Mrs. Nessman's Grade Ones Grade 1 Class Blog 

Watching my students play outside last week confirmed what I’ve known as a teacher for a long time: young children learn best through play. Playing “penguins” has been the favourite game during outdoor playtime lately. My Grade Ones have been gathering rocks to make nests, laying eggs and carefully transferring them from mom’s feet to dad’s, feeding their chicks by regurgitating food from their crop, and huddling to stay warm from the bitter “Antarctic” weather under the fir trees on our sunny playground.

My intentions for this penguin unit were to satisfy learning outcomes in Science and to develop literacy skills. We have read non-fiction and fictional stories about penguins, watched short video clips, learned phonics rules using penguin words, written facts about penguins and learned to draw penguins. As I watched their play and listened to how they were using their new vocabulary in their play (“Hi, I’m a Chinstrap.” “I’m an Emperor.” “Hold still while I regurgitate some food for you, baby chick.”), I realized just how powerful these play experiences are in enhancing their classroom learning.

It is encouraging to me to see the renewed emphasis on play in our kindergarten curriculum. It is a mistake to cut back on the length of playtime to make more time for classroom instruction as is being done in other jurisdictions in North America. I know that young children’s learning is better achieved if it is facilitated rather than directly taught. So when I looked down at the little guy crouching on my feet with one sleeve tucked into his coat, I decided to extend our playtime a little for this chick with a broken wing. Another few minutes of imaginative play would be time well spent.

Any thoughts?

For a recent  quick writing assignment, I suggested that the students begin their piece with “I remember”. Before writing, I had them choose a memory and then guided them to recall the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings associated with that time. Their writing criteria for this assignment was to write three or more sentences, to use capital letters at the beginning of each sentence and periods at the end,  to use correct spelling of Word Wall words, and to include a detailed, coloured picture. Have a look at their work below. Isn’t the improvement that they’ve made since the beginning of Grade 1 amazing?

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Yesterday our class had a lesson on bus safety led by one of our district bus drivers. While some of the kids in our class do not ride the bus to and from school, it was still excellent preparation for future field trips. Our driver was obviously a good teacher, judging by the bus safety rules the kids wrote today. Here are samples of their writing:

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or Doodles + Raindrops = Magic!

What better way could there be to deal with our rainy west coast weather than to celebrate it? That’s what we did this week. We listened to stories about rain, learned to read poems about rain, brainstormed and printed words about rain and best of all, made art with rain. After using our coloured markers to draw designs on watercolour paper, we laid our masterpieces out on the concrete and let the rain do its work, mixing our colours and making beautiful splatters all over our paper. It was so windy we had to hold them down with rocks!

A wet and windy November day.

Artists at work.

A doodle before the raindrops worked their magic.

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What do YOU like to do on a rainy day? Please leave us a comment. You are helping us learn to read when you do!

An Unknown Soldier's Grave near Flanders, Belgium

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At closing circle time when I asked them to share what they had learned today, BG responded, “I learned that the veterans were important to our country,” and CH-M summed it up beautifully. “I learned that it is important to remember our veterans. . . and to think back.”

Reading with your child at home every day will make a difference in their reading progress. At school, your child is learning different strategies to help figure out new words. Telling your child to “sound it out” is RARELY useful (I can feel some of you cringing now). Here are a few of the strategies we use for reading instruction.

Reading and reviewing the work your child brings home in the planner bag can be an excellent way to reinforce the new skills learned at school. My Grade Ones are often incredibly proud of the work they have completed and are dying to show it to their parents. Take the time to acknowledge their efforts and to ask them a little about the assignment . Which parts did you find hard? Was any of this confusing for you? Did you find this easy peasy? (they will all say that ) Praise for their efforts and encouragement for their struggles will go a long way to move them towards their reading and writing goals.

We’ve had a busy two days in Division 10. A field trip, a food project, Hallowe’en and a worm composting workshop . . . the fun just never stops!
After we arrived home from Silverside Farm on Thursday, we continued our focus on harvest time. Dawne brought in her food dehydrator and apples that Colton had picked from their tree and showed us how to dehydrate apples. First she used an apple corer to remove the seeds, next she sliced them and then she put them in the dehydrator. They looked like this:

After drying overnight, they looked like this:

We ate them today and we all agreed that Dawne gets a “two thumbs-up”! They were naturally sweet–no sugar added–and best of all, grown right here in the Valley.

Even though Hallowe’en is not until Monday, we celebrated it on Friday to coincide with the Family Dance. While some schools limit their celebrations to “Black and Orange Day”, our school does not! Our very active parent group organizes a “Guess the Weight of the Pumpkin” and “Guess How Many Candies in the Jar” activity, they sponsor a pumpkin carving contest, the students and staff all come dressed in costumes, we have a Costume Parade in the gym, individual class parties, and a Family Dance in the evening. For the past two weeks, one of our talented parents has volunteered her time to teach all of the classes the Macarena, the Electric Slide and a Thriller dance so that all the kids can participate in a group dance. Have a look at some of the pumpkins carved by kids in our class.

After lunch, Chantelle from the Nanaimo Recycling Centre came to teach us about worm composting. We examined some compost and learned how to find the cocoons, the baby worms, and tiny centipedes. We sorted food cards, deciding if they could go in the compost, the recycling bin, or in the garbage. We discovered that many of our families have compost bins at home and that we knew A LOT about composting and how important it is.

We finished the day with center time. We used plasticene to make pumpkins, we painted pictures, we made cards with Hallowe’en stickies, and some of us played with the cars or built with Lego.

Here are a few sites you might like to check out for some Hallowe’en fun at home. Click on the links below.

Hallowe’en Safety Game. Lots of good advice for keeping safe on Hallowe’en night.

Ghostly Math: Counting by 2′s

Counting by 5′s

Counting by 10′s

Hallowe’en Pairs Game–find the matching pairs of Hallowe’en cards

It's Pumpkin Time!

Hallowe’en Jigsaw Puzzle

Hallowe’en is always an exciting time in Grade One. It is fun to dress up and pretend to be someone or something else. Have a look at some of the activities the students had fun with last week.

On Thursday, Ms. Cochrane reviewed patterning with them before having them create haunted houses and identifying the patterns they created using letters. On Wednesday, they created Shape Monsters. After choosing from big or little circles, rectangles or triangles, they learned to spell “big” and “little” when they recorded the shapes they had used.

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I am so lucky to have such a terrific group of helpful parents this year! Having your support in the classroom allows me to work more frequently with individuals or small groups. It also allows me to take on fun projects with the class such as the one we did today:  making salsa fresca. The girls brought in the ingredients and did all the chopping today. Next week, the boys will be asked to bring in apples and they’ll be making Apple Crumble.

Here’s a slide show of our salsa-making! Huge thanks to Kirk for helping out today.

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