Dec. 17

 Hello everyone!

Happy Winter Break! We had a very busy day today. 

We were working on finishing up our community maps before and after our Pillars of Care assembly. We used our community checklist to make sure our community map had everything a community needs to be successful and then handed them in. 

We had our assembly and handed out our awards. We were missing quite a few friends today, so some winners will have to get their awards after the break! At the end of the assembly we sang a few familiar holiday songs together as a school.

After the assembly we filled in our calendar and did some skip counting practice. Then, we got to work on our art project! Yesterday, we had used a tracer to draw a mitten on a piece of watercolour paper. We read a story called "The Mitten Tree" about a lady who knits brand new mittens with different colours and designs, and hangs then on an old oak tree for kids to use when they have no mittens, or have lost theirs. We decided to design our own mitten for the mitten tree. 

Today, we started by designing our mitten using a pencil. Once we were happy with our design, we used oil pastels to colour in our design and outline our mitten. 

We took a break to have snack and a quick movement break before learning about watercolour paints. Ms. Byrne demonstrated how to use them under our document camera. She showed us how to add water to the paint to get it working, and how to do a "colour wash" over our mitten. It was so cool how the paint didn't colour the oil pastel on her picture! We did some finishing touches on our mittens and then we took turns visiting a painting station to colour wash our mittens. Luckily, watercolour paints dry quickly and we were able to bring them home! Here are some examples of our finished mittens:

We think they would look great on the mitten tree!

We took some time at the end of the day to clean out our desk trays and bring home any stray drawings or colouring sheets that we'd been working on at lunchtime. Once our desks were tidied and our painting all cleaned up, it was time to get ready for home!

We hope everyone has a safe, relaxing, and happy holiday. School resumes on Tuesday, Jan. 4th. We will see you then!

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Dec. 15

 

Hello everyone,

It was another cold day today! So, we got to come inside a little early and we watched a short Letter Blocks video about letter e while we waited for school to start. 

During our morning meeting, we learned about the Winter Solstice, which is next week. We learned that it is the shortest day and longest night of the year. Every day after today gets longer until it turns to Spring! Indigenous people recognize this time as a period of rest for plants and animals. They often celebrate this day with ceremony's or personal traditions as it marks the eventual return of longer days, warmer weather, and is a time to reflect on the sun's importance in our lives. 

We filled in our calendar and took some time to practice our number pairs of 10. We practiced them with a song and by modelling pairs of 10 using our fingers. 

Next, we practiced our Wow Words using Wikki Stix - they're colourful sticks that you can build, bend, and use again and again! We had lots of fun creating each letter out of our sticks. Here are some photos of our colourful letters:

 

We had planned to use our words in our journal, but we needed some extra practice of our carolling song for the afternoon assembly so we decided to use this time to practice our song several times to get it just right! Then we had snack and indoor recess. 

We had two rounds of literacy centers before lunch. 

After lunch we had mindfulness and practiced our letter sounds. We practiced making some more CVC words on our whiteboards today using e as the vowel (ex: bed, red, ten, jet, wet). 

Yesterday, we started creating our community maps. We went through our community checklist of important places, then we wrote our community name - Beddington Heights. We started by adding what we thought were the most important things - a grocery store, a school, a houses, etc. Today, we added labels to what we had already drawn, and added extra community places that we think make our community a great place to live!

We did indoor recess and P.E. in our classroom because the carolling assembly was scheduled during our usual P.E. time. We performed Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer during the carolling assembly! It has lots of words, but we did a great job!

Student Shoutouts!

Jawad - rushed to help when someone dropped part of their snack!

Finn - has been so responsible with his sweeping job this week, grabbing the broom and working to sweep the whole class before Ms. Byrne even has to ask!

Ramsh - helped Nathan when he lost his dinosaur eraser!

Reminders:

- Our Virtual Concert link (will be watchable starting at Thursday at 5PM):

https://youtu.be/Yo5mXMKpFDE

- Tomorrow (Thursday) is Plaid Day! Wear your favourite plaid shirt, pants, scarf, socks, etc. 

- Friday is a holiday theme day - dress in your favourite holiday sweater, colours, etc. for our Pillars of Care assembly!

- Friday, Dec. 17 is the last day of school before the Winter Holiday. School will resume on Tuesday, Jan. 4.

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Dec. 13

 Hello everyone!

We started our day by changing the books in our book boxes. We had a morning meeting where we shared from our weekend and then talked about our word review from Friday. We discussed that the 2 trickiest words were "and" and "the" so we decided to add them to our bonus words list for this week. Our new words are:

1. in

2. go

3. to (this is our red word this week because the o is making an /oo/ sound, even though there's only 1 o!)

4. my

5. like

Bonus words:

1. and

2. the

3. fin

4. tin

5. win

We wrote our words to bring home the list to practice. Thank you for helping us practice last week! We have already gained a lot of confidence in our reading because we can find words we recognize in every book we open!

We filled in our calendar and started working on letter c before Mr. Wiens came for music. He practiced some holiday songs with us to prepare for the assemblies later in the week. He also shared part of our virtual holiday concert video which will be added to his blog on Thursday for us to watch at home!

After music we had snack and recess. We finished up our letter c work just in time to completed our first literacy center before lunch. We saved our second center for after lunch!

We completed our "Making 10" rainbow work that we had started on Friday with our guest teacher. We will be practicing our making 10 number pairs all week in math, as well as completing the final 2 math assessments that we discussed last week. 

We had our second recess, then we took some time to read a book all about community maps. We learned what maps are, what they show, who uses them, etc. We also learned a few new terms: birds-eye view, scale, and legend. Ms. Byrne showed us a big poster of a map. It is nearly empty, it just has some streets! We will each be getting a map tomorrow that we can fill in with the important community places we have been learning about. We will add lots of the things we saw during our virtual community walk of Beddington Heights. We have created a checklist to help us make our community map our best work! We will be sharing pictures of our community maps later in the week. 

Before heading to the gym, we took some time to start up a new routine in our class - Student Shoutouts. We asked Izzy and Serena to help us with our shoutouts today. They each picked a student who was kind or helpful towards them today so that we could add a shoutout on our blog!

Student Shoutouts!

Ava - when another student fell on their way out for recess, Ava stopped everything to help them get up and make it to the playground. How thoughtful!

Jayla - when Jayla was done her making 10 work today, she noticed that another student needed some help. She used her free-time to help that student complete their making 10 equations. Awesome job Jayla!

Reminders:

Theme days - 

Wednesday, Dec. 15 - Pajama Day

Thursday, Dec. 16 - Plaid Day

Friday, Dec. 17 - Ugly Sweater/Winter Wear Day

Friday, Dec. 17 is also the last day of school before the holidays!

It looks like it's going to be a cold week - keep your eye on the temperature as we may have some Blue Dot days coming up! That means students can come directly into the school when they arrive, rather than lining up on the compound. Doors will open at 7:50 in this instance. Whenever possible there will be notice from the office, or available adults on the compound to direct kids to the doors during drop off. 

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Dec. 10

 Hello everyone!

We had a guest teacher today so that Ms. Byrne could meet with us one at a time to complete the final math and literacy assessments we mentioned on Monday. 

We started our day with partner reading. We picked books from our "Just Right" book bag and read our books with a partner. Our guest teacher read our morning message. We completed our first word review for this week's Wow Word! It was a bit tricky, but we got through it! Many of us found the words "and" and "the" challenging. We will review those words next week to make sure we know them really well before moving on. We will also get our new word set on Monday!

We filled in our calendar and did some skip counting practice on a 100s chart. Then, it was time to do literacy centers. We got to choose our centers today! Our guest teacher ran our reading groups. 

Mr. Wien's came to do music with us and practiced a song for next week's assembly! 

After music, we had snack and then did a math activity about ways to make 10. We used a visual of a rainbow to help us match up numbers to make 10. We started creating equations to match! We will continue this activity next week. 

We went to the gym and played a hockey game together. 

We cleaned up and got ready for home.

Reminders:

Theme Days - 

Wednesday, Dec. 15 - Pajama Day

Thursday, Dec. 16 - Plaid Day

Friday, Dec. 17 - Ugly Sweater/Winter Wear Day

Have a great weekend!

- Ms. Byrne

Dec. 8 - New Spirit Days added!

 Hello everyone!

We started our day with some reading time and then read our morning message. We completed another math assessment. This one was about comparing numbers. We had to look at two numbers and cross out the number that is bigger. We had to finish as many as we could in 30 seconds! That's not much time. We had fun trying to finish them all though. 

Next, we filled in our calendar and then we interviewed today's star student - Ayun! We learned that Ayun has 1 sister, she likes the colour pink, and her favourite ice cream is bubblegum flavour. We each chose 2 sentences to write about Ayun and drew a picture of her for our star student book. 

After snack and recess we had another round of literacy centers. We have started guided reading in our reading groups with Ms. Byrne. We are so excited to be reading books! Once we have read a book in our group, we get to put the book into our "Just Right" book bag in our desk. Then, we can practice reading the book on our own during our quiet reading time.

Thank you to everyone for practicing our Wow Words at home this week! We've shared lots of ways that we have been practicing at home, and our practice has been really showing when we are doing guided reading and finding our Wow Words in our books!

After lunch, we had mindfulness time and then some Mathletics time. We all worked on a subtraction task - subtracting from 5 on a number line. Once we finished that job, we got to use Live Mathletics to race other kids in addition and subtraction facts. 

We have been talking about community in social studies. We read another book about the important places and people in a community. We took a closer look at a map of Beddington Heights. We started at our school and went for a little virtual walk around the community. We focused a lot on the Beddington Towne Square and noticed lots of different community essentials there (ex: grocery stores, doctor and dentists offices, gas stations, banks, bus stops). We made a list of all the places we noticed. Next week, we will be using this list to help us create a community map that has everything people in a community need. 

Theme Days:

We have decided to add some extra theme days to make next week even more special! 

Wednesday, Dec. 15 - Pajama Day

Thursday, Dec. 16 - Plaid Day

Friday, Dec. 17 - Ugly Sweater/Winter Wear Day

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Dec. 6

 Hello everyone!

Today we began our Wow Word program. Wow Words are what we call the words we are practicing this week that we can start reading and writing on our own. Typically, these words are common words (sight words) that will help us be able to read and write more independently. If we can recognize these common words by sight, it will help us be able to read sentences, stories, and books fluently (i.e. we read in whole sentences that we can understand, rather than having to sound out each word 1 at a time). 

A letter is in our backpack that describes our Wow Words program and gives some suggestions as to how you can help us practice these words at home. We start out with the easiest/most common words, and then each week the words become more challenging. Each week we will also have bonus words that belong to a word family. If you find that we can read and write the 5 Wow Words for that week already, we can practice the bonus words as well! We wrote our Wow Words for this week on a paper, as well as some bonus words from the "-and" family. We put our word lists in our backpack so we can practice together. Our Wow Words this week are:

Group A:

1. I

2. a

3. it

4. and

5. the 

(the is a "red" word - that means it is not easy to sound out. We learned a trick today to help us practice red words. We put one arm out to the side, then use our other hand to "chop" the letters. Ask us to show you!)

Bonus Words:

1. sand

2. band

3. hand

4. stand

5. land

Group B:

Group B is working on words with the "sh" sound this week. We practiced some words that have sh in the beginning, middle, and end. 

1. shark

2. share

3. shadow

4. sunshine

5. splash

Bonus Words:

1. friendship

2. marshmallow

We filled in our calendar together. It was our 60th day of grade 1 today! We are also pretty excited to see how close our winter break is! After snack and recess we had another round of literacy centers. Our groups have new leaders this week. We are excited to show off our leadership skills during centers!

After lunch and mindfulness time we introduced our last set of letters. We discussed the sounds of j, y, x, q, c, and e. Then, we learned a new word - digraphs. Digraphs is a word for 2 letters that made a new sound when they are together. Today, we learned about the digraphs sh (ship), ch(cheese), and th(that). We practiced the sound for each of these digraphs. Learning these sounds will help us be able to sound out bigger words!

During math we practiced addition. We were "counting on" using pictures. One example of our counting on practice is below. Let's try to solve this problem together!

Throughout this week some of our math time will be dedicated to completing several math assessments. These assessments have been given to us by the Alberta government to help assess any gaps in learning that have occurred during the pandemic. Depending on the results of these assessments, we may receive additional funding to provide support and help students catch up in any areas where they may be behind. The assessments are tough, but we just need to try our best and do what we can!

In social studies today we began talking about community. We started with a book called "My Family Community" that explained all the ways our family and our community are similar and how our family is connected to our community. We got to share some things about our family like, the ways we help each other, things that we have learned from our family, etc. Then, we looked at a map of the world. We zoomed that map in until we found our neighbourhood - Beddington Heights. We noticed some of the things in our community (ex: grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, schools). We will continue talking about the important parts of a community throughout the week. 

Reminders:

- With the cold weather having arrived, a friendly reminder to dress in weather appropriate clothes each day. Also, please practice getting our Winter clothes on together so that we are able to get ready as independently as possible. We end up missing a lot of our recess time if Ms. Byrne has to zip up 26 coats!

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Dec. 3

 Hello everyone,

We have been continuing our study of CVC words. Sometimes, when we try sounding out a word 1 sound at a time, it can be hard to figure out the word. Yesterday, Ms. Byrne showed us a visual that can help us sound out new CVC words effectively. It is a slide! We put some words on the slide (example below) and used it to help us "slide" the sounds together. We slide our finger down the slide while making the sounds. This helps us connect the vowel sound to the ending consonant. Ask us to show you how to sound out the word below! You can use a simple slide like this one to practice reading any CVC word.

Here is a blank slide if you would like to practice some words together! We have a chart in our classroom that lists the vowels and consonants 

Today, we sat with a partner and searched for CVC words in our new library books. We sounded the words out with our partners and then shared the words at the end of our reading time. We were able to find lots of words we could read!

We did our final review of this set of letter sounds. We will be starting our final set next week! 

In math, we assessed our understanding of 2-digit numbers. Ms. Byrne would say a number (ex: 16) and we had to show that we could write it with the digits in the correct order. When there was a mistake (ex: if we accidentally wrote 61), we would stop and talk about that number. We would repeat the name, break it apart (ex: 16 means 10 and 6), and see if we could figure out how to fix it. 

We completed a round of literacy centres today where we got to choose which centre we went to! Our reading groups were working on reading a book together by sounding out the CVC words and using the pictures to give them clues. 

There was a mix-up in the P.E. schedule, so we got to visit the other half of the gym and played some tag games today. We will get back to practicing our hockey skills next week!

Before getting ready for home, we read another chapter of our My Weird School book. We're halfway through the second book!

Next Week: On Monday we will be starting our sight word program. A letter will be coming home to explain the program. Our weekly words will be posted on the blog each Monday for you to practice at home as well.

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne

Dec 1

 Hello everyone,

Today, we practiced CVC words. We learned that CVC words have a consonant, a vowel, and then another consonant. Words like: cat, dog, bug, and rip are CVC words. With a partner, we used a pop-it to help us sound out some CVC words. We set up a row of 3 bubbles on the pop-it, then Ms. Byrne showed us a picture. We had to pop a bubble for each sound while we stretched out the word, then write the sounds that we hear. We are getting really good at spelling!

We had music with Mr. Wiens and then filled in our calendar and did some skip counting practice. After recess we did another round of literacy centres. The reading groups that worked with Ms. Byrne today were learning about the king E, or bossy E. King E makes other vowels say their name. For example: turning bit into bite, or cut into cute. We practiced reading lots of king E words during reading groups today. 

After lunch, we went through our letter sounds and then completed a word ladder. The last word in our word ladder today was a king E word! This gave our reading groups the chance to explain the king E rule to the rest of the class. The word was: j-o-k-e. If we're reading a book together this evening, see if we can find any king E words! You might even find a few in this blog post! Try reading the word while covering the king E, then with the king E to see how the word changes.

During math, we worked on the number 12. We made 12 using blocks, showed it on a 10-frame, and talked about why the 1 comes before the 2. We came up with a list of other ways to show 12 and then got to work on our printing book page. 

At the very end of our second recess, we got held up by a fire drill! We did really well during the drill, but it was pretty wet outside. Luckily, we were all in our outdoor clothes already! By the time we came back inside, it was almost time to go to the gym, so we finished up our printing book work, then played a quick rhyming game together. 

In gym we have been learning how to use hockey sticks. We practiced controlling a tennis ball with our sticks and today we were playing a game called "Pirate Treasure" where some people are pirates who are trying to steal our gold (tennis ball) for their treasure chest. We had lots of fun!

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 29

 Hello everyone,

We started our Monday with some quiet reading time and switching our book box books. We had a morning meeting to share about our weekend and practice some more questioning. We watched a short video without words and then asked some questions about what was happening. 

Our start student today was Jayla! We asked her lots of questions, wrote sentences about her, and then filled in a star student page all about her for our class book. 

After our first recess, we gave Literacy Centres a try. During literacy centres, we each have a job to do that practices the letters and sounds that we have been working on. While we are working on our jobs, Ms. Byrne sits with a small group to teach us new reading skills and practice reading books together. Ms. Byrne got to meet with 2 reading groups today! Next week, we will also be starting our sight word program where we will be practicing 5 sight words a week during our centres. Ms. Byrne will post the 5 words here on the blog so that you can practice at home as well!

After lunch, we practiced our letter sound set and completed another word ladder. We're getting really quick at figuring out the next word in the ladder! We've all started to spell the words on our own. 

We read about the importance of family connections in Indigenous communities. We learned that a common belief in many Indigenous groups is that family connections are very important to a positive community. Everybody in a family and community have important roles and responsibilities. We sat with a partner to talk about some of our own responsibilities in our family. We shared with the class some of the jobs that we do within our family: chores, helping with cooking, helping with a younger sibling, taking care of a pet, etc. 

At the end of the day we had the iPads booked to do a job on Mathletics. We learned a new way to sign in and then Ms. Byrne was showing us how to earn the most points to help us access the secret world. The new way to sign in is much easier for us! We got to use a QR code to do it. We practiced some addition using a number line on Mathletics. 

Reminders: 

Tomorrow - Tuesday, Nov. 30 is Crazy Hair Day!

Have a great day!

- Ms. Byrne

Upcoming Spirit Day - Tuesday, Nov. 30th

Our November Spirit Day is this Tuesday, Nov 30th and it is crazy hair day! Students and staff will wear their craziest hair styles they can whip up.

Nov. 24

 Hello everyone!

We were so excited to see the snow yesterday! We got a chance to play in it during our second recess, and again today. Please make sure we are dressed properly for the weather so that we can enjoy our outdoor time. We also talked about some rules for the snow: snow stays on the ground (no throwing snow or snowballs at school), no eating the snow because it could have germs and dirt in it that might hurt our tummies, and no sliding on the hill because the fence is no fun to crash into! We did a great job following our snow rules today during recess. 

We started our day with some time to work on a family portrait that we started yesterday afternoon. We have been talking about how families can be similar and different during social studies. We will use our family drawings to help us talk about our family with our classmates. 

Next, we had a morning meeting where we handed out our Pillars of Care awards to prepare for our assembly in the afternoon. We filled in our calendar, practiced the months of the year song, and counted to 100 by 1s and 10s. 

We used the sentence starter "I hear..." to write a new journal entry today. Ms. Byrne played a mystery animal sound from her computer, and we had to write "I hear a _________." and try to spell the animal names. We sounded out 3 animals together as a class using bubblegum writing. Then, we wrote a fourth sentence all on our own. We had fun using animal sounds for our journal, so we might try another entry like this next week!

After snack and recess we had some Mathletics time on the iPads. We tried signing in on our own again, and Ms. Byrne showed us how we could get to the secret world once we had earned enough points! We worked hard to get access to that world today. 

In the afternoon, we had some movement time in our classroom since we would be missing our P.E. time for the assembly. We practiced our letter sounds. Then, we started a mystery sound game in science. We will finish our game tomorrow because it was time to start the assembly! We're nearly finished learning about our sense of hearing. Next up will be sense of touch!

Finally, we had our Pillars of Care assembly. When it was over, it was time to get ready for home!

Reminders:

Friday, Nov. 26 - No School due to Parent/Teacher conversations

If you haven't yet booked an appointment for Parent/Teacher Conversations on Thursday, Nov. 25 or Friday, Nov. 26 please do so! I have had about 20 appointments booked so far, so the spaces are filling up quickly! You can book an appointment using your MyCBE account. If you are having issues with your account please send me an email with your availability and I will do my best to book you an appointment that suits your schedule. 

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 22

 Hello everyone!

We started our day by doing some quiet reading and changing out our books in our book boxes. We had our morning meeting where we talked about the learning goals we have been setting and how Ms. Byrne is going to share them with you during Parent Teacher Conversations this week. We've had lots of parents signing up already!

We filled in our calendar and played a game of Splat to practice our adding and subtracting. Ask us how to play Splat! Mr. Wiens came to teach music and took a video of us singing our Highway of Heroes song to post on his blog for you to see (don't worry, if you checked "no" on our media consent forms, or if we had not received them yet, we sang from the side so that our faces were not in the video!). 

We interviewed our Star Student - Nola. We took a break to have snack before filling in our star student page with facts about Nola. Everyone tried to write 2 sentences today, and some of us even created our own sentences about Nola! 

We got to read the final chapter of our My Weird School book before lunch. We have the second book in the series ready to go for tomorrow!

After lunch we had mindfulness time, and then went over our letter sounds. We practiced the word ladder game that Ms. Byrne taught us last week. We started at the word "win" and ended up with "panda"!

During math we focused on the number 11 and completed a page about 11 in our printing books. We showed 11 in ten frames, and then chose another way to show it. 

After our second recess we watched a quick video that showed us how sound moves through the different parts of our ear to send messages to our brain. We filled in our 5 sense book page about our sense of hearing and drew pictures of different things we could hear.

We got to have centre time in the gym. That means that the different activities we have been practicing are set out into 4 different corners of the gym and we take turns playing at each centre with our group. We are practicing moving safely on the scooters, throwing, catching, and racket skills in our centres. 

Reminders:

Friday, Nov. 26 - No School due to Parent/Teacher conversations

If you haven't yet booked an appointment for Parent/Teacher Conversations on Thursday, Nov. 25 or Friday, Nov. 26 please do so! I have had about 20 appointments booked so far, so the spaces are filling up quickly! You can book an appointment using your MyCBE account. If you are having issues with your account please send me an email with your availability and I will do my best to book you an appointment that suits your schedule. 

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 19

Hello everyone,

Today was Shape Monster day in grade 1! We took a break from our investigation of 2-digit numbers to revisit 2D shapes. Yesterday, we each made a book called Shape Monster and practiced the story together. We coloured the pictures to match the words and then tried reading the story on our own. Today, we tried reading the story with a partner. Later in the day, we each chose a shape to start our monster with. We cut out the shape and glued it onto a large paper. Next, we chose shapes of different sizes to create the body and features for our monsters. Next week, we will be using our monsters to do some exploration of those 2D shapes, counting the shapes we used, charting the shapes we used, etc. Here are some pictures of our finished Shape Monsters:

We filled in our calendar and took some time to talk about zero. We talked about what zero means, and how to add and subtract with zero. We practiced a few addition and subtraction questions with zero to make sure everyone understood. We learned that we can do questions with big numbers using zero since the number stayed the same! We did some questions with big numbers just for fun. 

We worked on the letter R today. We completed our letter R page in our printing books, drew pictures of words that start with R, and tried to write sentences using R words. 

We went to the gym and played our horse and carriage game together again. 

We had just enough time to read 2 chapters from our My Weird School book before getting ready for home!

Reminders:

Booking is now open for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held online through Microsoft Teams. You should have received an email through SchoolMessenger with more information on how to book an appointment. Conferences will take place on Nov. 25 (evening) and Nov. 26 (morning). If you have any issues booking an appointment, please call the office or send me an email so that we can get it sorted out! 

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 17

 Hello everyone!

We had a morning meeting today all about asking questions. We looked at a silly picture from the book Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Seuss and asked lots of questions about the things that we could see (ex: "Why is that boy sitting the wrong way?" "Why is there a cat in their classroom?"). We read the story together and asked some questions about the book as well. We will be practicing this skill over the next few weeks to help us think about what we are listening to and reading. 

We filled in our calendar and then practiced our Letter Sound Bingo game. Ms. Byrne thinks we are almost ready to try playing on our own! Hopefully next week we will get to try. 

After our first recess, we worked on the letter L. We made a poster on our SmartBoard full of L words. We completed our printing book page about L and tried to write a sentence using "I love..."

After lunch we had mindfulness and then practiced our letter sounds. Ms. Byrne taught us a game called word ladder. We started by writing numbers 1-5 on our whiteboards. Then, Ms. Byrne gave us a clue for our first word - "A cup that you might put hot chocolate in." We guessed "mug" right away! We sounded out m-u-g together for word #1. Then, Ms. Byrne told us we were going to change only 1 letter to spell the next clue, and she showed us a picture of a pug. We changed the m to a p and spelled word #2. We kept getting clues about each word until we had spelled 5 words all together: mug, pug, bug, big, pig. 

Next, we read a book about our sense of hearing. We learned more about how our ear works and how our ear drum sends messages to our brain. We learned that our sense of hearing can help keep us safe, and that it is important to protect it by not listening to loud music or wearing ear plugs if we need to be around a loud noise. We will be doing an experiment with our sense of hearing tomorrow!

We tried logging onto Mathletics by ourselves today. It was tricky, but we're getting there! Ms. Byrne had given us 2 jobs on Mathletics that practiced making 2-digit numbers. Once we finished these, we had 200 points and were able to open the special secret world! It only opens for a few minutes before we go back to Mathletics and earn more points to open it again. 

In P.E. we have been using the scooters. Ms. Byrne taught us a horse and carriage game that helps us practice our balance and core strength, plus it is so much fun! 

Reminders:

Thursday, Nov. 18 - Booking opens for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held online through Microsoft Teams. You should have received an email through SchoolMessenger with more information on how to book an appointment. Conferences will take place on Nov. 25 (evening) and Nov. 26 (morning). If you have any issues booking an appointment, please call the office or send me an email so that we can get it sorted out! 

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 15

 Hello everyone!

We got another new friend added to our class today! We started our morning by welcoming him and helping to show him some of our classroom routines. 

We had a morning meeting where we shared about our long weekend, and talked about our new reading focus - questioning. We talked about what a question is and is not. We will be learning about asking questions while reading for the next 5 weeks and practicing how to do that while listening to stories and poems that Ms. Byrne reads to us. 

Next, we filled in our calendar. We worked on the letter Z today. We talked about how we make the S and Z sounds in the same way, except our voice is off when we say /s/ and our voice is on when we say /z/. We completed our usual letter routine and filled in our printing book page about Z. Many of us have started adding sentences to our printing books as well! 

We had our first recess break, it was very wet outside! Please make sure we are wearing appropriate clothes and shoes for the weather. If our socks get wet during recess it can be a pretty uncomfortable day! If you need any support with getting weather-appropriate clothing for your child, please don't hesitate to email me at: nibyrne@cbe.ab.ca and we will try our best to support you. 

When we got back inside Ms. Byrne taught us how to play letter sound bingo. We each get a playing card with letters, and Ms. Byrne holds up a picture. We have to figure out what letter the object in the picture starts with, and then find that letter on our card. We had lots of fun playing our practice round today! Once we learn the game, we will get to play it in a small group together to practice our sounds. 

After lunch we had mindfulness and then reviewed our letter sounds. 

We got out our place value blocks for math. We practiced making 2-digit numbers using our 10s and 1s blocks. Then, we practiced changing the number by taking away or adding blocks (ex: We made 87, then we took away a 10s block to turn it into 77). We also used our 10s blocks to count by 10s to 100!

After our second recess, we spent some time talking about family. We talked about what family means to us and read a book about a little boy named Miguel and his family. Ms. Byrne showed us that there were lots of similar books that were all about different kids and their families. We talked about how everyone's family might be different. Some families are close together, and others live far apart. We sat with a partner to tell them a little about our family and hear about theirs. First, we talked about who we think of when we think of our family. We shared our ideas and made a list of family words. Then, we talked to our partner about something that our family likes to do together and shared our favourite family activities with the class. 

Before we knew it, it was time to head to the gym to see Ms. Sterne. 

Reminders:

Thursday, Nov. 18 - Booking opens for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held online through Microsoft Teams. You should have received an email through SchoolMessenger with more information on how to book an appointment. Conferences will take place on Nov. 25 (evening) and Nov. 26 (morning). 

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 10

 Hello everyone,

We started our day with some partner reading. We had our morning meeting to talk more about Remembrance Day, the significance of poppies, and learn more about what the assembly was going to look like. 

We practiced a letter sound game together as a class before it was time to eat snack. We had an indoor recess so that we wouldn't miss the start of our assembly. 

Mr. Wien's hosted a lovely assembly. Ms. Austin told us some stories about the courage and bravery shown by 3 different Indigenous soldiers during her acknowledgement of the land. Mr. Hebert shared his opening message and then 2 of our friends got to carry our wreath out to the learning commons to be placed with our flags. 

Izzy and Finn getting ready to place our wreath!

We listened as Mrs. Anderson read us a story called The Eleventh Hour and the grade 3s read the poem In Flander's Fields. Then, we all stood and sang Highway of Heroes together. We had a moment of silence while Mr. Wien's played "The Last Post" on his trumpet, and then sang Oh Canada together. 

We watched closely so we could see our friends place our wreath!

When the assembly was over, it was lunch time! After lunch we had our daily mindfulness time, then we worked on signing into Mathletics on our own. Once we signed in, we completed some activities about ordering numbers. 

After our second recess, we reviewed everything we had learned about sense of taste and introduced our next sense - hearing. We began by watching a video that helped explain what sound is. We used a noise meter on the SmartBoard to help us "see" sound and begin to understand how our ears can hear things. We will be continuing with this study next week. 

Reminders:

Thursday, Nov. 11 - No School - Remembrance Day

Friday, Nov. 12 - No School - PD Day

Thursday, Nov. 18 - Booking opens for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held online through Microsoft Teams. You should have received an email today through SchoolMessenger with more information on how to book an appointment. Conferences will take place on Nov. 25 (evening) and Nov. 26 (morning). 

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 8

Hello everyone!

We started our day with a morning meeting to talk about Remembrance Day. Some of us already knew why this day is so important, so we shared with the whole class to make sure everyone understood. We learned that we will be having a virtual Remembrance Day assembly on Wednesday morning and we have a special job to do for it - making a wreath! We will be working on our wreath tomorrow. 

We filled in our calendar and talked a little about how the time went back over the weekend. We all noticed this morning that it was light outside when Ms. Byrne came out to get us, but last week it was dark! We also added a new page to our calendar - The Number of the Day. This page helps us learn about what bigger numbers actually mean (place value) and how we can use a 100s chart to find out which numbers are more and less. Today our number was 12. The page looks like this:

Next, we looked at another I Spy picture and used it to help us write a journal entry. We picked 1 word from the picture to sound out together, then we each worked with a partner to sound out a second word. We each wrote a journal entry with the words we worked on. Once we are all comfortable with writing a sentence this way, we will try new sentence starters!

After snack and recess, we worked on the letter S. S can be a tricky letter to make properly, so we took the time to talk about how to draw it correctly. We listened to some songs with letter S words and made our poster about S. We each completed the S page in our printing books. 

Next it was lunch time, and then our 10-minutes of daily mindfulness. After mindfulness each day we review our whole set of letter sounds. Today we also got out our whiteboards and wrote these new letters on them for the first time. After some practice, Ms. Byrne told us we were going to spell the word "zip". Lots of us knew how to spell it right away! Then, she asked us to change "zip" into "sip". Then into "rip" and "hip". We came up with a few other rhyming words (dip, snip, lip) that we spelled by changing only the first sound. We're turning into such great readers and writers! Some of us are really ready to begin practicing reading. If you would like to help us at home, here is a list of "sight words" (words that fluent readers know automatically without having to sound them out). 

We can practice these words at home together - just 2 or 3 at a time. Knowing these words, finding them in our favourite books, practicing reading or writing them, will be a huge help when we are reading books by ourselves!

Next, we worked on ordering numbers in Math. We talked about how to tell which is the larger number when the numbers have 2-digits. We practiced ordering some numbers on the Smartboard by arranging a list of 3 numbers from lowest to highest. Once we had practiced together, Ms. Byrne put 3 numbers on the whiteboard and asked us to give it a try on our own. It was pretty tricky at first! Tomorrow, we are going to use blocks to represent these numbers to help us see which ones are bigger more clearly. 

We went outside for our second recess and then came back inside to work on Science. We got into pairs and sat together while Ms. Byrne finished reading our sense of taste book. Today we read about sweet tastes and how some foods are naturally sweet (like watermelon) while other foods have sugar added to make them sweet (like candy). We also learned about the flavour umami. Umami is a flavour found in meats like pepperoni or beef, and also in soy sauce. We discussed our favourite foods in these categories with our partner. Next, we read about how everyone's brain senses tastes differently, so everyone has different opinions about what tastes good and what doesn't. We talked our partners to see if we could find a food that one of us likes and the other does not (ex: sushi, fish, plain pizza vs. pizza with toppings). Finally, we talked about how our sense of taste can keep us safe from eating dangerous things. We saw a picture of a poison symbol. We talked about how we might find this sign on chemicals, cleaning products, and other things that might look like food or drink, but would hurt us if we did eat or drink them. Many of us weren't sure if we had ever seen these symbols before. If we have some time this evening, could you help us look for 1 thing in our house that might have a warning sign on it like this? (cleaning products, bleach, etc.)

Finally, we went for P.E. with Ms. Sterne. We practiced playing a throwing game together. 

Reminders:

Wednesday, Nov. 10 - Picture Retakes - If your child was away on our picture day, or you were not satisfied with the photos you received, please let me know by commenting below or sending me an email: nibyrne@cbe.ab.ca. I will make a list of the students that need retakes so that no one gets left out!

Thursday, Nov. 11 - No School - Remembrance Day

Friday, Nov. 12 - No School - PD Day

Thursday, Nov. 18 - Booking opens for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held online through Microsoft Teams. You should have received an email today through SchoolMessenger with more information on how to book an appointment. Conferences will take place on Nov. 25 (evening) and Nov. 26 (morning). 

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 5

 Hello everyone!

We started our day by doing some partner reading. Yesterday, we got to visit the library and check out a book with our very own library cards! So, we shared our new library books with a friend. 

We reviewed our second set of letter sounds using our gumball game. We have been practicing with syllables. We learned that syllables are parts of words. Usually, syllables have 1 vowel. (ex: el-e-phant). We practiced clapping out the syllables for lots of words. Today, we each got Elkonin boxes. Elkonin boxes can help us count out the sounds in individual words. We used them today to break several 3-letter words into their sounds. Then, we changed 1 sound in the word to make a new word. We spelled 10 different words on our own!

We have been reading a book about our sense of taste. Each page asks a question (ex: What is your favourite snack? Is your favourite snack salty, sweet, sour, or bitter?). We read a page, and then turn and talk with a partner about the question. We then share some of our discussion with the class. We've been having lots of fun thinking about the different types of tastes we like and dislike! Today we also looked at our snacks to see which kinds of tastes we could find. 

We had music with Mr. Wiens today. Afterwards, we talked about the number 10 in math. We completed our number 10 page in our printing books and then brainstormed ways to show 10. We came up with 8 different ways and we each picked 2 to put into our printing book!

We went to the gym and practiced our throwing and catching skills again, before returning to class and reading a chapter from our class read-aloud! We are so excited to be reading a chapter book. It's called "My Weird School" and it is about a kid named AJ who thinks that his teacher is actually a spy! We have been trying to fit in 1 chapter a day. Today, we read chapter 5. 

Reminders:

Wednesday, Nov. 10 - Picture Retakes - If your child was away on our picture day, or you were not satisfied with the photos you received, please let me know by commenting below or sending me an email: nibyrne@cbe.ab.ca. I will make a list of the students that need retakes so that no one gets left out!

Thursday, Nov. 11 - No School - Remembrance Day

Friday, Nov. 12 - No School - PD Day

Thursday, Nov. 18 - Booking opens for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held online through Microsoft Teams. You should have received an email today through SchoolMessenger with more information on how to book an appointment. Conferences will take place on Nov. 25 (evening) and Nov. 26 (morning). 

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 3

 Hello everyone!

We started our day with some quiet reading time. Then, we reviewed our Cree and Blackfoot words for Fall. We reminded everyone what these words mean and why they were used to refer to this time of year. We filled in our calendar and practiced counting to 100 by 1s and 10s. Each day, we have been adding a star to a set of 10-frames to count how many days we have been in school. Today was our 40th day of grade 1! We can't believe how quickly the time is passing.

Mr. Wiens came to our class and taught us a song called "Highway of Heroes" by The Trews. We practiced singing the chorus of the song together because everyone is going to sing it during our Remembrance Day assembly next week. We really liked the song! We can listen to it together at home to practice the words:

Next, we helped Ms. Byrne write a journal entry that was her very best work! She wrote 3 sentences with neat printing, sounded out a word on her own, added a colour word to a sentence, and drew pictures to match. We used a checklist to make sure the journal entry was perfect. Tomorrow, we are going to use this checklist to review our own journal entries and see where we can make improvements!

After lunch we had our mindfulness time and then worked on finishing our smell test experiment. We wrote guesses about what the mystery items were, and then Ms. Byrne revealed the real answer! Some of the mystery items were yummy smells (ex: cinnamon, vanilla, orange), other smells we were a little unsure of (ex: vinegar, garlic). We had lots of fun trying to guess the mystery smells. It was interesting to notice how difficult it was to guess the mystery when we could only use 1 of our senses! When we were finished, we each picked a favourite and least favourite smell to write on our paper. 

We practiced our letter sounds using our gumball game and then we got back to our greater than and less than work in math. We each completed 9 greater than, less than, or equal to questions in our math book, and then we got to choose to do 3 "spicy" (challenging) questions that Ms. Byrne wrote on the board, or to make up our own 3 questions. 

In P.E. we are working on throwing and catching skills right now. Today, we worked with a partner to play catch using a bean bag. Each time we caught the bean bag, we took a step backwards to make the game more challenging. 

Reminders:

Wednesday, Nov. 10 - Picture Retakes - If your child was away on our picture day, or you were not satisfied with the photos you received, please let me know by commenting below or sending me an email: nibyrne@cbe.ab.ca. I will make a list of the students that need retakes so that no one gets left out!

Thursday, Nov. 11 - No School - Remembrance Day

Friday, Nov. 12 - No School - PD Day

Thursday, Nov. 18 - Booking opens for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held online through Microsoft Teams. You should have received an email today through SchoolMessenger with more information on how to book an appointment. Conferences will take place on Nov. 25 (evening) and Nov. 26 (morning). 

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Nov. 2

 Hello everyone!

We got a new friend in our class yesterday so we were busy making sure our new friend felt welcome and understood how our class worked. 

We practiced using Bubblegum writing (stretching out a word) as a whole class, and then with a partner yesterday. Today, we added an extra step by adding a bubblegum sentence to our journals. We looked at some journal examples that Ms. Byrne created and rated them 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then, we each got our journals out and tried to write our best sentence. Some of us added a colour word to our sentence for an extra challenge! Yesterday, we looked at all the letters for our second set - m, n, s, z, l, r, w, h, u, i. We looked at each letter and practiced the sound. Today, we focused on the letter m and completed our printing book page about m. 

In math this week we are focusing on ordering numbers. Yesterday we practiced ordering numbers 1-10 that were scrambled on the SmartBoard. Then, we learned about "greater than" and "less than". We used < and > to show which number was greater. We added some teeth to our arrows to make them look like crocodiles. The crocodile always has his mouth open towards the bigger number because that's the one he wants to eat! We practiced this with pairs of numbers up to 10. Today, we practiced 3 questions up to 10, then 3 with numbers 10-20, and then 3 with some bigger numbers for a challenge. We talked about how to tell which number is bigger when it is a 2-digit number (ex: 21 and 12). We also talked about using the = sign if the numbers are the same. 

During science today we started a smell test experiment. We are using our sense of smell to guess mystery objects without using our other senses. So far we have smelled: brown sugar, coffee, and lemon. We have some more mystery smells to test out tomorrow!

In social studies this week (connected with our previous science unit about Fall Changes) we have been looking at Fall through Indigenous ways of knowing. We have a giant medicine wheel in our classroom now! We each made a fall leave art project to add to the Fall section of the medicine wheel. We talked about our connection to the land during Fall and why this time was/is important. Today, we learned how to say Fall in some Indigenous languages. We discussed that there are many different groups of Indigenous people with different languages, cultures, and traditions. We learned that takwakin is the word that some Cree people use to refer to this time of year and that it translates to "gathering." This is because this time of year is when people, and other animals too, were gathering food and supplies for Winter. Especially when Indigenous Ancestors were alive (before grocery stores!). We also learned the Blackfoot word O'ko, which refers to this time of year as well. We labelled our medicine wheel with these words. During this discussion we were able to talk about working together as a community as well, because it would take a lot of working together to prepare for Winter a long time ago!

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Oct. 27

 Hello everyone,

We have been practicing using onset and rime to break words into chunks. We have practiced with some of our classmates names (ex: M-icah) and played a game where we take away the onset of someone's name and replace it with a new letter to see what their "new name" is (ex: T-icah, or V-icah). We take turns trying to read the new names. It is so cool to see how much our reading has grown already!

Today we also focused on the -at word family. Words in that family all have -at as their rime. We read through our -at family poem together and then we each got a highlighter to see if we could find all of the   -at family words in the poem and highlight them. We made a house poster on our SmartBoard and added all of the -at family words we could think of to the house. We split them into their onset and rime and practiced reading them. 

Later in the day we introduced a new family -og. We read an -og family poem and practiced splitting the -og words into their onset and rime.

We learned about 3 types of writing today. When we are first writing we start at level 1 - scribble writing. That's where we use scribbles, random letters, or pictures to help share our ideas and stories. When we scribble write it usually means only the person who wrote the idea can read it. Once we start learning letter sounds like we are, we can begin to move onto level 2, bubblegum writing. This is where we stretch out a word to help us write all of the sounds that we hear (ex: today we chose the word "airplane" to stretch out. When we stretched it long we were able to hear the sounds "arplan"). Using bubblegum writing, we can write some  or most of the letters in the word. We can also use any sight words that we know to help write a sentence (ex: "I see an arplan."). This means that now I can read my story, my teacher can probably read my story, moms and dads could read my story, and maybe some other people. When we know all the letter sounds, sight words, vowel rules, etc. then we can write using the final level - book writing. Lots of times we might mix book writing and bubblegum writing (ex: using sight words and bubblegum writing to make a sentence). Bubblegum writing is about using the sounds that we know to help us share our ideas and get used to writing. It can be hard not to feel stuck because we want to spell things perfectly, but taking risks is an important part of learning! We practiced bubblegum writing by writing 1 sentence on our whiteboards with a bubblegum word. 

In math, we practiced using the words sides and vertices to describe shapes. We counted the sides and vertices of lots of different shapes and filled in a chart to show how many sides and vertices each shape had. We are going to continue practicing with these words tomorrow!

We reviewed everything we have learned about our sense of smell so far. We watched a quick video that showed a diagram of our nose. We followed air as it went through the nostrils, to special receptors that help us to smell things. Those receptors send messages to our brain, and then our brain works to figure out what the smell is, if it is safe, etc. Today we talked about how to keep our nose safe (don't put anything inside it!). We also talked about a second important job that our nose does - helping our sense of taste! We learned that our senses of smell and taste work together to help us taste our favourite foods. That's why foods taste differently when we have a stuffy nose. 

Reminders:

Costume Day Friday

·       Students are permitted to wear their costume

·       All costume props must be left AT HOME including masks, wands, swords etc.  All students will still be required to wear their Covid-19 mask.

·       The school is closed on the weekend so if any costume items are forgotten at school they will not be accessible until Halloween is over.

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Oct. 25

 Hello everyone!

We started our day by switching out the books in our book boxes. We had a quick class meeting to share some things from our weekend. We filled in our calendar and practiced counting to 100 by 1s and 10s. 

Next, we had music. Mr. Wiens was away today, so we had a guest teacher that taught us how to use chopsticks as mini drumsticks! We learned some new songs and practiced playing them on our new drumsticks. 

We had a new star student today and completed our interview of them before ate snack. After recess, we worked on our Star Student pages. We were working so hard to do our best that we needed a little extra time after lunch to complete our pages. 

Then, we reviewed the sounds of our first letter set. We talked about 2 new words - onset and rime. The onset is the first sound in a word (everything before the vowel). The rime is the rest of the word (from the vowel onward. For example: in the word sat, /s/ is the onset, /at/ is the rime. We practiced breaking some 3 letter words into their onset and rime. Then, we read a poem together that had lots of words that had the same rime -at. We will focus on this poem a little more tomorrow and learn more about the -at word family.

In math, we worked on the number 9. We practiced the number and word 9 in our printing books. We showed 9 on a ten frame, and then chose 1 other way to show 9. 

After our second recess we completed our last step of our Braille practice. We got to bring them home today! Then, we looked at the next sense from our 5 senses book - smell! We filled in a sentence in our book and brainstormed things that have a strong smell. We drew some pictures in our book of things that we like to smell. 

During P.E. we practiced using scoops and bean bags to toss in a forward direction. We took turns tossing our beanbag into a hula hoop for aiming practice.

Reminders:

Costume Day Friday

·       Students are permitted to wear their costume

·       All costume props must be left AT HOME including masks, wands, swords etc.  All students will still be required to wear their Covid-19 mask.

·       The school is closed on the weekend so if any costume items are forgotten at school they will not be accessible until Halloween is over.

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Oct. 22

 Hello everyone!

We are excited to tell you that we finished our first set of letters. They are: p, b, t, d, f, v, k, g, a, o. We have completed these letters in our printing book and practice the sounds every day. We have even started spelling words using these letters on our whiteboards! This week we have also been practicing reading the words: the, I, a, see, can. We have been finding these words in our morning message, and in books that we read together. These words are in lots of books! They are important for us to remember because they will help us read full sentences and stories more fluently. We also used these words to write a journal entry yesterday. We each wrote "I see a ______." and filled in the blank with a word of our own! Some of us used words we know how to spell already like cat, others used words we found on our name tags like circle or square, and some of us tried to sound out another word using its sounds. We used these journal entries to practice writing all of our words on the line, using our new popsicle stick tool to add spaces, and writing with lowercase letters. Our journals improved so much! Check out some before and after pictures below. These journals are only a week apart! (don't worry - Ms. Byrne always asks permission to share our work. We look at the before, then the after and celebrate how much we are growing together!):

Before: Lots of great ideas here! We could fix some of the floating letters, and keep the words in one sentence together so that it is easy to read.

After: Neat and tidy! Letters on the line, nice spaces, and our sentences together. This time, our friend even spelled "camper" by himself by stretching out the sounds and writing the letters he could hear. We have to be brave and take risks to do our best learning!

Before: Another awesome idea, and all the letters are on the line nicely. We need to add spaces between words and practice using lowercase letters throughout our sentence.

Wow! Look at those neat lowercase letters. The spaces make it easy to read her ideas, and she also sounded out "block" with just a little help from Ms. Byrne.

Today we finished our shape scavenger hunt and added our chart to our math books. We were able to find lots of examples of circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles in our classroom. See how many we can find at home!

During our morning meeting today we talked about the story of Chanie Wenjack. Our last blog post explains his story as well. We talked about how Chanie was a student at residential school who really missed his family. He decided to sneak away from the school to try and walk back to his home. It was a very far walk - over 600km! And it was very cold outside. Unfortunately, Chanie passed away before he was able to make it home. We used our P.E. time today to complete a "Walk for Wenjack." We added together the distance we walked as a class and it added up to 38.4km! We talked about how it is important to remember the children who went to residential school, and let them know that we would never want that to happen to them or any other people again. 

Our last job of the day was to complete our Braille project. We reviewed how Braille works and we each got to look at an actual book with Braille writing! We watched a video of a young girl reading Braille as well and she helped show us how it worked. We each got a Braille alphabet - it kind of looked like a secret code! We got to work finding the "code" to match each letter of our name. Once we had coloured in the dots we needed, we glued split peas to the coloured dots to create a raised effect. We set them all out to let the glue dry, but we will be bringing our projects home next week to share! 

Reminders:

- Friday, Oct. 29 - Students will be allowed to wear a costume to school on this day if they would like. As always, no toy weapons of any kind. Students will still be required to wear a face mask that covers their nose and mouth. Full face masks that are a part of a costume are not allowed. 

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne