June 1st - Our Very First "Field Trip"

 Hello everyone!

We had so much fun today with our special guests from Teacher's Pet. Our guest, Mr. T, came to us with a problem - he woke up this morning to find zoo animals in his backyard! He needed our help to build some spaces for the animals to safely live. Each of us got to choose a zoo animal. We built a small model of our zoo animal. Then, we talked about what the animals might need in their enclosure (shelter, food and water dishes, a place to sleep, a fence, a gate, trees, and toys to play with. We each got a small box to start with and a checklist of all our elements. We talked about what a budget is and how we would be paying for materials with our imaginary dollars. We each got $20 to spend on materials. Our parent and grade 6 volunteers helped us work within our budget and ran our material stores! We drew a plan for our enclosures and then got to work buying materials and building each element for our zoo animal. Here are some photos of our building projects:

A huge THANK YOU to our parent volunteers - Danielle, Karin, Amanda, and our grade 6 volunteers - Franzen, Hannah, Matty, Tawkee, and Amy, for all their help during today's activities. We couldn't have done it without your help, and it was so wonderful to be able to have you visit our classroom for the morning. We get to bring our enclosures home today, so we can continue to build things for our animals, use them for some imaginary play, or display them! 

After lunch we had mindfulness time and then got into some problem solving in math! We did some practice with addition and subtraction on a number line to remind everyone how to use that strategy. Then, we completed our very first 3-Act math problem. In Act 1 - we watched a video that showed a problem - a little girl went to get some eggs from the fridge, but the carton fell out! The video asked us, how many eggs were broken? We talked about what we would need to know in order to solve that problem (ex: if the carton was full). We each made a silly guess (ex: 100 broken eggs), and then a serious guess (ex: 6 broken eggs). Then, we moved on to Act 2, where we got to see how many eggs were in the carton to start with (9). And, how many eggs were left unbroken after they fell (5). We worked together in our table groups to try and use that information to solve the problem. It was tricky for our first time, but some of our friends were able to figure it out by thinking, "I know that 5+4 equals 9, so if 5 eggs are left, 4 must be broken!" We came back together to draw a picture of the problem to help everyone understand how we could find the answer. We are going to keep working on problem solving for the next couple of weeks!

We had recess and something exciting happened. While we were playing on the field, the sprinklers came on!!! It was quite a surprise for everyone. Some of us accidentally got a little wet when we ran back to Ms. Byrne and Mrs. Young. Oops! At least it was a nice day!

When we came back inside, we did 2 rounds of literacy centres. We got ready for home time and then went to the field to meet Mrs. Sterne for our gym time. The sprinklers were still on, but we were able to play on one of the fields. We came back to class to pick up our zoo enclosures and head out for home!

Reminders:

- Friday, June 3rd - Sport's Day - please dress for the weather, wear comfy shoes, sunscreen, etc.

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

May 30

 Hello everyone!

We were so excited when we came into our classroom this morning to see that everyone's plants have started to grow! Each of us has at least 1 sprout that has reached the surface! We also got called right away to take our class picture. 

We started our morning by reviewing our Wow Words. We got our new Wow Words for this week, they are:

1. I'll (we discussed the apostrophe again and why it is in this word)

2. away

3. saw

4. some * (the o is not making its usual sound)

5. eat

For our bonus words we focused on the /ee/ sound of the vowel pair /ea/. Our bonus words are:

1. meat

2. seat

3. treat

4. peach

5. teach

We filled in our calendar and completed a Mystery Pattern activity. Then, we had literacy centres. During centres, Ms. Byrne will be working with each of us individually to read, assess our letter sounds, counting, etc. for the next little while. That will give her the best picture of what we are able to do, and what we can still work on for the last month of grade 1. 

After lunch, we completed our Numeracy Screening Assessment from the Alberta government. Then, we had some Mathletics time. We missed Mathletics time last week because of all our performances and rehearsals! During our Mathletics time, Ms. Byrne worked with some friends who had missed the first part of our Numeracy Screening Assessment last week. Now we're all done and can get back to our problem solving unit in math!

We ended our day with building time to finish off our perfect pets. They are all done and we get to bring them home today!

Reminders:

- Wednesday, June 1st - Teacher's Pet will be visiting our classroom

- Friday, June 3rd - Sport's Day

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

May 27

 Happy Friday everyone!

We had another super busy day today! We had our first pillars of care assembly where parents were allowed to attend! Our winners were so excited to share their awards with families. Thank you to everyone that was able to attend today. We look forward to having more of you next month when all families are invited to attend. 

After the assembly we took a snack break  and listened to a story about optimism, which is the pillar of the month for June. We filled in our calendar and discussed some of the special events happening next week (our special Teacher's Pet visitors on Wednesday, and Sports Day!). We completed a round of Mystery Pattern. We're getting really good at using the clues to figure out the mystery pattern on our own!

We headed outside for our gym time, and then returned to class to get to work on some building projects. First, we looked at our building materials for the day - toothpicks and marshmallows! We talked about how these are not eating marshmallows, they are building marshmallows. Lots of hands have touched them so they could have germs! They've also been left open to make the marshmallows harder and better for building with. We all agreed that eating even just a little bite from one of them could possibly make our tummy hurt - so we were going to use them for building only! Everyone was really great at following this rule! We worked together to use toothpicks and marshmallows to build a 3D cube! Then, we each got extra toothpicks and marshmallows to build another 3D shape. We looked at pictures to see some examples and then got to work. We made some square-based pyramids, some triangular-based pyramids, and some prisms! We noticed that no one made a cone, cylinder, or sphere. We wondered why that might be, and a few of our friends figured out that it was because all those shapes have curved edges, and we can't create curves using toothpicks! We had so much fun building our shapes today!

Next, we worked together to finish the last building for our perfect pets. If we had already finished our building, we paired up with a friend to help them put together their last pieces. We're so close to finishing! We think we will be all done by Monday and then we can finally take them home! 

Finally, we wanted to update you on our plants! Since we put our sprouts into the soil we have been checking on them each morning to make sure they have enough water and sunlight. They must be getting what they need, because they've started to grow stems! We've been able to watch some of them push the soil out of their way throughout the day. We are still waiting for some of them to break through, so we're hopeful that we'll be able to see them after the weekend. Just in case, we planted some extra cups today!

Reminders:

Monday, May 30th - Class Picture Day!

Wednesday, June 1st - In-class "field trip" with Teacher's Pet - please return permission forms ASAP and submit your payment online or by visiting the office to pay by debit!

Friday, June 3rd - Sports Day - please be prepared to spend the day outside (dress for the weather, wear sunscreen, running shoes, etc.)

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne

May 25 - Spring Concert tonight!

 Hello everyone!

We have had a busy day preparing for our Spring Concert. We had rehearsal time, and a dress rehearsal where we performed for the grade 4, 5, and 6 students. We had lots of questions about how the performance this evening will work, so let's share with you as well! We can come into the school around 5:30 and go straight to our class. We met Mr. Shackleton today because he is going to be in our classroom for this evening because Ms. Byrne has a prior commitment. Our concert will start at 6. When the performance is done, we will return to our classroom. You can pick us up there - just make sure we let Mr. Shackleton know before we leave so that he knows where everyone is!

We've also been busy tending to our seeds! Every one of us had at least 1 seed that had started to sprout. It was cool to see how some sprouts were little, some had grown lots of roots, others had even started to to grow a leaf! We talked about how our sprouts needed soil to grow big and strong. The soil helps give the sprout the nutrients it needs, as well as something for the roots to grow into to help our plant get strong. We are excited to see if our plants will start to spring up through the soil! Once we had put our sprouts into the soil, we covered them, then watered them, and placed them by the window to get sunlight. 

In literacy this week we have been continuing our work with "making connections." See if we can make connections to stories we are reading at home as well! We've also been revisiting our letter sounds and completing assessments to see if everyone is able to remember the double-letter sounds we've been working on. 

In math we are working on a problem solving unit to end our grade 1 year! We're starting with a game called Mystery Pattern! We get clues 1 at a time and try to guess what type of pattern would match the clues. We will use these skills to help us solve some mystery number puzzles, as well as addition and subtraction problems!

Because of all the rehearsal and dress rehearsal times, we decided to wait to finish our perfect pet projects until Friday so that we could spend some time on them and get everything done at once!

Reminders:

Friday, May 27th - Pillars of Care assembly - invitations for families to attend have been given to our winners this month! Assembly begins at 8:30AM

Tuesday, June 1st - In-class "field trip" with Teacher's Pet - please return permission forms ASAP and submit your payment online or by visiting the office to pay by debit!

Friday, June 3rd - Sports Day - please be prepared to spend the day outside (dress for the weather, wear sunscreen, running shoes, etc.)

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

May 19

 Hello everyone!

We've been working on the "When 2 vowels go walking the first 1 does the talking" vowel pairs this week. We focused on /ay/, /ai/, /oa/, /ee/, and /ea/. We know that /ea/ doesn't always follow this rule - it can't make up it's mind about which rule it wants to follow! But this rule is one of the sounds we should try when sounding out an /ea/ word (like "peach" or "nearby"). We learned these vowel pairs a while ago, but we spent this whole week practicing sounding out words that use them. Each day, our morning message was missing all of it's vowel pairs and we had to help fill them in!

We did some more work with the comprehension strategy of "making connections" today. We read a book called "17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore," about a little girl who has lots of ideas (like gluing her brother's slippers to the floor!) and seems to be always getting in trouble. We talked about how everybody makes mistakes sometimes. Ms. Byrne shared a story about when she was younger and she used a roll-y chair to roll over the new floor her dad had just installed. The roll-y chair got caught in a part of the floor and broke it! So, she wasn't allowed to use the roll-y chair anymore. We each thought about something that we aren't allowed to do anymore and wrote about it in our journals! We had fun sharing some of the silly things we decided to do. 

We filled in our calendar and went for recess. It was very windy outside! We had literacy centres, during which we switched our library books. 

After lunch, we started our perfect pet building! It was more tricky than we thought it would be! It took some trial and error to figure out the best ways to put our pets together. We got so carried away with our building that we spent nearly the whole afternoon working on it! Thank you to everyone who brought in materials that we were able to use for our building project. We have some last details to add on Tuesday, and then we will bring our pets home to enjoy. We'll share some pictures on Tuesday as well!

Reminders:

Thursday, May 19th - Spring Dance - in the school gym from 6-8PM. Children must be accompanied by an adult!

Friday, May 20th - No school - P.D. day

Monday, May 23rd - No School - holiday

Wednesday, May 25th - Div 1 Spring Concert - Beginning at 6

Monday, May 30th - Class picture day

Have a fantastic long weekend!

-Ms. Byrne

May 16 - Picture Day is Tomorrow!

Hello everyone!

Important reminder that tomorrow is Spring Picture Day!

We started our day with our Wow Word review. We got our new Wow Words. They are:

1. old

2. out

3. house

4. has

5. or

For our bonus words, we decided to focus on the /ou/ sound. Our words are:

1. mouse

2. couch

3. pouch

4. about

5. shout

We read our morning message and talked about how we have about 6 weeks left of grade 1! We did some sharing of how we're feeling about that. Many of us have mixed feelings about this big milestone. We are happy about summer break, proud and excited to be moving into grade 2, but also sad and nervous about the big changes that will happen. We talked about how we will be close by and can stop by to say "hi" to Ms. Byrne as we move around the school. We also talked about how our class list will change. We will have some of the same friends, some friends from Mrs. Young's class, and some friends from Mrs. Diduch's class. We're excited to get the chance to meet new friends, or reconnect with friends we may have had in our Kinder class!

We looked at a visual to help us remember which vowels teams follow the "When 2 vowels go walking, the first 1 does the talking" rule (ai, oa, ay, ee, ea-sometimes). We practiced the sounds of these vowel teams and some words that have those teams in them (tail, boat, today, see, team).

We went outside for recess and then had snack. While we ate snack, we listened to a story called "The 3 Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot." Many of us noticed that this book was similar to the story of the 3 Little Pigs! We talked about how we were making a connection when we noticed that. Ask us what connections we were able to hear in the story!

We filled in our calendar and had literacy centres. Some of our reading groups got mixed around to match students with other students who are working on similar skills during guided reading. 

After lunch, we had mindfulness time. Then, we practiced some of our 2 letter sounds. 

In math, we took a quick break from 3D shapes to do some more practice with fact families. We watched a short video that explained what fact families are and how they worked. We practiced with some different fact families on our whiteboards with a partner. 

We had our second recess, then we focused on our seedlings! We did some scientific observing to see how our seeds have changed over the weekend. All of us had at least 1 seed that had started to grow roots over the weekend! We took some time to draw the changes we could see in our seeds, and write about them in our journals! We learned that when scientists do experiments, they always record their observations as a part of the scientific process. We also noticed that Ms. Byrne added extra bags to the window. One bag had no paper towel, and the other had a dry paper towel. She also put a bag of seeds into her filing cabinet so that those seeds don't get any sunlight. We're going to see if the seeds in these bags grow in the same way ours do! This is called a "control" and is an important part of experiments as well. It helps scientists know which parts of their experiment had the most impact (ex: if the seeds in the filing cabinet don't grow, but the ones on the window do, we will have proof that sunlight is important for the seeds to grow!)

We had P.E. with Ms. Sterne today and we practiced our dance routines from last week. 

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Reminders:

Tuesday, May 17 - Spring Picture Day!

Friday, May 20 - P.D. Day - no school

Monday, May 23 - Holiday - no school

Wednesday, May 25 - Spring Concert - 6PM - we are so excited to welcome you back into the school to enjoy a Spring Concert! We have been working on a special project during our music classes that we will be sharing. K-2 will have their concert on May 25th, and grades 4-6 will have theirs on May 26th. 

A Message from BHS Parent Council:

 

Hard to believe that our last Fundraiser for this year is coming to a close.... DON"T MISS OUT!

There are still many beautiful plants, planters and hanging baskets for sale. You purchasing these plants will be a beautiful addition to your home as well as help support our children's school.

 

Please click on this link to place your order

https://beddingtonheightsschool.growingsmilesfundraising.com/home

May 13

 Happy Friday everyone!

We had a very busy day today because we were setting up our seeds for germination! We each got to choose 5 seeds to put into our bag. We put the bags on the window so that our seeds could get some sunlight. We also added a wet paper towel to the bag to give the seeds water. We will keep a close eye on our seeds and will be recording our observations over next week! 

Yesterday, we continued to work on our perfect pet creations. We gave our perfect pets names, wrote about what they like to eat, and why they are our perfect pet. Today, we revisited the idea of making connection to reading. We read a story called "The OK Book." Then, we discussed what this book is about - trying new things, and not being perfect at everything! It's fine to be just ok at something. Trying new things and being ok at them can mean we need more practice, or it might be something we're always ok at - and that's fine too! Some things can just be for fun. But, being open to trying new things also helps us find the things that we're excellent at! In our journal, we each wrote 3 things that we are ok at, and 1 thing that we are excellent at. We talked about how these sentences were a connection to the story because we weren't just repeating things from the story, we were thinking about the meaning and connecting it to our lives. 

We've been practicing how to draw 3D solids in math. So far, we've learned cubes, cones, and pyramids. We will continue learning this skill next week, as well as finding other ways to model 3D shapes! 

Before putting our seeds in their bags today, we learned about the parts of a seed. We learned some very fancy science words like: cotyledon (kaa-tuh-lee-din) and embryo! Cotyledon is the part of a seed with food for the baby plant. The embryo is the part of the seed that will grow into a plant if we give the seed everything it needs. We labelled a diagram of a seed with those parts, and also the seed coat, which protects the embryo and cotyledon. We watched a Magic School Bus episode about what plants need to grow, while we took turns going to the sink to prepare our seeds:

We also had P.E. with Mrs. Sterne today. We went outside and played compound games with her! We also wanted to mention that we had so much fun this week dancing! Mr. Moi, our dance teacher, said he loved dancing with our class because we all joined in and were up for trying anything! We're hoping to share some videos of our dancing with you during the Spring Concert (see reminders below). 

Reminders:

To pair with our "Building Things" unit, we will be doing some building in our classroom. To support us with this, if you have any recyclables (ex: cardboard, small bottles or boxes, toilet paper/paper towel rolls, etc.) or spare material (ex: fabric scraps, string) that you could send to school, we would very much appreciate it! We will be collecting materials all week to have a collection of building materials!

Friday, May 20 - P.D. Day - no school

Monday, May 23 - Holiday - no school

Wednesday, May 25 - Spring Concert - 6PM - we are so excited to welcome you back into the school to enjoy a Spring Concert! We have been working on a special project during our music classes that we will be sharing. K-2 will have their concert on May 25th, and grades 4-6 will have theirs on May 26th. 

A Message from BHS Parent Council:

 

Hard to believe that our last Fundraiser for this year is coming to a close.... DON"T MISS OUT!

There are still many beautiful plants, planters and hanging baskets for sale. You purchasing these plants will be a beautiful addition to your home as well as help support our children's school.

 

Please click on this link to place your order

https://beddingtonheightsschool.growingsmilesfundraising.com/home

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne