Mrs. Coutts' Grade One/Two Class

A. Lorne Cassidy will be collecting  milk bags.  These milk bags will be donated to local volunteers to be woven into sleeping mats and sent to earthquake victims in Haiti.  Milk bags can be sent to school with your child.  Thank you to Mrs. Anderson and Mme Thomas for undertaking this important project.

Our students enjoy using the website ca.ixl.com to practise their math skills.  Storylineonline by the Screen Actors’ Guild provides a great opportunity for our students to listen to stories being read by famour actors.  Tumblebooks is another site that is enjoyed by everyone.

There are four categories of knowledge and skills within each subject area that will be used to evaluate your child’s achievement level for theOntarioreport card. They are:

 Knowledge and Understanding

-          knowledge  and understanding of content presented

 Thinking

-          use of planning skills (e.g., generation ideas,  organizing information)

-          ability to make inferences, interpret information and form conclusions

Communication

-          expression and organization of ideas and information

-          communication for different audiences and purposes

Application

-          application  and transfer of knowledge and skills

-          making connections within and between various contexts

 A broad range of strategies will be used to assess these knowledge and skills.  Some will require the students to perform or demonstrate their skills and some will require them to speak and present.   Others will require students to draw and write about what they know and understand.

Our students will have many opportunities to participate in shared, guided, and independent learning activities in reading, writing, and mathematics.  These activities will enable our students to build on their prior learning in order to acquire new skills.  For reading, decoding and comprehension strategies will be modeled for our students.  They will be coached and guided in their application of these strategies.  Opportunities to practice these strategies by reading independently will be provided.

 Shared, guided, and interactive writing activities enable our students to have the steps that proficient writers take demonstrated for them.  The traits of good writing, such as topic selection, organization, and word choice, will be explored.  Independent writing gives students opportunities to do their own writing using both self-selected and assigned topics.  As they write independently, our students take risks, develop fluency, think creatively and critically, and express their personal ideas.

 Our mathematics program will consist of a balance of guided, shared, and independent activities.  Guided mathematics activities will enable our students to observe an approach to solving a problem.  Appropriate mathematical language and the steps to effective problem solving will be modeled.  Shared mathematics will provide our students with the chance to acquire and use content knowledge and skill through problem solving, investigation, reasoning and proof, communication, connection, and reflection.  Independent mathematics helps students to consolidate and focus on their own understanding and think of ways to explain this understanding.

Mathematics

Our grade one students have been learning to identify two-dimensional shapes and sort and classify them by their properties.  The grade two students can identify and describe various polygons and sort and classify them by their geometric properties.

The Literacy CAFE Menu

The focus of instruction in literacy is Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary.  Our students are learning strategies to check for understanding.  Guided reading instruction models how to retell the story, use prior kowledge to connect with the text, and predict what will happen.  The text features (titles, headings, captions, and graphic features) are used and a summarization of the text includes a sequence of the main events.

For reading accuracy and fluency, our students are learning to cross check then problem solving unfamiliar words.  They monitor if the pictures and/or words look right, sound right, and make sense.  They use the pictures.  They use the beginning and ending sounds of words.  They are also learning to skip the word and then come back to it.  Our students read appropriate-level texts that are a good fit.  They practise common sight words and high-frequency words.

Thank you very much for helping your child practise reading with fluency.  These are the books that he/she are reading in school each week.  They are at your child’s current instructional level and will be needed at school every day.  Please help your child establish the routine of returning the book bag to his back pack after they have been read.  Please contact me at donna.coutts@ocdsb.ca if you have any questions.

Each Wednesday our students will visit the library to sign out a book for the week.  This library book will be due the following Wednesday.  Thank you very much to Mrs. Perrault for her hard work at maintaining our library and for running the Scholastic Book Fair.

Skipping club will be starting on Friday October 7.  This event will take place every Friday during the first nutrition break.  Everyone is invited to participate.  Students just need to bring a pair of shorts and a t-shirt to change into.  Skipping ropes will be available.

Thank you very much for visiting this blog.  It will be maintained all year and will be updated each week.  Information about our focus of instruction, learning activites, and assessment for learning will be explained.  Details about special events, like field trips and book orders, will also be included.  I hope the following information is helpful.  Please leave a comment if you have any questions or concerns.  Messages can be sent to donna.coutts@ocdsb.ca or 832-3434 ext. 321.  Your child will be receiving a note tote for messages.

Reading aloud to your child is the best way to get him or her interested in reading.  Here are some things you can do to help make reading fun for your child:

• Read all kinds of materials-stories, poems, informational books, magazines, and comics.
• Read stories aloud with drama and excitement!  Use different voices for different characters in a story.  Use your child’s name instead of a character’s name.
• Re-read your child’s favourite stories as many times as your child wants to hear them, and choose books and authors that your child enjoys.
• Read stories that have repetitive parts, and encourage your child to join in.
• Point to words as you read them.  This will help your child make the connection between the spoken words and the words on the page.
• Discuss the themes of a story, and ask questions about the characters.  Ask questions that make your child think about what might happen next or what he/she might do in the same situation.
• Take your child to the local library.  Look at CD-ROMs, videos, magazines, and the Internet, as well as books.  Get a library card, which is free, so that your child can borrow books.
• Subscribe to a magazine for your child. 
• Write notes to your child on paper or by e-mail.
• Encourage your child to send e-mails to his friends and family.
• Point out to your child the many ways in which mathematics is used throughout his/her day.
• Encourage your child to tell or show you how he/she uses mathematics.
• Include your child in everyday activities that involve mathematics-making purchases, measuring ingredients, counting out plates and utensils for dinner, or sorting laundry.
• Play games and do puzzles with your child that involve mathematics.  Such activities may focus on direction or time, logic, reasoning, sorting, classifying, or estimating.

 Hand skills are important to successful handwriting.  Small movements of the hand are referred to as fine motor skills.  Here are a few suggestions to help your child strengthen this skill:

• Cut pictures out of newspapers or magazines.  You can take a large black marker and draw a line around the picture to give a guideline.
• Have your child put together small beads, Legos, Tinker Toys, or Lincoln Logs.
• Knead Play Dough or clay.
• Play pegboard games.
• Play with toys that require moving or placing little pieces.
• Let you child squirt a water bottle outdoors one the sidewalk.  Coloured water looks great on the snow.
• Squeeze a kitchen baster to move ping pong balls with air.  Have a race on the table.
• Use small marshmallows and toothpicks to form letters.
• String, popcorn, buttons, or beads to make necklaces.
• Let your child use a hole-punch to create a design on a piece of paper.
• Have your child clip clothespins to a container.
• Your child may enjoy using lace cards.