Support Systems

If there’s anything I learned this week, it’s that the people in my life at home and at school provide amazing support for me and for each other. We started the week off with some very sad news. A teacher at our school passed away on the weekend after battling cancer. We gathered in the staff room on Monday morning as our principal talked us through it, and as another teacher reminisced about the last moments she had spent with Lianne. It seems that these days, everyone knows someone who has been affected by cancer in some way. I lost my dad to cancer two years ago, and hearing the stories of Lianne’s last days were all too familiar to what my family experienced when my dad was sick. Many of us broke down, myself included, and cried for Lianne and her young family. Our principal made sure that she had a few supply teachers to go into our classrooms and support as needed. It allowed me to have a good cry in the staffroom while my class was safe with another teacher. My heart goes out to Lianne’s family, and she will be greatly missed by her Fairwood family.

I pulled myself together and went back to the classroom, putting on a brave face for my kiddies. We went on with the fun day I had promised them and read The Fox and the Falling Leaves for their second last retell. They used my descriptive feedback from the last Mr. Magee story to help them improve for this retell.

After recess, my sister, Amy came in to help me with a fun project. I brought in a big, orange pumpkin and the kids estimated how many seeds were in the pumpkin. They guessed as low as 67 and as high as 1000. As we pulled out the seeds, we grouped them in groups of ten because counting by tens is way more efficient than counting by ones (they can now say that all on their own, and actually know what it means). Amy helped out by keeping some of my kids focused, assisting them with washing their hands, and taking pictures of us doing our activity. The kids just loved her! They also loved that she yelled out my name, addressing me as Molly. Now they know my first name. There are no mysteries left in the world, are there? Speaking of mysteries, the kids solved the pumpkin seed mystery and counted 350 seeds!

Our shared reading for the week was a poem I found called Pumpkin Possibilities. We used this poem to work on comprehension and letter blends like th, sh, and ch.

I had to stop with the th practice because when they were sitting close to me, they kept spitting on me. Needless to say, I was sick on Thursday with a cold. I was up all night unable to breathe, so I requested a supply teacher through the system at 4:00am. And no one took the job. Can you believe that? Thankfully, the staff at school is so supportive and different teachers took turns teaching my class until a supply FINALLY accepted the job. I returned today sounding a little congested and left sounding like I have laryngitis. You don’t always realize how much talking you do throughout the day until you do it when you’re sick.

Let me rewind to Wednesday now. No. Back to Monday when I took the pumpkin seeds home, baked them, soaked them in food colouring over night, and let them dry again all day. By Wednesday, I had rainbow coloured pumpkin seeds and we did some awesome sorting and patterning activities with them. It was a great way for me to assess their abilities to sort by one attribute and to make an ABB pattern.

To end off the week, I brought in four little white pumpkins and repeated our Monday pumpkin activity, but this time it was student-led. They used what they knew about the big pumpkin having 350 seeds to make a reasonable estimate about the little pumpkin. Most figured that since it was smaller, it would have fewer seeds. Then one little guy said, “Unless the seeds are smaller too”. He’s a thinker!

We reviewed texture and value in art class and did some more rip art as we made haunted houses. They were all over it.

Here are a few more pictures I took this week

Last week I went through the Scholastic book order and bought a few holiday packs. I had no idea each pack included so many books. When I got home my Amazon order had arrived in the mail. All in all, I got 39 new books in one day. Thirty nine. Probably the happiest day of my life. 

It’s report card time, and those progress reports are due in exactly one week. You know what I’ll be doing this weekend…

Oh, and I’ll be painting our class pumpkin for the pumpkin contest. More on that next week :) 

Leaf Art and Candy Questions

This week we read stories that were set in the summer time. My kids and I LOVE the Mr. Magee stories, so I read them Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee, which they later wrote a retell for. These books are really a lot of fun, and they’ll be excited to find out that I have one more up my sleeve for next week. They are getting really good at writing retells and using the success criteria to help them include all the expected parts. Since it was a short week, we only had time to write one retell.

In math, we learned what it means to estimate. I showed them a Ziploc baggie filled with mini Kit Kats to see if they could make a reasonable estimate-which they could. Then they became obsessed with asking if they could have the candies. We are also continuing our work with number sense by creating combinations to make numbers up to ten. We worked with variations of this question throughout the week, both in pairs and independently.

Again, they were dying to know if I would actually give them treat bags with the candies inside. I said, “Not a chance!” But don’t worry; I’m not a mean and crotchety teacher. I just want to save the sugar rush for a day closer to Halloween. Preferably on a Friday…at the end of the day.

I found this book in the library that I’m going to use next week. Sure, it’s about estimating and that will work nicely for our quick flashes, but most importantly, LOOK AT ALL THOSE DUCKS!!! As soon as I put it on the chalkboard ledge, the kids pointed out that I must love the book because of all the ducks.

Speaking of ducks, we had pajama day on Wednesday and I wore my new ducky PJs I got for my birthday. They were a real hit.

A few weeks ago we went leaf hunting in the school yard, and my kiddies picked NINE bags of leaves. Then I had no idea what to do with nine bags of leaves. Needing them out of my classroom, I turned them into an art project to go along with our unit on texture and value.

I love the dog house and bird bath

Here are some more pictures of the classroom from this week.

Our shared reading for the week. Our focus was on "th" and "sh" words.

 Counting by 5s and 10s

 Visual schedule cards for one of my kiddies.

A story about what we have to do in each season

We have been at school for 31 days

The Paint Tornado and Wintery Weather

This week we started our new units in every subject.

Literacy: Writing retells

Math: Patterning and Sorting

Science: Daily and Seasonal Changes

Art: Texture and Value

I created this big idea to blend everything together: The seasons change and so do we.

Literacy

This week was all about winter. I had planned to come to school and greet them in the morning wearing a hat, scarf, and mittens. But…Monday morning was hectic as usual, so I forgot to grab my stuff as I was running out the door. Those extra ten minutes of sleep really set me back in the mornings. This was our shared reading for the week. 

I know it’s way too difficult for them to read on their own, and even very challenging for most to read along with me, but we were really working on visualizing. They loved being able to close their eyes as I read to them. I asked them what they saw in their heads as I read and one boy says, “I saw a big skeleton head on fire!” I had to clarify that visualizing meant that you had to make pictures that made sense with the words, rather than just letting random images pop into your head. It was pretty funny, nonetheless. We also used this poem to learn about long vowel sounds; specifically a and e.

Our read alouds this week were all stories that were set in the winter time, and we used them to write retells. I introduced the unit by reading The Snowy Day, and I modeled for them how to write a retell. 

 The next day I read The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett and used this retell as a writing diagnostic (or in the current lingo, assessment for learning). I was able to create individual writing goals after reading their work. Side note: I love the beautifully detailed artwork in Jan Brett’s books. 

On Thursday, we looked at a student example, talked about what the student did well, and what he could do to make his writing even better, and from there, we created our success criteria. Then, I read them Learning to Ski with Mr. Magee for their last retell of the winter week. This book is awesome. It’s written in rhyme, so it’s that much more fun to read and listen to. The kids were howling with laughter. I even read it to them for a second time on Friday (for a refresher) because they loved it so much.

I forgot to take a picture of our success criteria, so I will post it next week.

We also learned how to make an inference. I put my stellar artistic skills to work and made this little poster.

Math

I took one day to work just on sorting because it was pretty clear they knew how to sort. We talked about the word attribute, so that they could tell me how they sorted different objects in our classroom. 

(I thought this one was rather creative)

Then we went into patterning with geometric shapes. They loved creating patterns and labeling them with A and B letters. I took a day to add in some number sense as well. I read them a story called The Sleepover. It’s a big book from the Fosnot math kit we have in our school. It’s all about how eight girls at a sleepover keep changing where they are seated on a bunk bed, and completely confusing poor Aunt Kate, because she keeps thinking that she has either lost or gained a kid while she was out of the room. It builds that concept of the conservation of a number. 

I then gave them this question in pairs: 

We ended our week with a Pattern Party! I got this idea from my friend, Sam who teaches Grade One, way up where it’s far too cold for me :P You can visit her blog to see where I got the original idea. 

Science

I find that for science and social studies, it’s a lot easier to create booklets of all the content you want to cover, and to have these booklets ready for the beginning of the unit. It also ensures the kids won’t lose all their pages. I created this booklet for them to work on throughout the unit. Click the picture for a copy. 

I also showed them The Berenstain Bears For All Seasons. It’s here on Youtube, but I found the full version through Discovery Education. York Region teachers can access it through the BWW. You’ll need a password, though.

We also learned about day and night, and the kids were just mesmerized that the earth is always spinning. They were also very intrigued when I told them my story that when I was in Ireland having breakfast, my family was still at home, sound asleep.

We also learned how to read and record the temperature on a thermometer. We make a class recording here every day and then they record it on the calendar, found in the booklet.

Art

We are learning about value: the use of light and dark shading in a picture. I showed them Starry Night by Van Gogh and we talked about how to make the colour blue light and dark. They knew to add black and white to the paint to change it’s value. I told them I wanted them to make a night time painting (to connect back to what we learned in science). Well. Didn’t they just have the time of their lives! The majority of their pictures did not exactly depict a night time scene, but they had a grand old time changing the colour blue. They painted as they listened to some music; mostly One Direction (they requested it, I swear!), and worked really well together. By the end of the period, I told them it looked like a paint tornado came through our classroom. Luckily, I have 18 little helpers who were just dying to help me clean up the gigantic mess.

That ended our fun filled wintery week. We are heading back tomorrow to learn all about spring, and to work with number patterns. As for art, I haven’t decided what I’d like to do, but the paints will be kept in the cupboard for a little while.