Kenneth D. Taylor - Grade 1 - Ms. Moore

Dear Parents and Guardians,   We have had a very busy week of learning so far. On Monday morning, we started our day by writing in our journals. The students were challenged to write about one event from their weekend with lots of detail. They were also asked to create more than one sentence. Mrs. Witczak and I are VERY IMPRESSED with the progress we have seen in our student's journal writing over the past month. Here are a few examples from September: Here are some examples from this week: Here are all of the sight words we have learned so far this year. At this point in time, your child should be able to quickly read and correctly spell each of the words. When working on the words at home, please ensure you practice them in a different order each day:)                             1. the                  11. he ...

Dear parents and guardians, Today we had our very first lockdown practice of the year. We explained the meaning of a lockdown to the students yesterday, as well as reviewed procedures. The majority of students did a wonderful job and stayed silent through to the end of the lockdown. Ask your child how they did, and chat with them about the severity of talking during a lockdown. The learning happens so fast it is hard to keep up! We have been continuing to practice our first 26 sight words. The most recent ones that we added are:  - at - be - this - have - from - or Please continue to practice these words with your child. We have also added a new fall-themed poem this week for the children to practice, called "The Bat". It is one of the most challenging ones they have learned yet, and they are working hard to master it! We have been very focused on our writing this week. We have been trying extremely hard to add new words to our vocabularies by describing ...

Dear parents and guardians, Lots of great learning happened in myself and Mrs. Witczak's classes today! We started our day by reviewing our sight words and sight word poems.  We added six new words to our sight word list, so now we have learned 26 words! We continue to practice our first 20 sight words. The new ones that we learned today are: - at - be - this - have - from - or. Ask your children if they know what these words say! After we finished reviewing our sight words, we wrote a new journal entry about what we did on the weekend. The students have been encouraged over the past few weeks to stretch out their words so that they can hear each sound, and then try their best to spell the word. Over the past week, students have been learning to stretch out their ideas, too! We have been spending time talking about descriptive language and asking ourselves, "does this answer all the questions somebody might have?" The students have been working hard to...

Dear Parents and Guardians, As your children may have mentioned, I have been absent over the past two days! The children had the same substitute teacher over the two days and by the sounds of it, adjusted quite nicely! Thank you to Mrs. Witczak for taking the lead with our students in my absence! Here are a few highlights from yesterday and today: The students were given the challenge of counting how many seeds were in our big pumpkin and small pumpkin. To complete the task, they had to group seeds into piles of 10. Once they had filled all 10 piles of 10 they then moved the seeds to a big pumpkin that said 100!    After each group counted their seeds, we added them all together to find out how many total seeds were in each pumpkin. We discovered that our large pumpkin had 535 seeds and our small pumpkin had 445 seeds. We then figured out that the difference was 90 seeds! The students continued to work on their "Hello Fall, Goodbye Summer!" b...

Dear Parents and Guardians,    We started our short week yesterday by writing in our journals. Before writing, Ms. Moore and Mrs. Witczak showed the students how to stretch their ideas out and encouraged the children to try to write more within the allotted time. We also continued our pumpkin investigation by measuring how many blocks tall each pumpkin is. Throughout the process, we discussed mathematical vocabulary, including: taller shorter higher lower bigger smaller different more less   We learned that our big pumpkin is about 16 blocks tall and that our little pumpkin is about 11 blocks tall. The children were then asked the question, "How many blocks bigger is the large pumpkin?" Ask your child if they remember how to get the answer.    We then observed what the inside of a pumpkin looks like and feels like.    This morning we learned about the season of fall. Ask your child to tell you what th...

Dear Parents and Guardians, Another week of amazing learning has come and gone! Please check your child's purple folder for some examples of the learning we have done thus far. In their purple folders, you will find your child's very own version of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?", which we have been writing and illustrating for two whole weeks! Have your child read through their book with you and see if it follows the pattern! The sight words were on the board, therefore they should have been spelled correctly. We also spent a lot of time talking about friendship this week, and positive interactions with peers. As a class, we read the book "The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Teasing." The children took some time to review the choices that they are making and reflect upon how teasing makes them feel. Ask your child how they will deal with teasing and what they can do to make it stop if it does occur. We reviewed the letter ...

Dear Parents and Guardians,   This morning we started a very exciting pumpkin and apple investigation! To start off, the students were provided with the opportunity to look at both a pumpkin and an apple. They then shared their prior knowledge (what they already know) about each item. As a class, we discussed the following vocabulary: similar same compare different contrast   We then completed a Venn Diagram about what we think we know about pumpkins and apples.   We then created a web of questions based on what we would like to learn about pumpkins and apples.   We will be spending the next few weeks inquiring into the above questions. This fits into the following science topics: Needs of Plants and Animals Seasons Senses   We will also be utilizing math (skip counting, measurement) and language arts skills (writing, reading, researching) throughout the unit.   During math, we began our new patterning centres. Ask your ...