June 17-21

June 17-21

A few reminders:

All Home Literacy/Decodable Books - Please have your child return these.  We will not be sending any more home for this school year.  

Extra Bag - We want to start sending home items throughout this week - Reusable grocery/shopping bags work great, as they are easier to pack than our regular backpacks 

We will also be sending home many items this final week, that may still be helpful to support your child with reviewing and maintaining their skills in reading, writing and math over the summer!  

As we head into the final days together, we know this can be a time of mixed emotions for everyone.  Having conversations about how your child is feeling helps them to know they are supported with these changes.  Feel free to reach out as well, if your child is needing some extra support in these final days.    

As we are heading into the final days of our school year, we have had some great opportunities to enjoy our days together in some special ways. Here are a few highlights from our fun last full week together!

Camp Day!

Is that a campsite?  Definitely not.  We had fun making our own tent structures, playing a Bingo game and then reading with a friend and our flashlights in our tents. 

Pancake Breakfast

We were treated to a Stampede Preview when the Stampede Caravan came and made our whole school pancakes!

    

Fish Creek Walking Field Trip - Early Summer

         

We had the perfect weather to be out and exploring the land and Fish Creek Park.  We looked closely at native plants and noticed differences than our last visit a few weeks ago.  We saw different plants and blooms on flowers.  We also noticed more bugs as well!  We enjoyed hiding our frogs again, doing a plant and tree scavenger hunt and a bug hunt too.  Thank you once again to our parent volunteers who have helped to make these trips possible throughout this entire year.  Fish Creek is an important part of being at Andrew Sibbald School!  

Summer Solstice and National Indigenous People’s Day 

The end of this week brought us to recognizing the Summer Solstice as well as National Indigenous People’s Day.  We listened to the message of the Summer Solstice from Elder saa’kokoto about the messages and gifts the land gives us during this time of year.  We then went out into our Learning Grounds and did a Soundscape, of listening to the sounds all around us.  It was a wonderful time to connect with the land and our space. 

June 10-14

 June continues to roll along here and it was yet another busy and exciting week.  

Reminders for the Week Ahead:

Classroom Camp Day - Monday June 17 - see previous Messenger for further details

Tuesday June 18 - Pancake Breakfast - please ensure your child has something at home for breakfast before coming to school

Wednesday June 19 - Summer Solstice Walking Field Trip and Picnic - 11:00am- 2:00pm 

Here are some of the highlights from last week. 

Physical Education - Summer Games and Sports Day

We enjoyed learning about the Olympics coming up this summer and our countries that we were assigned for the events that took place this week during Phys Ed time.  Ms. Gardner’s class was France and Mrs. Kosior’s class was England.  We had fun shooting balls into buckets as a team on Monday, throwing discs as far as we could on Tuesday, doing a chicken toss on Wednesday and seeing how far we could jump on Thursday.  We really enjoyed all of the stations and events that were set up for Sports Day on Friday and connecting with our Grade 6 buddies who took such great care of us.  

     

 

Science/Literacy

Learning Intentions

I can use organizational tools to record information 

I can gather information from a variety of different places and sources 

I can ask questions to identify research topics 

I can record factual information in various ways 

I can show an animal in its environment

I can determine how the local environment meets the basic needs of an animal

I can discuss how an animal moves from place to place to meet its needs 

We have continued to expand on our understanding of learning about plants and animals and weaving this into writing skills as well.  This week we focused on the parts of a plant and how it provides different things as well as the needs of a plant in order to survive.  We have also been learning about 5 environments in Alberta, learning about different plants and animals in each and then recording this information in a visual to share.  

   

  

June 3-7

 Dear Parents

It's been another busy week in grade 1!  Take a look at what we have been learning about below!

Please note that we will hold our classroom talent show for all students to share their talent on Wednesday, June 12.  Participants chosen will present their talent on June 24 for the school.

Rock Your Locks 

This year marked our 20th anniversary of Andrew Sibbald’s participation in this event.  Money raised will go to help send children affected by cancer to Camp Kindle.  Funds are continuing to roll in so stay tuned for a final total.  Students from the whole school enjoyed supporting their peers in this event at the culminating assembly on Friday.

Literacy/Science

I can use organizational tools to record information 

I can gather information from a variety of different places and sources 

I can ask questions to identify research topics 

I can record factual information in various ways 

I can show an animal in its environment

I can determine how the local environment meets the basic needs of an animal

I can discuss how an animal moves from place to place to meet its needs 

This week, we dived into learning more about Coyotes and how they are connected to us and where we live.  We learned about what it looks like, what its basic needs are, its environment and adaptations.  Each day, we read information and had discussions about a topic.  We then recorded our information in our visual journals to show and represent our learning and understanding.  We have been very interested to learn more each day.  Take a look at some of our work!

         

Phonics

This week we reviewed some challenging sounds that we covered earlier this year, ED and Long U.  Please take a look at the home practice activities below and review them with your child.

Lacrosse

We had the opportunity to learn from an expert about the game of Lacrosse.  Coach Dan helped us to learn and build our skills around scooping, trapping, partner tossing, over hand toss, and cradling the ball.  These skill were taught in a full and interactive way with games such as Hungry Hungry Hippo and What Time is it Mr. Wolf.  

Learning Intentions

Engagement in various types of play supports motivation and confidence in physical activities

Demonstrate a variety of object-manipulation skills.

Math

In math we continued to look at partitioning groups.  Students looked at a collection of different objects and build an understanding that the concept of ½ can be applied to groups.  The following is a summary of the concepts so that you can better understand and support your child and their learning. 

Learning Intention 

Sharing involves partitioning a quantity into a certain number of groups.

Grouping involves partitioning a quantity into groups of a certain size

How Do You Find Fair Shares of Groups?

When showing halves with shapes, the whole shape is divided into 2 parts that have the same area.

For example, each of these sandwiches show halves, or 2 fair shares.

To show two fair shares, or halves, of a group of objects, the group is divided into two equal groups.

For example, these 6 flowers are shared fairly between two people. Each person gets 3 flowers. Three flowers is one-half of 6 flowers.

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Size of Fair Shares

A share size is more if the same number of people share more things.

For example, if 2 people share 8 mini pitas, each person would get 4 pitas.

If 2 people share 4 pitas, each person would get 2 pitas.

So, if 2 people share 8 pitas, each share is bigger than if 2 people share 4 pitas. That’s because they have more to share.

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Definitions

halves: two equal parts of something

one-half: one of two equal parts of a whole

whole: the combined amount when parts or quantities are joined

May 27-31

 May 27 - 31, 2024

We had another busy week of learning in our Grade 1 class.  

Science - Learning from the Land at Fish Creek Park

Learning Intentions:

I can share examples of native plants and animals of Alberta

I can share an understanding of how an environment meets the basic needs of plants and animals

We had the most beautiful morning on Tuesday, to walk and spend time in Fish Creek Park.  The signs of spring were all around us, and we had many rich conversations about plants and animals.  We spent time looking for specific plants that grow in Fish Creek and really noticed the Buffalo Bean that is growing and blooming.  We also explored closer to the water and looked for different things in nature.  We made our way over to the bridge and looked at that different habitat and how it would provide a nice space for frogs.  We had each made a frog before we left, and got to play a bit of a camouflage game and hiding them and then seeing if a friend could find them.  Lots of laughs and memories were had out on the land.  We once again thank our parent volunteers who joined us and helped make this learning experience rich and memorable.

           

Science/Literacy

I can observe and describe similarities and differences between plants and animals

I can use organizational tools to record information 

I can ask questions to identify research topics 

I can record factual information in various ways 

We continue to build our understanding of plants and animals and what makes them unique.  We had rich conversations about plants and worked together to record similarities and differences between grass and cactus.  This generated rich conversations and had us asking some deep questions about cactus if there was water inside that you could drink and if cactus are edible.  

We then recorded our own information about two different plants on our own in our visual journals.  

 

Phonics 

This week we have been learning about the “shwa e” sound. This sound depends on amclosed syllable sound that contains a vowel and then a consonant.  Please review the home practice below to help solidify your child’s understanding of this sound.  

Math

This week we have been developing strategies to partition shapes into halves and create wholes shapes from half of a shape.  Students worked with a variety of shapes and materials to partition a half and also to create a whole shape.  

Learning Intentions:

When a fraction is used to describe a part of a whole, the whole must be known to make sense of the fraction

The following is a summary of the key ideas to support your child’s learning and build background knowledge.

What Are Halves?

•	When you divide something into two parts that have the same size, those parts are halves.
•	Shapes can be divided into halves. For example:
	-	A rectangle can be folded to make halves. A rectangle can be divided in other ways too. Both halves must take up the same amount of space.
	-	A circle can be divided into two halves in many ways. Both halves must take up the same amount of space.
•	These shapes do not show halves because, while there are two parts, the parts are not the same size.
•	Two halves make up a whole. Each half is one-half of the whole.

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Halves of Different Shapes

What a half looks like depends on the whole.

Some halves are round. Some are not.

Some halves are small. Some are big.

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Finding the Whole From the Half

If you know what a half looks like, you can put two of those halves together to make a whole.

For example:

•	This is half of a shape. You could put the halves together in two ways to make rectangles.
•	This is half of a shape. You could put the halves together to make a circle.

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Helping Your Child

Use the words “half” and “halves,” when appropriate, with your child.

Ensure your child understands that halves must be the same size, even if an attribute of the two halves, such as colour, is different.

Help your child see that the size of the half depends on the size of the whole.

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Definitions

halves: two equal parts of something; together they make one whole

one-half: one of two equal parts of a whole

whole: the entire shape or object that is divided into parts