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