It was a fun and silly
week in Grade One as we started off our new units. The big idea for this month
is “There are two sides to every story”. I let them ponder that for a few
minutes, and hoped that something would click after reading a few stories. Our
literacy focus this month is on recounts and points of view between an original
fairy tale and its adaptation.
I started them off by
reading Cinderella by Cynthia Rylant. The boys were NOT impressed. It’s a
longer book and I’ll admit, it’s really not that exciting. They were squirming
on the carpet and interrupting the story to ask when it was over. Normally that
would drive me nuts (and it sort of did) but I was actually happy to see that
they found the original story to be pretty dull….because….the next story I had
up my sleeve would put the first one to shame. I bought this fantastic series
of fractured fairy tales. They tell the same classic tales from someone else’s
point of view. A few days later when I read them Seriously, Cinderella is so
Annoying! they were howling with laughter. They were more than happy
to compare it to the original Cinderella story. This one is told from the
stepmother’s point of view where she is the nice one and Cinderella (or Cindy) is an
annoying chatter box who never stops singing and telling crazy stories. The
kids loved it.
Halloween had come to an
end and although I didn’t want to see any more candy, I didn’t want the kids to lose
their excitement over having engaging math problems to solve. So I built the
wonderful world of Candy Land! Using my imagination of course, I designed a
delicious world where the Halloween goodies were made into a thrilling theme
park. The kids totally ate it up (get it?!). Anyways….there are various
components to Candy Land and I told them we must begin by identifying the
shapes that I used to construct the castle. We talked about 2D shapes and what
they have in common.
Next, I took them into the
restaurant where we have this menu posted on our math wall.
These prices helped the
students answer the restaurant questions I gave them this week. Here is an
example of a question and a computer made model of what their answers look
like. I’m so proud of them!
We ignored the fact that I would obviously have a heart attack with this much food. Maybe I should start saying "Ms. Lawrence's entire family went to Candy Land..."
We finished the week with
a Friday art lesson. I read them these books
They LOVE that temperamental
pigeon. We made our own pigeons out of 2D shapes with things that we shouldn’t let the pigeon
do. Some of them were hilarious!
Our Grade One pigeon display
I’ll leave you now with a
few more pictures and blurbs from the week.
Our share
reading for the week. The kids made their own pages and we made a class book!
Isn't it obvious why I chose to use this book to teach the kids about what makes us unique?
They love the letter blender. I started by cutting out the blends, but I got lazy and just ended up drawing them in.
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