Feb. 28

Hello everyone!

We have had a busy time lately! Last week with TWOsday, Pink Shirt Day, and our 100th Day of School, we are still playing catch-up on some activities!

We started our day with our word review from last week. We did really well on those words! The word maybe was tricky for some of us. Ms. Byrne corrected our reviews while we ate snack and then we put them into our backpacks to take home. There are 8 weeks worth of word reviews on the paper. Any words that we missed during our word review, we took time to practice during our guided reading centres. If you can review the words we've missed as well, that would be extra helpful! Our new words for this week are:

1. she

2. are*

3. name

4. book

5. little 

Are is our red word, or heart word, for this week. We talked about the "ar" sound. We call it the pirate sound! /ar/ almost always makes that pirate sound. But, the e in are is the tricky part. It can be hard to remember it is there!

We decided to focus on the /ar/ sound for our bonus words as a reminder. We chose:

1. car

2. far

3. jar

4. card

5. hard

We wrote these words on cards to add to our word rings. We talked about how our word rings are getting pretty full. If that is happening, we can remove any words that we know super well and don't need as much practice with (ex: it, and, I, can).

We filled in our calendar and did some counting practice before snack and recess. We had literacy centres. Our centres have changed! We've added a "roll and read" centre that we practiced together last week. We also put our wikki stix and letter tiles together into one centre so that everyone can choose how they would like to practice their Wow Words. We also took away letter bingo to add a story writing centre. We have mini-books that we can take and use for creative writing! We get to work on our own or with a partner to create our stories. We will have author's chair times on Friday to share some of our story ideas with our classmates. 

After lunch we had mindfulness time and then practices our Wow Words using a dice game. 

Next, we took some time to work on the 100th day activities that we didn't get to finish on Friday. We worked on a book called "100 Collection." It practices counting to 100 by 10s. On each page we had to decide on a collection (ex: hearts, stars, dogs, pizzas) and draw 10 of them. We wrote the word to match our pictures, then moved on to the next page and chose a new item for another collection of 10. We repeated this until we had 10 collections of 10, or 100! We took a break for recess and then returned to working on our books. We have 1 job left to do on our 100th day passport, so we will work on that tomorrow and then hopefully bring our 100th day passport home!

We had gym with Ms. Sterne where we started learning basketball skills!

Reminders:

- Parent/Teacher conversations will be next Thursday and Friday (March 10th and 11s). You will be able to book appointments through your MyCBE account by the end of this week. This also means there is no school on Friday, March 11th

- Spring Break - March 18th is the last day of classes before Spring Break. Classes will resume on March 28th

Student Shoutouts:

Serena - for being kind to everybody

Ava - for helping Kali and Nola finish their 100th day books

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Feb. 23

 Hello everyone!

Yesterday we celebrated TWOsday (2/22/22). We began working on a time capsule for us to open on March 3rd, 2033 (3/3/33))! We drew some pictures, and wrote some things about ourselves now and what we thing life will be like in 2033. We also measured ourselves using string so that we could see how much we grow over the next 11 years! This morning, we finished our last pieces of our time capsule and put them together into a big envelope. We brought our time capsules home today with a letter explaining everything! Feel free to add pictures, drawings, or anything else from home that we would like to add before sealing the envelope.

We had a morning meeting today about Pink Shirt Day. Some of us were familiar with why we wear pink on this day every year. We talked about the story of a boy who wore a pink shirt to school and was bullied. His friends all decided to wear pink shirts to school the next day to support their friend, and to show the bullies that what they did was not okay. We listened to a story called "The Recess Queen" and talked about how the character Jean was a bully. The solution to this problem was that a new girl came to school. She stood up to Mean Jean, and then invited Jean to play with her and was very nice. Sometimes, bullies are acting mean because they are feeling sad, and offering our kindness can be one way to stop a bully. Other times, like when someone is being physical (hitting, pushing, etc.), it is important to tell an adult right away to make sure that no one gets hurt. 

Mr. Wiens came to teach music and then we filled in our calendar for the day. Only 2 days left until our 100th day of school! We had snack and watched another story about bullying called "The Bully-Blockers Club." We had indoor recess and then literacy centres. 

After lunch, we practiced our Wow Words for this week. Then, we did our basic facts in math for this month. We can't wait to find out how much we improved! This month, we focused again on checking our work. So, before handing in their work, everyone went back and looked at each question to check for little mistakes. 

We had our second recess, then took some time to read a book called "Happy in Our Skin." We used this book to help us talk about how our skin is an important part of our body. Many of us remembered why peoples' skin can be different colours from previous discussions, so we reminded everyone and then talked about how our skin being different colours doesn't change what's on the inside. We're each our own unique and wonderful people! And it is important to treat everyone kindly. 

We had a science lesson about light and dark colours. We discussed how we can tell if a colour is lighter or darker, then we compared some colours from our crayon boxes. We sorted our crayons into lighter and darker colours, with some in the middle. We used our crayons to fill in a chart of light and dark colours. 

In the gym we are learning some new cooperative games. Today, Ms. Byrne taught us Pool Noodle Tag, and Human Knot! We had lots of fun playing both. 

Student Shoutouts:

Ava - for helping another group tidying their literacy centre

Rachel - being kind to everyone

Reminders:

Friday, Feb. 25th - 100th Day of Grade 1

March 10th (evening) and 11th (morning) - Parent/Teacher Conversations - appointments will be available to book through your myCBE account soon!

Reading Give it a Shot - Remember to return home reading books when they have been read to receive new ones, and to get points on our Reading Give it a Shot chart! 

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Pink Shirt Day and Wow Words

 Hello everyone!

We will have our usual blog update tomorrow, but we wanted to post to let everyone know that tomorrow is Pink Shirt Day! We will be reading some books and having discussions about anti-bullying, being kind, and showing love and care towards others. Wear any pink clothing you can find to join in on this day with us!

We also got our new Wow Words for this week. They are:

1. no

2. yes

3. big

4. they* (red word)

5. maybe

Our bonus words are from the -ig family:

1. pig

2. dig

3. wig

4. fig

5. twig

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Feb. 15

Hello everyone!

Yesterday, we completed our Wow Word review. "Was" definitely tricked some us and we think we need to practice it a bit more. Since this is such a short week, we decided to pick our trickiest Wow Words so far to practice them again. We chose:

1. the

2. went

3. was

4. have

5. with

For our bonus words, we picked words with the /th/ sound, since that sound has been the hardest for us to remember! We picked:

1. that

2. thing

3. three

We used our morning meeting this morning to talk more about Black History Month. We started by reading a book called "All Because You Matter." We talked about our Xavier Riddle stories we've been watching during snack and remembered some examples of people who were not treated fairly just because of the colour of their skin. We were wondering why people have different coloured skin, so we talked about why darker skin can be important for your body if you live in a place that gets hot and has lots of sun. We talked about how not everyone who has darker skin lives in a hot place, but it means someone in their family, or their ancestors, probably came from a place that is hot. It's actually something bodies do to protect us from the sun! We talked about treating people fairly and never making fun of someone because they are different. 

Next, we filled in our calendar. Only 5 more school days until our 100th day of school! 

We asked the questions for our next star student. We are going to do our writing for that page tomorrow. We had snack and recess, and then worked on our literacy centres. 

After lunch, we had mindfulness time and then we practiced some 2-letter sounds. We took out our whiteboards and Ms. Byrne asked us to write the first or last sound in different words (ex: can you write the last sound in "wish?"). We write the sound and then hold up our whiteboard. We practiced with 10 different words before putting away our whiteboards.

During science we read a book called Mixed: A Colorful Story. It's about the primary colours mixing and making new colours. Ms. Byrne asked us to think of some ideas of how we could show what we learned about colour at the end of this unit. We decided on a painting! We came up with a list of colourful things that we could paint in our final pictures. Now, to learn everything we need to know about mixing colours to help us paint our best pictures!

After our second recess, we had our Mathletics time. Our points winners this week are Nathan, Mila, and Ajay!

We played a team game of curling in the gym before home time. 

Reminders:

-  Thursday and Friday (Feb. 17 and 18) are Teacher's Convention Days so there is no school

- Monday, Feb. 21 - No School - Family Day

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Feb. 11

 Hello everyone!

Sorry about the late post - the internet went out at the school Friday afternoon and Ms. Byrne wasn't able to publish the blog!

First, we wanted to share our sit spot experience from Thursday. We really enjoyed having our quiet 10-minutes of sit spot time. Here are some photos from that time:

During that time, we connected with the land by watching the trees, the sky, closing our eyes and listening to the sounds around us, or imagining our favourite outdoor place. When we came inside we had some drawing time in our journals to draw what we experienced during sit spots. Here are some of our beautiful drawings:

Izzy imagined a bird chirping during her sit spot time.

Stefan drew everything he could see - including the playground that was behind us!

Gabe drew the blue sky, and a bird flying over us.

Yvie imagined the Spring flowers she hopes come soon!

We had an important job to do for Mr. Hebert today. We each had to fill out a survey about our mindfulness and wellness activities. There were some questions about mindfulness time, some about our sharing circles, and some about sit spots. We learned what a survey is, and how people use surveys to find information. We read each question together as a class and talked about what it meant before everyone chose an answer on their paper. It took some time to make sure everyone understood the questions, so our survey ended up taking much longer than we thought!

We filled in our calendar and did some addition questions using 10-frames. We are learning this strategy to help us practice "making 10." We practiced moving counters into 10 frames to show a question, then moving some over to create 10.  Here is an example:

We had snack before we went to the gym to see Ms. Sterne. Her and Mr. Wiens have switched now, and she will be teaching us P.E. on some Fridays. 

When we came back to class we had to choose our literacy centres and complete our 2 rounds. By the time we finished that, it was time to go home!

Reminders:

- Next week is a short week! Thursday and Friday (Feb. 17 and 18) are Teacher's Convention Days so there is no school

- Monday, Feb. 21 - No School - Family Day

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. Byrne

Feb. 9

Hello everyone!

We have been very excited to record our home reading books each morning. Many of us have already earned our first animal card! We made a chart for our wall and have been tracking the books we have read. 3 books earns us 1 card. There are 24 cards to collect altogether.

We started our day by learning more about why we are doing "sit spots." We learned that sit spots can help you feel more connected to the land. We wanted to know more about what it means to feel connected to the land, so we read about how many Indigenous people believe that we are caretakers of the land. The land gives us food, clothes, and shelter, so in turn it is our responsibility to take care of it as well. Part of feeling connected to the land is recognizing that responsibility and doing our part to care for the land around us. The more connected to the land we feel, the more likely we will treat it kindly. 

Our pillar of the month for February is Love. We decided to use this for our journal writing today. We wrote sentences using "I love..." We each wrote 3-5 sentences to complete our journal, and we added pictures of the things we love to complete our entry.

Mr. Wiens came for music and then we filled in our calendar. Today was our 91st day of grade 1! That means we are halfway through the year, and halfway to grade 2!

After snack, we had recess and then literacy centres. Our reading groups today got to read one of Ms. Byrne's favourite books - The Peanut Butter Rhino. 

After lunch we did another practice sit spot. Don't forget that we are having some sit spot time outside tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be beautiful, but you may want to wear something you don't mind getting a little dirty - especially your pants!

We played a dice game to practice our Wow Words and then did some skip counting practice. We practiced more with using skip counting to help us add yesterday, and today we were using those skills, plus our number line addition to help us solve problems. We tried 10 problems independently and double-checked our work to see if we could find any mistakes. 

We started our next science unit today - mixing colour! We started by talking about primary and secondary colours. We made a chart with the primary and secondary colours listed. Then, we found the crayon to match each colour and coloured in a circle beside the word. We drew pictures of things that are red, blue, yellow, purple, green, and orange. Then, we got to choose 1 more colour from our crayons to add to the bottom of our charts. 

We played a team game of curling in the gym. We're getting really good at lining up our shots - we may have some future olympic curlers in our class! 

Student Shoutouts:

Cecilia - for rescuing our recess equipment when our soccer ball and basketball tried to blow away from us!

Ajay - for using his super reading skills to read a chapter book to a friend during our morning reading time.

Reminders:

Valentine's Day - We will not be handing out individual Valentine's Day cards this year. We will work on a craft together to celebrate the day on Monday. 

Thursday, Feb. 17 and Friday, Feb. 18 - No School - Teacher's Convention

Monday, Feb. 21 - No School - Family Day

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne

Feb. 7

Hello everyone!

We have an important message to pass on from our new Patrol Team:

Parents – just a reminder that our patrollers are on duty each morning in rain, snow, and fine weather (We do not patrol on blue days).  Could you please wait until they call, ‘Point, double-check, and proceed,’ before making your way between the pylons and safely across the street.   

Please also be aware of our parking guidelines. 

They are: 

-no parking for any length of time in the bus zone!  

-no parking within 5 metres of a stop sign or cross walk or corner of 2 streets (you should be able to take 5 large steps between your vehicle and any of these)  

-stay out of the staff parking lot 

 

Thank you as well to our Patrol parents who ensure our students arrive on time to volunteer.  It’s greatly appreciated! 

 

Mr Lancée & Mr Shackelton 

Your BHS Patrol Supervisors 

We started our day with our Wow Word review. With last week being a short week, we didn't get to practice the words as much as usual and we did find some of them pretty tricky, especially "with" and "going". We will practice the "th" and "ing" sounds more this week. We got our new Wow Words and added them to our word rings. They are:

1. up

2. was

3. had

4. will

5. have

"Was" and "have" are red words because they do not follow our usual rules. 

Was is tricky! A says an /o/ sound after w (ex: water, walk), and then s says a /z/ sound when it's by itself, right after most vowels (ex: is, as). 

Have looks like it has a king e - which would make the a say its name. But, the e is actually only there because of a silly English rule that says no word can end in V! Isn't that strange? So, a says its usual sound in that word and the e makes no sound (ex: love, give).

Our bonus words are part of the -ad family. They are:

1. sad

2. mad

3. dad

4. bad

5. glad

We filled in our calendar and had a sharing circle where everyone shared something they hope happens this week. Since we had lots of indoor recess last week, many of us were hoping the weather stays nice this week so we can have outside time!

We had 2 rounds of literacy centres before lunch and used that time to practice our new Wow Words. 

After lunch, we had mindfulness time. During mindfulness time we learned about something new - sit spots! As a part of our work with Indigenous ways of knowing, we decided to use sit spots during our mindfulness practice. Today, we practiced sit spots by finding a comfortable space to sit in our classroom, breathing deeply, while we watched a forest scene. Sit spots are typically done to connect with nature so, on Thursday, we will be trying sit spots outside! We will find a spot within the school grounds where we can sit and have some quiet time to connect with the outdoors. The weather looks great for Thursday, but please consider if you want your child to wear snow pants or other extra clothing that day in case the ground may be damp. 

In math today we were talking about how our skip counting can help us to solve problems. We solved a word problem about our Wow Words and used our counting by 5s to figure out how many Wow Words we can spell now. We also talked about how we can figure out problems that are close to ones we already know (ex: if we know 5+5=10, then we know that 5+6 is going to be 1 more - 11!). We practiced this with a few problems. 

We received our Reading Give It a Shot program today! There are 24 animals cards for each of us. Each time we return a home reading book, we will get 1 point added to our chart. When we get 3 points, we earn a card to take home! We will add points for any time we spend reading independently in class as well. 

After our second recess, we got back to work on our snowmen projects. We made a list of the jobs our snowmen were doing in our pictures. Then, we choose a writing paper (mild, medium, or spicy - depending on how difficult the writing task was). We wrote what job our snowman does, and how they help their community.

In gym, we practiced our take-outs in curling. We learned that the "target" in curling is actually called a "house" and the middle of the house is called the "button." We practiced throwing our rocks to move a rock that was already on the button. It was lots of fun! 

Student Shoutouts:

Stefan - Kye gave Stefan a shoutout today because he helped Serena with her backpack at the end of the day

Jayla - For coming to find Ms. Byrne to ask for help when she saw someone crying at recess

Reminders:

Valentine's Day - We will not be handing out individual Valentine's Day cards this year. We will work on a craft together to celebrate the day on Monday. 

Thursday, Feb. 17 and Friday, Feb. 18 - No School - Teacher's Convention

Monday, Feb. 21 - No School - Family Day

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Feb. 3 - Valentine's Day Update

 Hello everyone!

Valentine's Day - You may have seen in the principal's message sent out yesterday that the decision has been made that students will not be handing out Valentine's cards brought from home this year. We talked about this today and decided that we will work on a special Valentine's art project that day to celebrate instead. 

We have been working hard this week to finish up our Star Student pages for our book. We have completed 2 pages so far this week, and we have 4 friends who are still patiently waiting for their turn. Once we finish all our pages, we will be making a cover page and putting our star student pages together to create a book to bring home. We've been ordering the pages so that you can see how much our printing has improved throughout the year, and how much more we are able to write now! 

Mr. Wien's came to teach us music. We got to play xylophones! 

We filled in our calendar and had a class meeting about how February is Black History Month. We will be reading books during our snack time that introduce important black figures in history (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, super star athletes like Jesse Owens, etc.). February has so many important and special events!

We had our snack and learned about today's important person - Rosa Parks! We had indoor recess and then had literacy centres, while also switching out our library books. 

Yesterday in math we were practicing completing addition and subtraction on a number line. We used the number lines on our desk to help us complete some tricky questions. Today, we got to have some Mathletics time and practice our number line addition there! We've been tracking our Mathletics points to challenge each other to put in our best effort in Mathletics. So far, our reigning overall champion is Jayla! Last week's top points went to Gabe - he earned 730 points! Today, we were even more motivated and we beat all our records! Serena finished our math time on top with 1560 points - amazing! Izzy came in second with 1087 points! Since both of them got over 1000 points, Mathletics sent Ms. Byrne an award for them, which she printed and gave them to bring home. We're excited to see if more of us can get some awards next week! 

We started a new social studies project today. We read the book "Snowmen at Work," and talked about how the snowmen all play different roles in their community. We shared some important jobs we know of in our community, and some of us shared the important jobs that our moms and dads have and how they help our community too. Tomorrow, we are going to work on an art project to create our own snow-person at Work and decorate them to match different community jobs. We will use our art projects to do some writing about how our snow-person helps their community. 

We had some more time to practice our curling skills in the gym. 

Student Shoutouts:

Finn - We wanted to give Finn a shoutout today because he has been working very hard to do his neatest printing recently. He wanted to show you all an example, so he wrote one of our star student facts on a whiteboard and took a picture of it to share!

Briella and Gabe - They have been taking their sweeping staff job very seriously this week and keeping our class neat and tidy for everyone! Thanks for being great members of our classroom community Briella and Gabe!

Reminders:

- Please review this week's Wow Words at home - with it being a short week we haven't gotten to practice as much as usual at school! This week's words are: am, me, he, with, going

-Your child's report card is now available for viewing through your MyCBE account

- Thursday Feb. 17 and Friday Feb. 18 - No School - Teacher's Convention

- Monday, Feb. 21 - No School - Family Day

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne

Feb. 1

 Hello everyone,

We have made it to February! 

We started our morning by switching our Home Reading books. We took some time to review and practice our Wow Words on our whiteboards before we completed our word review. We think we will practice the "-ay" sound a little more because it was tricky for us to remember to use it in our bonus words. We got our new Wow Words and added them to our word rings. They are:

1. am

2. me

3. he

4. with

5. going

We talked about how we can find the word "go" in word number 5. Then, we discussed the -ing ending and when we might use it. We learned that we use that word ending when we're doing something, an action. For example: walking, dancing, sitting, playing. It can also be a word family. We decided to use     -ing for our bonus words as well to practice spelling that word part. Our bonus words are:

1. sing

2. king

3. ring

4. sting

5. thing

Next, we had a morning meeting and had our very first Sharing Circle. We learned the rules of a sharing circle and today we each got to share something that makes us happy at school, and something that makes us upset or frustrated. We wrote down any ideas that were shared, so that we can talk about them throughout the week and hopefully solve some of the problems that were making people feel frustrated. 

We started our calendar and were excited to see a brand new calendar for February! We talked about some important days in February: today being Lunar New Year, which some of our friends are celebrating with their families (we read a book about Lunar New Year during our snack as well!), Valentine's Day, Family Day, and our 100th Day of School! February is also Black History Month, so we will be talking about this throughout the month as well. We filled in our calendar and did some counting practice before we had our snack and indoor recess time. 

We completed 2 rounds of centres and used our Wikki Stix and letter tiles to practice spelling our new Wow Words. 

After lunch, we did some letter sound practice and then did some "word part" practice, where we practiced recognizing different word endings and word parts (ex: -ing, -ay, -ack, -ick). 

During math, we practiced some strategies for checking our work, finding mistakes, and fixing them. We looked at some examples Ms. Byrne created of addition questions. We had to find the ones that had incorrect answers and fix them! We worked with a partner to help us find all the mistakes. 

After our second recess, we had a quick lesson about the Lunar New Year and some of our friends shared what they do to celebrate this special day with their families. Then, we got back to work on our Winter pictures and filled in the 'Plants in Winter' part of our checklist. 

In P.E. this week we are learning about Curling! We've never gotten to play this sport in the gym before, but we have special equipment now to practice. Today, we learned about some of the rules of this sport and we got to try out "throwing" the rocks to get a feel for how to throw them properly:

Student Shoutouts:

Jayla, Kayla, and Kali - for helping friends with their science posters when they finished their work

Izzy shared a shoutout for lots of people in our class for remembering to raise a quiet hand instead of leaving their desk when they had an idea to share, or a question for Ms. Byrne

Reminders:

- Your child's report card is now available to view through your MyCBE account! 

- Some of you have been asking about bringing in Valentine's cards. We are clarifying any rules around this with Mr. Hebert and will be sharing the information on the blog as soon as we know

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne