Happy 2014 in Grade One!

The two-week holidays came to an end and back to Grade One I went. The weather was less than kind that first day back and it really should have been a snow day. I’m not just saying that because I could have used another day; the roads really were horrendous. I almost got rear ended on the way to work, which would have been a huge inconvenience because I didn’t have time to get hit. My plan to get to school early did not work out and I needed to get there quickly, yet safely. Then the temperature dropped a crazy amount and Tuesday ended up being a snow day. I only had 10 kids so it was hard to really move on with my new unit. 

Which is awesome. Let me tell you about it.

It’s all about…Dinosaurs! Which you would already know if you’ve been following me on here. On Monday I started them off with a KWL-type chart. It actually didn’t have the W section.

 

Then we watched the one and only Billy Nye the Science Guy. I truly believe you can’t teach primary science without visiting our old pal, Bill Nye at least once throughout the year. He is just so awesome.

The video got the kids so excited to learn about dinosaurs.

The next day, I introduced them to some non-fiction texts about the stegosaurus and we made the magazine model for their writing for this unit.

I'm so good at drawing a stegosaurus

On Thursday, we learned all about the triceratops and the kids wrote their first piece all on their own. This is the piece I use for the assessment for learning portion of the unit. What can they do all on their own? What do they each need to work on? What do I need to base my mini lessons on in the next few days? I just finished marking all of them so I will tell them their individual writing goals on Monday.

In math we are continuing with money and also learning about fractions, and deconstructing numbers.

I have been working our dinosaur and science content (more on that in a minute) into our math investigations because when everything ties together, the kids seem to be so much more engaged. Here are some examples of the questions we have been working on in math:

They love questions about Gramms Bear

In science, we started the Energy in our Lives unit. It was this science strand that inspired my decision to study dinosaurs at the same time because the big idea for the students to understand is that the sun is our main source of energy, and without it, we could not survive. We talked a lot about energy, did a few activities, and came up with this poster for our classroom.

We also looked at how our bodies gain and use energy. We watched a 10 minute movie from the Power to Play series. I got this kit at a workshop I attended last year.  

We talked about the four food groups and came up with some healthy meals that would provide lots of energy for our bodies.

  

We ended off the week with an art activity. I decided to push aside my fear of the September paint tornado and bring out the water colours. The kids made dinosaur silhouettes. I think they turned out pretty well!

Just for fun in those transition times, I read them Attack of the Tyrannosaurus from the Dinosaur Cove series. They loved it and we ended up finishing it by Friday afternoon. Luckily, I have another dinosaur chapter book to read to them for the week!

Overall, 2014 in Grade One started off great. I had one parent donate a ton of dinosaur toys and lend me a handful of dinosaur books. The support from the families is fantastic, and it makes me that much more grateful to have such a wonderful class.

Happy New Year!