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

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 next week Tuesday or Wednesday.  

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.
Homereading​There 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

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 - 3:50pm. 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.