October 8th-October 19th

ART: Half Self Portraits

Students worked with pencils, pencil crayons and sharpies to create a "Half Self Portrait". They were careful to make sure the proportions were accurate and were very creative when designing their names and backgrounds. 

LANGUAGE: Narrative Stories

We have been discussing elements of narrative stories. We started a whole class novel study reading the book A Boy Called Bat. Students will be read aloud a chapter at a time, followed up completing some work based on what has been read. Last week we took at look at Idioms and how they add to the story. 

 

SCIENCE: Sorting Rocks

This week we received a special delivery of "rocks"! Students worked in groups to sort the "rocks" in to the 3 different kinds of rocks (Metamorphic, Sedimentary and Igneous). They discussed with each other the different characteristics of the "rocks" and why they believed they belonged in each group. Oh my was it tempting to eat these delicious "rocks"!

LEARNING BUDDIES

This week we met our Learning Buddies for the first time! We are paired up with Miss. Atwal's Kindergarten class. Throughout the year we will be visiting this class and participating in a variety of activities (i.e. reading, art activities, STEM challenges). This week students worked with their buddy to complete a "Buddy Book", which helped them get to know each other. The class is excited to take on a leadership role. 

SCIENCE: Rock Research

Student's each selected a rock and determined which kind of rock they had by using books and websites. After completing more research about their rock over the next week (i.e. how it is formed, how we use this rock), students will use the app Chatterpix to teach the class about their rock

ART: Mindful Colouring

This week the class was introduced to Mindful Colouring. With the lights low and meditative music playing, students focused on completing their "Dazzling Pattern" creations. We discussed the benefits that Mindful Colouring has on our minds and bodies. 

September 24th-October 5th

Over the past few weeks we have been very busy diving deeper into our Math, Language and Science units. We have also had a few exciting activities such as our field trip to High Park and the Terry Fox Run.

Urban Oasis in High Park

Students took part in a day long trip to High Park where they had the chance to explore and discover the Oak Savanah habit. They collected data such as soil and air temperatures, amount of sun, and compared the current data to the data from the past. They also had the chance to photograph different organisms, plants and trees. 

Art: Warm and Cool Hand Prints 

We have an extremely creative group of artists in Portable 1! During one of our recent art projects, we continued to discuss warm and cool colours and how they can play tricks on your eye when arranged together. Students traced their hand prints and then picked one type of line the fill their background with. They remained very focused when adding warm and cool colours, ensuring they coloured the proper areas in (i.e. warm colours on hand and cool colours on background, or cool colours on hand and warm colours on background). 

Here are a few of our finished projects:

Math: Number Sense and Numeration

As you can see from the lessons on Google Classroom, we are continuing to work through our Number Sense and Numeration unit. We have been practicing our addition and subtraction strategies in a variety of ways such as, stacking, using base ten blocks, using expanded form and using mental math. Students are exploring these strategies as a whole group, in pairs and independently. We are working on solving word problems and how to determine:

1) Is it an addition or subtraction problem?

2) Do we need to carry?

3) Do we need to regroup?

Terry Fox Run

Thank you to everyone who donated and participated in the Terry Fox Run! We had some super speedy runners, but I did my best to capture a few action shots :)

Science: Rock Walk

We started off our Rocks and Minerals unit by completing KWL (Know, Wonder, Learned) charts. In order for our unit to be a success, it was important for me to have students share what they already KNOW about rocks and minerals, but really important for me to know what they WONDER. As we continue this Unit of Inquiry, I am hoping to answer as many of their questions as possible! We went on a Rock Walk and photographed where we saw rocks in our community. We came back to class and students uploaded their pictures to Google Classroom and explained how rocks were used for different purposes. 

Drama

We were very lucky to have a special guest supply teacher come in to teach the class (and me!) some really fun drama games! The class created tableaus and then explored emotions - melodramatic versus or normal emotions. We finished the class off with a fun game called "Imaginary Vacation".