Lots of Learning In April

We are busy this month in Grade One!  Mr. Lajoie, a student teacher from Lakehead University, is working in our class for the month of April.

Students are busy learning about two-dimensional shapes, mass and capacity in Math.  Students have compared and classified 2D shapes according to different attributes (e.g., size, number of vertices, number of sides).  Students will spend the remainder of the month exploring mass and capacity using non-standard units (e.g., "The container holds 3 scoops of rice."; "The eraser is as heavy as 15 jelly beans.").  I will be posting pictures of our explorations as we go!

In Reading, students are learning about inferring.  Inferring is an important skill that teaches readers to "read between the lines".  When reading with your child at home, ask them questions about what you think is happening (e.g., Why do you think..., How does...).

In Writing, we are focusing on word choice.  Students are encouraged to "bump up" their word choice as authors (e.g., mad to angry, pretty to gorgeous, big to gigantic).

You may have heard your child talk about "math games".  Each morning we "play" a variety of games I have chosen to reinforce math skills such as adding, subtracting and problem solving.  The children are having a blast and don't realize they are learning.  Here's a peek at one of our games called "Quack Attack".

Language Learning

We are working on retelling what we have read.  Students are working on retelling the characters, setting, problem and solution in stories read to them.  Some of the stories we are retelling are Cookie's Week, Where the Wild Things Are, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  This week we are reading Cookie's Week.  Students will put the events/days of the week in order.  At home, talk to your child about the characters, setting, problem and solution in books you read together and television shows and movies you watch together.

In Writing, we are using our own lives and ideas to write sentences.  Students are expected to write 3 sentences using a pattern.  Last week we wrote about what we can do in each season using the pattern "In the summer I can...".  Ask your child what they like to do in the different seasons.  To help your child at home have them write notes to family members or friends and write lists such as groceries or chores.

Word Families

We are working on building words from the short "a" families.  Word families are words that have the same ending and rhyme.  The word families we have been learning about are:

• "at" - cat, hat, sat, mat, bat, that, splat
• "an" - can, man, fan, plan, Stan
• "ap" - map, tap, sap, lap, cap
• "ag" - rag, bag, lag, nag, sag, shag