Diorama videos and our learning focus for April

The conferences are over and I'm sitting here reflecting on all the learning that has happened so far this year, and there's still more to come! Your children did an excellent job of articulating their strengths, goals and progress in their conferences. I was very proud of them. Thanks for coming and supporting them so well. 

So what's next?

The unit of study in reading for this month is Focus on Connections, Thinking, and Monitoring Comprehension. This Unit of Study continues the idea that it’s important to understand the words as we read, rather than just decoding them. Although we will still work on decoding strategies in our Guided Reading groups, we will be keeping the focus on Comprehension.

Some ways that you can support this work at home is to:

• Talk about books and stories with your child. Talk about the books you are reading and ask them questions about their books (like in a Book Club). Focus book discussions around-

·         Feelings they get when they read

·         Pictures that they create in their mind as they read

·         Confusing parts of the book

·         Questions they had about the story or the characters

·         Connections they can make with the story, the setting, the characters

·         Predictions they may have had about the book (before, during and after they read)

The April unit of study in writing is the Craft of Revision. In this unit, first graders will be invited to revise their writing- to resee, reform and strengthen their writing. First Graders will come to know that all writers revise their writing by adding or taking away words and that writers look for ways to make their writing stronger (better) before they publish it or share it with the world.

Some suggestions for supporting this month’s work at home:

• Continue to provide tools for at home writing (pencils, pens, paper, a quiet place to work) and encourage your child to write daily.

• Encourage your child to reread their writing to make sure it makes sense, has the right words and the correct punctuation (capital letters and periods). Encourage them to “fix” it (edit) where they notice any errors.

• Initiate a daily discussion with your child about what they did as a writer in school that day and encourage them to begin to make plans for what they are going to do the following day in writing workshop.

First graders are engaged in other meaningful literacy activities during the course of the school day to support the work they are doing in the reading and writing workshop.

Thank you for your continued support at home.

In Math we are currently learning about 2-D and 3-D shapes, then we will move onto more work on money and place-value concepts, then fractions.

In Science we will continue learning about Air & Weather including observing weather, measuring rain, watching types of clouds, discussing wind speed, and wind vanes.

In Social Studies we will learn more about Singapore, answering the broad questions of

1. Where is Singapore?
2. How has Singapore changed over time?
3. What are the diverse cultures that live in Singapore?

I plan this unit with four other teachers and we each teach one part of it. Each Wednesday for the next 8 weeks, the children will go to one of the other four teachers for 45 minutes for a Social Studies lesson. 

Dioramas and Oral presentations

It's looking like a zoo in our classroom with beavers, elephants, wolves, snakes etc on show all around us. The dioramas look fantastic and have had many compliments from other people. Children researched an animal, wrote a book about it, gave an oral presentation and made a Keynote (Powerpoint for iPads). I videoed each oral presentation on the iPad so it will be a bit wiggly. Now I have to upload them individually to Youtube before putting them on this blog so it will take a while, but meanwhile, here is a photo of each proud child:

Cole taught us about Beavers

Aran taught us about pythons

Holly taught us about zebras

Samantha taught us about penguins

Max  taught us about wolves

Zoe taught us about rabbits

Xander taught us about anacondas

Kai taught us about crocodiles

Julia taught us about kangaroos

Alex taught us about cougars

Archie taught us about Kiwis

Amanda taught us about hamsters

Jemma taught us about hamsters

Grace taught us about elephants

Vittal taught us about tarantulas

Erica taught us about animals in the ocean

Sandy taught us about cobras

Noah taught us about cows

Another Starlight Ball movie

Pina Giardini made a movie of the Starlight Ball for her family to see. She has also allowed us to share it. Of course, it features her own daughters mostly, but it is well worth watching.

Thanks Pina!

The Gorgeous Starlight Ball

Is there anything more gorgeous than a roomful of handsomely dressed 7 year old boys, taking their beautiful partners for the waltz? Didn't you just melt as you watched? The Starlight Ball is my favorite night of the school year, and now you know why. There is a selection of photos below, and you can see a lot more if you CLICK HERE. Huge thanks to Leanne Pepple who puts so much work into the Ball each year.

T-A-N-G-O!!

Such beautiful girls

What handsome young men!

Here is a short video clip of the Ball. It might not work on iPads or iPhones.

Adzooks Puppets
On Monday morning we were treated to a puppet show by the Adzooks Puppeteers. They are here all week, doing shows, helping the children create puppets in Art class, and giving puppetry lessons to us all. I admire their enthusiasm, and ability to keep 276 children entertained so well! There are more photos HERE.

Some of the puppets the children made.

Seng Kang School visit - you can find photos of the visit HERE.

Math App on iPad or iPhone

Here's a good App I have found to help the children who are still learning their math facts. It relates directly to the fact triangles that we have been using this week. I have only tried the free version and would recommend it.

Goodbye Julie!

We are so sad to be saying goodbye to Julie. She leaves us on Friday to move to Korea. We will miss her gentle manner and lovely smile. Good luck Julie!!

Julie with her puppet

100th Day In Mrs Woody's Room

How to make Mrs. Woody yell!!

 I love teaching nonfiction reading and writing to this age group. They have been excitedly finding captions, glossaries, tables of contents etc. They tried following instructions in library books to make origami, draw dinosaurs, and make clay models:

Julia & Xander are following instructions to make clay models

Payam and Sandy pore of a huge book called 'How To Do Everything.'

Max follows instructions to make origami folds

  Then everyone wrote one or two small "How To.." books. They had to choose topics they were experts on,  and write instructions in clear, logical steps. Children wrote books called "How to draw a butterfly", "How to make peanut butter and jelly toast", "How to make chocolate milk", "How to block a goal in soccer", "How to make a try in rugby" etc. Here are a few more:

 But the book that made us all laugh was this one:

Here's what he wrote:

STEP 1: Mess around

STEP 2: Put the microphone on the table

STEP 3: Let Kai sing Party Rock. Cole will dance back-up

STEP 4: After Kai stops singing, play soccer inside

STEP 5: Put on ear plugs then after that sing the Star Spangled Banner VERY loudly!

STEP 6: It's almost time for Mrs. Woody to yell. One step left: break dance with Kai, Sandy, Cole and Vittal.

STEP 7: She'll yell as soon as you finish so put ear plugs in!

Laying the How To book out on the floor, and sharing it with a friend, helps you see if any steps have been left out of the instructions.

 Today was Day 97 of First Grade. Next Wednesday we will celebrate the 100th Day! We have lots of fun activities planned for this.

Service Learning 

All Grade 1 classes are participating in a Service Learning project where we will be partnering with other students from two schools: Fuchun Primary School (FPS) and Seng Kang Primary School (SKPS) located  in the community called Compassvale, off of Punggol Road. Correlated to outcomes of the SAS Grade 1 Curriculum, these partnerships will enhance cross cultural understanding, provide an opportunity to form new friendships across cultures, and help students appreciate diversity while acknowledging commonalities. There will be a total of four sessions, two at S.A.S. and two sessions at,SKPS. Due to the Singapore Ministry of Education protocols, parent participation will be extremely limited for any session away from S.A.S. The first session is scheduled for mid-February and the final session in May will be a celebration giving students from these schools an opportunity to share their reflections on a culture other than their own.

Happiness is...A GOOD BOOK!

This was our final week of Festival of Stories. Our theme was "Happiness is a Good Book." 

We listened to a real author called Stacey Zolt Hara talk about how she wrote her book and worked with the illustrator.

Mr. Schunk came in to read his favorite book to the class, which was also by our favorite author, Helen Lester.

 We were certainly happy today! We were all very comfortable in our pajamas, and enjoyed lying around with pillows, blankets, soft toys and flashlights, reading lots of books.

Max is reading a Helen Lester book

Vittal and Cole got comfortable on the couch to read their books together.

Kai and Aran disappeared into their hut with books and flashlight.

Julia, Holly and Samantha snuggled into their reading hut.

Payam, Archie and Xander made a hut and took their books in.

Jemma, Julie and Zoe built a hut to read in.

Erica, Amanda and Jia Feng with blankets and soft toys.

!

Alex with soft toys and a good book.

After studying lots of nonfiction books, the children have made their own books, using features such as titles, photographs, captions, diagrams, maps, glossaries and indexes. They are great!

Art Auction

Today we had a great surprise when Suzanne came in to show us the beautiful piece of art she had made, using photos of the children's paintings that they made earlier in the year. It's wonderful - - thanks Suzanne!!!