This week, we will be working on a class book study of the book Cadeaux, by JoEllen Bogart and Barbara Reid.  This is a beautifully written and illustrated book about the gifts a well travelled grandmother gives to her grandchild.  There are lots of opportunities for great discussion and connections to the text.

The children will also be working in small groups to read and present a short play about how animals prepare for winter.  Last week we read about how the first snow affects the forest animals and celebrated by inviting our grade one neighbors to watch a beautiful short film based on the book.  Our word work will focus on the vowel sounds “au” and  “eau” as found in chaud, beau, cadeaux, etc.

In math, we will continue to work on solving more difficult addition and subtraction questions. I’m very pleased with how the children are willing to persevere and try different solutions to answer some of the questions I am posting for them.  I’ll try to post an example of what I mean this week so you can see their work and the thinking process.  So often children want the teacher (or mom and dad) to tell them exactly what they have to do and lead them to the answer–and they can get frustrated when the question is a little confusing or the answer is not immediately apparent.  My goal is to get the children to feel comfortable understanding the question and then coming up with strategies to find a solution to the problem.  The next step is for them to communicate their thinking to each other (and me).  I assure you that the children have made some wonderful progress moving towards these goals!

For homework I sent home the green duo tangs and I believe thirteen pages of grade one sight words (8 words per page) and I hope that you can spend some time practising at home.  The pages can be cut up to make practice cards so that you can test recognition in random order or play games with the cards.  The children are all working diligently to gain instant recall of these high frequency sight words.  I tend to wait until late November before I start this process as I find many of the children have already gained recognition of most words through their daily class books and homework readings and find the process very positive and successful.  I colour code the words on sound patterns and difficulty and have the colors correspond with the rainbow.  Once the children have read the entire rainbow I send home a certificate.  I’m very pleased to see many children are quite excited about finishing up their rainbows.  I will continue to work with those readers that need a little extra support to master these words and appreciate your home support as well.  I’ll continue to post the audio to these words…do a search on the words flashcards, or quizlet in the blog.

Please note that while library books are to be returned on Thursday, there will be no books taken out again until January.

We are fortunate to have the Board’s drumming kit at our school this month.  I attended a workshop last week on teaching drumming and I’m very excited to share the drumming fun with the children in music class…pa rum pa pa pa pum!

Thanks for sending in those warm mittens and extra socks in your child’s backpacks.  Stay warm and have a great week everyone!

Orma