Week 27

Firstly, HUGE congratulations to Ava, who became a big sister over the CNY holiday. Serena arrived on Tuesday 9th February and is just lovely. Mum (and dad!) are doing really well and Ava is loving being a big sister. Great news!

Secondly (and almost as exciting!), we have made it to 100 days in 1BeM!! We decided way back in August that when we reached this milestone, we would have a little celebratory party lunch in the class. So, NEXT THURSDAY 25th, as well as the normal snacks and lunch, please can you send in a small something for us all to share. Remember, no nuts and no pork. We will then enjoy this together...now, all I have to find is the disco ball I promised them!

A massive XIE XIE to Nicole (Apple's mum), Susan (Alex's mum), Audrey (Walter's mum) and Imelda (Miko's mum) for a wonderful morning of CNY celebrations and discovery on Tuesday. The children loved finding out all about the festival and some of the traditions involved. They tried their hand at calligraphy, tasted delicious Chinese treats and tried to solve some (pretty tricky!) riddles...GONG XI GONG XI!

This week, we started thinking about our new unit, “Service Starts With Me.” We started with our existing understanding, sharing whether or not we agree with the statement, “We do enough Service in Grade One.” Playing "Lay it on the Line" to illustrate our thinking, we discovered that people have very different opinions about Service. Next week, we will begin unpacking our "Essential Questions" and sharing our responses.

We also started new units in Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop this week. In Reading Workshop, we will be looking at “Non-Fiction Books,” exploring a wide variety of high interest informational books, as well as online and magazine reading...and thank you for sending in so many non-fiction books from home! This is a great way to capture the collective interest of the class. 

Our Writing Workshop unit, “Informational Books,” will run concurrently and there are many links between the two. In this unit, the children will be encouraged to write lots of information books about many different “topics,” with an underlying aim to use their writing to teach something to others. We are also really enjoying (and becoming experts at) our Word Sorts...and are trying to transfer our knowledge to our Writing Workshop pieces.

We have also started a new unit in Mathematics, our latest investigation into “Addition, Subtraction and the Number System.” Over the coming weeks, we will continue to expand our repertoire of addition and subtraction strategies, as we explore doubles and near doubles, fact families, place value, combinations, multiple addends and the true meaning of and misconceptions related to the “=” symbol, to name but a few.

Away from the classroom, we have also really enjoyed swimming this week...and no haze in sight! A polite reminder that the children are expected to swim on swimming days as it is considered an important part of the curriculum.

Reminders and Requests

*Happy Lodge Shoebox Shopping-Monday 22nd February-8.20-11.30am-Please contact your child’s Imelda if you would like to help out..we have lots of gaps!

*Happy Lodge Visit-Wednesday 24th February-Please return the permission slip if you have not already done so

*Theatre Trip-Wednesday 2nd March

Have a lovely weekend