1B Classroom Update
March 2019
Parent Update
Important Dates
- Monday, March 11 | Read-a-Thon Starts
- Tuesday, March 19 | Anytime/Anywhere - Israel
- Friday, March 22 | ASP Winter Trimester Ends
- Friday, March 22 | Read-a-Thon Ends
- Monday, March 25 | ASP Spring Trimester Starts
- Monday, April 1 | Narrative Reports Distributed
- Friday, April 5 | No School | Winter Family Conferences
Request for IB Materials please!
Earlier in the term, we started our Inquiry unit learning about homes and how they are the same or different around the world. These features allowed us to make our transition into our current unit which focuses on Maps and Geography. In order for our friends to grasp a deeper understanding of homes and maps, our friends have begun to research homes around the world and located them on maps. In these upcoming weeks, our friends will be solely be focusing on where we could find these special homes and what materials they are made out of. They have been exploring the environmental reasons as well as cultural reasons as to why a home is built the way it is. For our upcoming Curriculum Share, our friends will be building various types of homes from around the world and we are in need of many materials for this construction of our homes! If you happen to have the materials our students brainstormed below (or others), please send them in. We will begin to build in April. Your donations would greatly be appreciated!
- construction paper
- air dry clay (preferably gray or white)
- woodsie dowels (various sizes)
- wood pieces
- foam bricks(white and red)
- plastic bottles/cans/caps
- artificial grass
- Styrofoam or wood glue
- cardboard pieces
ELA
Math
Phonics and Sight Words
Last week, in phonics, we introduced consonant blends to students. A consonant blend is when two consonants are next to each other in a word, but they each make their own sound, as in the word “stop” – the /s/ and the /t/ each make a sound. A blend is different from a digraph, which has two letters but only one sound, such as in the word “shop” (the "sh" makes one sound). Blends can come at the beginning of a word, such as “stop”, or at the end of a word, like "pest'. We also briefly reviewed digraph blends, which is when a consonant comes before or after and digraph. For example, in the word "shrub", the "sh" is the digraph, which makes one sound, and the consonant "r" comes right after, which also makes its own sound.
When practicing consonant blends with your students, make sure to prompt them to say the word slowly so that they can hear all of the sounds. Also, we recommend practicing the different glued sounds that we have learned (/ong/, /ang/, /ing/, /ung/, /onk/, /ank/, /ink/, /unk/) and digraphs (wh, ch, th, sh, ck) by prompting students to read and write words with these sounds.
Art with Ms. Walsh
Grade one artists are excited to be back in the studio for semester two! And we are equally as excited to be working with them again! : )
In conjunction with first grades’s ELA Unit on Birds, we are investigating the Birds of Israel. Surprisingly, 500 million birds migrate through Israel each year — so birding is a big deal there! We are focusing on the ten most beautiful birds that live in Israel year round. Each student selected a species to investigate and make. Hoopoes are the national bird of Israel. Purple Swamphens are as large as a chickens. Blue Throats are secretive and hide in plants on the ground. Please ask your artist about her/his bird of focus.
To build the birds, 1B Artists learned that “armatures” are structures inside sculptures that hold them up — much like a skeleton holds up a body. Using paper, cardboard, rubberbands, staplers and wire to make armatures for the birds was extremely difficult — but your students persisted!! The armatures are AMAZING. Hope to have more photos of student work for the next update!
Monday, we add paper clay (made out of our own recycled paper, joint compound, glue, flour, cornstarch and baby oil) to our amatures to fill out our birds!
Congratulations Artists on your hard work!! Fingers crossed our birds will be ready for March 19th trip to Israel!
Many thanks,
Ms. Walsh