Term 1 Week 7 Update

Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs! We’re up to our ears in dinosaurs! We spent the week in IEYC this week making all kinds of different dinosaur crafts. We made paper plate glitter dinosaurs, toilet paper tube diplodocuses, felt stegosauruses, and tried our hand at a very fine motor activity threading spines onto the back of cardstock spinosauri. (And yes, I had to use Google to get all those plurals correct). This collection of dinosaurs will continue to be used in play next week.

In Phonics we are doing a deep dive into initial sounds of words – one letter every two days. This week we finished off the letter O and then did G and H.

In Maths we continued to look at the numbers 6-10. We used our tens frames and blocks to create different numbers in the very early stages of addition, which we call “counting on”. We put 5 blocks on the top of our tens frame and then rolled a modified die where the 6 was replaced with a sticker representing 0 and then depending on what we rolled we counted on from 5 to make our new number. For example, if we rolled a 4 we would look at our tens frame with 5 blocks on it already and say, “5…6, 7, 8, 9” as we added one block at a time for the 4 we rolled. We also played a game called “Guess My Number”. In pairs the students took a number strip with the numbers 1-10 and placed a block over one number while their partner’s eyes were closed. When the partner opened their eyes they had to look at the number strip and use strategies such as counting down or up to find out what the covered number was.

In Writer’s Workshop we introduced writing goals. Our 3 goals of the moment are:
-I can use details
-I can use labels
-I can use words
As the students demonstrate that they can consistently do these things in their writing, their names will go up on the wall next to the goal they’ve achieved. It’s a great motivator.

In our Morning Meetings we’re looking at the feeling of anger. We’ve learned that there are various degrees of anger and sometimes our anger gets so big we can’t control it anymore. We’ll be learning strategies over the coming days to keep our anger under control so we can maintain a peaceful classroom.

That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend, stay dry, and we’ll see you on Monday!