Mrs. Cook's Grade 1 - Room 72: October 2017

Happy Hallowe'en!
Students enjoyed seeing all the wonderfully decorated pumpkins and sketching their favourites today.
We also wrote a story together titled Five Little Bats. We wrote four stanzas together and students then wrote the last stanza on their own. Ask your child what their bat did in the story.

October 30

Hallowe'en

Hallowe'en is tomorrow. We are not dressing up in costumes. Students are encouraged to wear orange and black.

Math
In math today we learned how to play our first math game "Race to 100." Students used a hundreds board for the game, took turns rolling one die and practiced counting up and numeral recognition as they raced their partner to be the first to reach 100. Math games are an excellent way to help reinforce numeral recognition, counting skills, subtizing and number operations.

Science
We continued with our exploration of the sense of sight. Ask your child what teacher they worked with today and what they learned about their sense of sight.

Naturalization Project
If you are interested in assisting with the Naturalization project for Royal Oak school there will be an informational meeting on November 2 at 7:00 pm at the school.

Picture Retakes
Picture Retake day is November 8.

Weather
We go outside daily. Please make sure that your child is dressed for Calgary's changing weather conditions.

Book Truck
Our class will be visiting the Calgary Public Library Book Truck on November 15. If you have not sent in your child's library card number please do so before this date. If you do not have a public library card you may sign up for one on the CPL website or at any branch of the library.

October 25 and 26

Thank you to those parents who donated pumpkins for our pumpkin math project. Students have had the opportunity to predict which pumpkin would have the most seeds and then use a variety of counting strategies to not only count the seeds but to show their work and prove that their count was correct. Some students used 1:1 correspondence with hundreds boards, some used a single hundreds board and then grouped into piles 100 with the remainder less then one hundred left on the board, and some grouped into piles of five or ten to make a quick count possible. Ask how many seeds were in your child's pumpkin. As you can see from one of the above pictures, one of the pumpkins had 587 seeds! Today we used non standardized measurement tools to first estimate and then measure our pumpkins. We used unified cubes to measure height, string to measure the circumference and our counting ability to count all the lines. Students also looked closely at the pumpkins to sketch.

I was going to send the pumpkins home tomorrow but many of them are rotting quickly and are beginning to soften and be full of mould inside so I will put them in the composter.

Volunteer opportunity:

We would like to extend an invitation all interested parents to participate in the new Naturalization Project at Royal Oak School. Our first meeting will be on Thursday, November 2 at 7:00 p.m. We are hoping to follow a thorough and rigorous process to create a ROS garden/playscape in the Naturalization area in the spring of 2018. Due to the generosity of the ROS Parents, we have seed money which was donated through Casino Funds and the efforts of the parents through the Parent Fundraising Society.

Reminders:
1. Picture order forms are due November 1. If you require retakes they will be on November 8. Your child will need to bring the envelop of original proofs to return to the photographer on this date. Please also send me an email to let me know that you would like retakes.

October 23

In math today we started counting our pumpkin seeds. We used a variety of strategies such as taking turns within our groups to count on, using groupings of seeds and using a hundreds board to keep us on track. We will continue with this tomorrow, checking each others work and asking students to prove what they know. How can you show someone how many seeds you have? How do you know you are correct? How can you prove it?

In literacy centres this week we have started breaking into small groups to focus on specific student needs. Students will be working within like groups to target specific literacy goals. Ask your child which teacher they are working with during literacy block.

In Inquiry we have begun to explore our five senses. Students are rotating in groups between all of the grade one teachers to learn about the sense of sight. Today our class discovered that it is possible to trick our brains into seeing something different then what is actually there by looking at optical illusions. In the next while students will be exploring how sight helps us navigate and communicate with the word around us, how people with deficits in sight manage, how animal and human sight differs and how to care for our eyes.

Reminder: On Halloween at Royal Oak School we do not dress up in costumes during the school day, Students are encouraged to dress in orange and black instead. The Halloween dance is a great opportunity for students to wear their costumes!

Halloween Dance
Family Halloween Dance on Thursday, October 26. Due to the large number of families and limited capacity in the gym, there will be two dances run by School Council one will be from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. and the other from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. An orange sheet was sent home last week, please return it indicating what time slot you will be coming, Dressing up is encouraged!

October 18

Thank you so much to our parent volunteers who accompanied us on our walk to the Wetlands. We would not be able to provide your children with these amazing real world learning experiences without your help. While at the Wetlands students used their five senses to look, listen, feel and smell the world around them. They then documented those experiences in their visual journal. Several questions were raised and these will be added to as we work together to discover what we think, see and wonder about. These wonderings will form the basis of our inquiry into seasonal changes as we document what we already know, what questions we have, form hypothesis and ask questions and finally learn and research to answer the questions we have generated together.

In math we continued to look at identifying attributes and how we can change just two attributes of a shape at a time. Ask your child whether they changed the colour, shape, size or number of sides of their object.

In reading today we worked on implementing our first decoding strategy, using our "Eagle Eye" to look at the picture for clues to help us decode unknown words in the text.

I'm in need of several pumpkins for math next week. If you could donate a pumpkin to our class can you please send it with your child tomorrow or Friday. Thank you for your assistance.

Pumpkins wanted and new teacher

We will be using pumpkins next week to work on our math skills of measurement, estimating, sorting and counting. If you are able to send in a pumpkin please do so this Thursday or Friday. I will need six for our math study.

New Grade 1 Teacher
-Royal Oak School is happy to welcome Mr. Pereira to our Grade 1 team. Mr. Pereira spent the day with Ms. Barley’s class today. He will be taking over for Ms. Barley as she goes onto maternity leave. Her last day will be on Wednesday this week. We wish her all the best with her exciting venture with her new little one.

Volunteer Needed

Volunteer Opportunity

We are decorating a pumpkin to be displayed at the Royal Oak Sobeys. Our class brainstormed what they would like to do and then voted for their favourite choice. We will be decorating our pumpkin like a princess. I am looking for a parent volunteer with current security clearance to come in and help us with this. There is no carving involved!! Please let me know if you are available this Tuesday to assist.

Thank you!

Building vocabulary with your child

Building Vocabulary with your Child
All parents want their child to do well in school. One way to help your child is to help them build their vocabulary. Children use knowledge about words to help them:

 understand what they are reading
 make writing interesting
 help understand new ideas taught in school
 talk with their family and friends in a clear way
How can you help?
Reading: the Number 1 way to Expose Kids to a Richer Vocabulary

 Read stories to your child every day!
 When your child comes to a word they don’t know, give them a quick kid‐friendly definition and continue reading. At the end of the story go back to the word and ask if he remembers how to say it.
 Talk about the words from the books you read and relate them to everyday life. Use them over and over to help your child learn them.
New Words are Everywhere!
-  Take your child to new places and expose her to different ideas.
-  When you visit the zoo or take a walk, have your child describe what she sees.
-  Take your child with you to the bank, grocery store and see what new words you can discover.
  Encourage Talk at Home:
-  There are many ways to help your child be interested in words around them. Playing with words through games, songs and humor can be powerful.
-  Encourage your child to recognize when they come across a new word and not to skip over it.
-  Use your child’s interests to have conversa ons rich in words.
- Categorizing Words:

 To be good word users, children need to know how they connect to other words. Why do apples and oranges go together? They are both fruit!
 Have your child help sort groceries to put them away. Find all the fruit, pull out all the breakfast foods, find all the things we drink...
 Putting away toys. Start with the toys that make noise, toys that are games, toys that are for building etc.
Teach your kids that learning new words can be fun!

Pumpkinella

October 13, 2017

PUMPKINELLA

October 31, 2017

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Halloween will soon be upon us and Royal Oak School would like to recognize the occasion with our annual “Pumpkinella” event. This is a strictly optional activity where families are encouraged to work together to carve a pumpkin and bring it to the school. The jack-o-lanterns will then all be displayed in the school’s “pumpkin patch” (gathering area). Throughout the course of the day, students will have the opportunity to tour the “pumpkin patch,” marvel at the creative contributions, and ready themselves with ideas and plans for the following year.

As Halloween falls on a Tuesday this year, parents can drop their pumpkins off Monday, October 30^th from 4-5pm and can pick their pumpkins up on Tuesday, October 31^st from 4-5pm. Please do not send pumpkins before these dates as in the warm school environment they often will not survive several days. It is highly recommended that families pre-arrange adult support for dropping off and picking up pumpkins as they are often challenging for our young students to manage on their own.

Please note, any pumpkins not picked up by 5:00pm on October 31^st will be disposed of.

We hope to see all your spooky jack-o-lanterns in our ROS pumpkin patch soon. Please contact your child’s teacher should you have any questions or concerns about this event.

Sincerely,

The Pumpkinella Committee

Wetlands Walk next Wednesday

Dear parents,

In the welcome package you received at the beginning of the year was a letter regarding trips within walking distance of Royal Oak Elementary. I have attached part of that notice to the bottom of this email. Ms. MacDonald’s and Ms. Cook’s grade 1 classes will be taking a walk to the wetlands looking for signs of Fall on Wednesday, October 18 in the afternoon. Students will be looking for signs of fall, documenting seasonal plant and animal changes taking photographs of nature and using their five senses to gather information about the sights, sounds, and scents of fall. Please contact your child’s teacher if you have any concerns regarding this walk.

Sincerely,

Kim Cook

Amanda MacDonald

Trips within walking distance

The CBE values the educational benefit of off-site activities and we want to ensure students have opportunities to go out into the community around their school with their teachers to complement their classroom learning. To allow this to happen more easily, we have simplified our process for trips that are within walking distance of the school. This change does not include restricted activities such as swimming.

As parents, you will no longer need to fill out a consent form for your child to go on a class trip that is walking distance from the school, e.g. to a local park. Instead, your school will send a letter outlining local sites and what potential risks may be at the start of each school year.

Teachers will let you know when they plan to include a trip to a local site. We believe that this change will allow teachers to more easily take advantage of places close to the school.

Potential Risks of trips within walking distance from school:

Slips, Trips, Falls

Getting Lost or Separated From the Group

Pre-existing medical conditions

I will also need 2 volunteers to accompany us on the walk. If you have current security clearance and are available to join us please let me know.

Wee Reads Volunteers Needed!!!

Royal Oak School is in need of more volunteers for our Calgary Reads programs. Please see the information below about how to volunteer.

Wee Reads

Wee Read is about reading aloud and sharing the joy of reading with Kindergarten and Grade 1 students. Reading volunteers would need to commit to 30 minutes per week for 8 weeks. In this 30 minutes, volunteers will have the opportunity to work with two students either in Kindergarten or Grade 1.

If you are interested in volunteering for this program, a valid police clearance through the CBE is required. Interested volunteers are asked to please attend a Wee Reads training session on Wednesday, October 18^th from 2:30 - 3:50 pm. The training sessions will be offered at Royal Oak School. If you are interested in attending, please contact Sarah Power at sapower@cbe.ab.ca and RSVP by Monday evening, October 16th.

Read Up

The Read Up program helps struggling readers in grades one and two strengthen their reading skills at a critical time in their cognitive development. Volunteers receive advanced training and commit to two 45-minute sessions each week for a total of about 40 sessions. Volunteers must have previously worked as a Wee Read volunteer or have an Education background. Please contact Sarah Power sapower@cbe.ab.ca if you are interested in enrolling in Read Up training with Calgary Reads. The training is approximately 4 hours at the Calgary Reads office.

Sarah Power

Resource and Kindergarten Teacher, Royal Oak School

Calgary Board of Education | www.cbe.ab.ca/b402

t | 403 777 6279

Writing

In writing block we have been learning about sentences.
What IS a sentence?
A sentence is a complete idea that makes sense.
What must a sentence include?
A sentence must start with a capital letter. It must end with punctuation.
What do we need to include to make a sentence? How can we make our sentences more interesting?

We will continue to develop our ability to convey our thoughts and communicate in interesting, detailed sentences throughout the next weeks.

October 11

It is Picture Day tomorrow!!

This is just a reminder that individual pictures will be taken tomorrow (class photos will be taken in the spring). Dress in your best, but also dress for the weather!

We continued exploring the Zones of Regulation today and how our bodies communicate with us. We've discovered that the green zone is optimal for learning and are learning about what emotions we may be feeling when we are in the red and yellow zones. This learning will continue as we explore the blue zone and learn more about what we can do as individuals to move ourselves into the green zone.

Volunteer Opportunity

October 5

We've had a very busy week! Yesterday the students participated in the Terry Fox run. We had an opportunity all week to learn about Terry Fox and the courage he demonstrated when he did his Marathon for Hope. The students ran with popsicle sticks and had them marked every time they completed a lap.
When we came inside we counted up all the laps our class completed using tallies. Our class completed 84 laps!We wrote an acrostic poem about Thanksgiving and the things in our lives that we are thankful for.
We looked more closely at the attributes of objects. This understanding will lead us deeper into our investigations of patterns and creating logic trains.
We used the iPad minis to log into IRIS and post our first learning artifact. We uploaded our September independent writing sample. If your child was absent that day we chose a writing sample from our writing journals. The writing journals are not independent work at this time of year for most of the grade one students.
Your child brought home instructions on how to log into IRIS to view their learning artifact. As the year progresses students will be setting learning goals and documenting their progress in IRIS.
Your child also brought home a list of sight words and in most cases a small sheet of what they are currently working on in terms of letters, letter sounds and early numeracy skills. Please help them practise these at home.

Some notes:

Leaves:We are collecting leaves for art and science, if you have some non-crunchy leaves you could donate to our class it would be appreciated. We would need these for next Wednesday.
HomereadingThere have been several questions about home reading so hopefully this helps answer them.-Home reading books are changed every Tuesday and Thursday. Books may be kept until your child is able to read them fluently. That means they should be able to ready the book and sound like they do when speaking. -There is a small blue book that is an excellent communication tool to record which books were read and feedback if it was too hard, easy or just right. -The students are supposed to read the books to you, and answer questions about the books. The white sheet in their book bags has wonderful strategies and suggestions to help your children. Answering questions about what they have read and making connections helps to build comprehension skills.

Have a wonderful long weekend.

Calgary Reads Volunteer Training

Calgary Reads Volunteer Training

Royal Oak School is in need of more volunteers for our Calgary Reads programs. Please see the information below about how to volunteer.

Wee Reads

If you are interested in volunteering for this program, a valid police clearance through the CBE is required. Interested volunteers are asked to please attend a Wee Reads training session on Wednesday October 18^th from 2:30 - 3:50pm. The training sessions will be offered at Royal Oak School. If you are interested in attending, please contact Sarah Power at sapower@cbe.ab.ca and RSVP by Monday evening, October 16th.

Read Up

The Read Up program helps struggling readers in grades one and two strengthen their reading skills at a critical time in their cognitive development. Volunteers receive advanced training and commit to two 45-minute sessions each week for a total of about 40 sessions. Volunteers must have previously worked as a Wee Read volunteer or have an Education background. Please contact Sarah Powersapower@cbe.ab.ca if you are interested in enrolling in Read Up training with Calgary Reads. The training is approximately 4 hours at the Calgary Reads office.

Sarah Power

Resource and Kindergarten Teacher, Royal Oak School

Calgary Board of Education | www.cbe.ab.ca/b402

t | 403 777 6279

October 2

What a blustery start to October. I'm hoping that this is short-lived and we can have a much longer autumn. With the snow and ice we are postponing the Terry Fox Run until Thursday. Please remember to send in your Toonies for Terry between now and Thursday.

Today in math, we sorted the letters of the alphabet by attributes using a Venn diagram. In writing we looked at how sentences can be constructed with who, did what, where. Students then created some simple sentences.
We began exploring our inquiry question; how do we communicate? Students brainstormed in groups about what they already knew and what they wondered about communication in its various forms.