, as well as online and magazine reading. Ms Jae pasted a log in account number for an online read called myON. We are introducing this in class next week with the help of our librarian. 

In our Writing Workshop unit, “Informational Books,” the children will be encouraged to write lots of information books about many different “topics,” with the aim to use their writing to teach something to others. We are also really enjoying our Word Sorts and are trying to transfer our knowledge to our Writing Workshop pieces. We have also been paying attention to conventions in writing, such as using capital letters for names of places, people and at the start of a sentence. We have also been focusing on using full stops (period), question marks and exclamation marks where appropriate.

In Mathematics, we explored Symmetry and Fractions. We introduced Fractions using origami paper, folding into half and quarter and then decorated halves and quarters of wholemeal wrap using jams!! The children enjoyed this activity so much!! 

We have started a new unit in Mathematics, our latest investigation into “Addition, Subtraction and the Number System.” Over the coming weeks, we will continue to expand our tool kit of addition and subtraction strategies, as we explore doubles and near doubles, fact families, place value, combinations, multiple addends and the true meaning of and misconceptions related to the “=” symbol, to name but a few.

Reminders and Requests

*Happy Lodge Shoebox Shopping-Monday 22nd February-8.20-11.30am - Thank you to our volunteers for signing up!!

*Happy Lodge Visit-Wednesday 24th February-Please return the permission slip if you have not already done so.

*Theatre Trip- we are scheduling a theatre trip on Wednesday 2nd March. Permission slip will go home next week.