Sight Words!

Hello Firstie Parents!!

Another quick update about what is happening in Room 7… We are still really enjoying having Louis le lutin visiting our room. This morning he greeted us by zip-lining through the class. Madame Byrd was worried about his safety but he made it down the zip line no problem and the kids were very excited.

We are continuing to work on sight words and are using our Sensory Table and Word Work Table to work on reading and recognizing sight words. The sight words (high frequency words that we would like to know ‘by heart’) we are working on and that you could work on at home are as follows:

-Le

-La

-Les

-Un

-Une

-Des

-Chat

-Bonjour

-Va

-Louis

-Tu

-Ami

-Me

As promised to a few parents in Parent-Teacher interviews, here are some “Sneaky No-Learning Teaching Tricks” (i.e ways to work on these sight words with your child if you are struggling to get them to sit down and do the dreaded “homework”).

Sight Word Stacks

Write a different sight word on each foam square. Then, put them all in a bag. Pair up the students and have them take turns picking a foam square out of the bag. If they can read the sight word that's on the square they get to keep it and add it to their stack. With each word they get their stack grows. If their stack of foam squares topples over they have to put them back in the bag.

Sight Word Twister:

Write out sight words and tape to Twister board. Kids spin and play as usual but must read and say the sight word they are about to put their hand or foot on.

Fly Swatting Sight Words:

This is a class favourite and we often do this to practice letter and number recognition as well. Write or type up sight words on a large sheet of paper or on small cards and spread out on the table, tape to the wall or put on the floor. Give the kids fly swatters (or just use a glove or bare hand) and say one of the sight words out loud. The kids are to find the sight word and swat it as quickly as possible. This is a great game to play with siblings or parents as opponents.

Sight Word Hockey:

Great for the boys!! Use a leftover strawberry container to create a hockey net and use bottle caps as pucks. The child must first read the sight word out loud and then may have the chance to shoot it into the net. They are required to at least try to read/ sound out the word before "shooting".

Sight Word Cups:

This can easily be played with plastic kids cups or Dixie cups. Write the sight words on the cups (or tape them to reusable cups) and hide a candy, toy, or some sort of prize underneath some of the cups. Kids then need to read the sight word before lifting up the cup to see if a prize is hidden underneath.



**Two things to note:

1) We are still collecting items for our Hampers for Harmony House. Our theme is Paper and Linens.

2) We are in need of items for our Sensory Bin:

     - cotton balls (large)

     - marshmallows

     - white rice

     - dried beans (any colour)

If you can donate any of these items we would be very appreciative.

Happy December!

Hi Parents!

Happy December! I hope you are finding time to enjoy the first snowflakes and snowballs with your kiddos amidst the hockey practices, holiday shopping and seasonal get togethers! If your home life is anything like our school life right now, I imagine you are very busy! Thank you so much for taking the time to read this little blog post today to learn about the exciting things going on in our classroom.

As some of you have heard, we have a very sneaky little visitor in our classroom this month. “Louis le lutin” has graced us with his presence for the month of December (he’s on special leave from the North Pole with instructions to watch out for well-behaved students and to learn about Grade 1 and our firsties) and will be returning home in a couple weeks.

So far, he has played a few sneaky little tricks on us and has left us coded messages and sweet, personalized notes for the students. We are having a great time writing to Louis and practicing letter writing, proper letter format, capitalization of names and letter at the beginning of sentences, appropriate punctuation for our sentences, and much more! Every day when we arrive, Louis is up to something new and can be found hanging from the flag pole, playing games on the computer or drinking Madame’s tea. His silliness prompts excellent discussions and wonderfully creative writing ideas.

During math centers, Louis has brought us some fun number sense and numeration games and he is trying to teach us new tricks to make simple addition easier. Our favourite so far is with a number line

(like these ones that we all have at our desks). It would be great to practice this trick at home. The trick goes like this- if your number sentence is 4 +5 = ?, you start at 4 on the number line, then count up 5. Simple as that! J

We are also starting to work on subtraction and since Louis is always stealing and hiding things, we often have to figure out how many are left… This is a problem we are working on today:

Yesterday, homework bags went home for the first time and the students were VERY excited! Please remember to do ONE sheet with your child per book and ask them to color ONE monster on their bookmark each time. I will send home books as frequently as they are returned. Please DO NOT feel that you have to return the homework nightly. You can judge whether your child is feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work or whether they need more of a challenge. Also- I welcome feedback about the home work bags! Thanks!

Lastly, as you also might have heard, this afternoon we are having a little class party!! Each group of students earned 10 behavior points so we are celebrating together with games, music, balloons and our good friend Louis might even do “Le gigue des lutins” (the Elf Jig)!

P.S – Thank you to Isaac’s mom, Tania who has brought in some play doh for us! We are still looking for more play doh, and if anyone is able to make us some we would be very grateful. J

SENSORY TABLE!!! and an update

Hi parents!

Lots of exciting things have been happening in our Grade 1 classroom lately! I was so thrilled to get to update many of you in person at Parent-Teacher interviews and fill you in on all of the fabulous learning endeavors we have been embarking on in the past few weeks.

This week, we are wrapping up our ‘Hibernation et migration’ Unit on hibernating, adapting and migrating animals in winter. We have read many books together, done research about various animals and their winter habits, and we have even created a shared book as a class about the animals we have been learning about, written and illustrated entirely by the students.

We have also introduced a “SENSORY TABLE” (like a sand table you would see in a Kindergarten classroom only the materials in the table change on a weekly basis and there will always be literacy or numeracy learning games involved). I have sent home a letter with a request for parents who are willing to volunteer to make play doh to be used in various literacy and numeracy activities. Please see the right side bar on the blog with a poll for parents who are going to make play doh to indicate that they will be making some and what colour they will be making. This will show me (and fellow parents) how much of each colour is being made.

Also, please check your child’s note tote for a note about a class phone book. I usually like to make up a little class list with phone numbers so that parents may arrange play dates, etc. Please return the form and indicate whether or not you would like me to share your information with the class. I will them send home the list only to those parents who wish to participate.

Lastly, I have included ANOTHER POLL (I know, enough already with the polls! But honestly it is a really great way to get parent feedback without too much tree killing J ) about what holidays your family celebrates at home during the winter season. I would like to have a very inclusive and welcoming festive season and would like to teach about and celebrate several different holidays. Thanks for your input and continuing support!

Xo Mme Byrd

New Additions to Our Blog!

Hi parents!

Please check out some new additions to the blog:

1. A link list in the right side bar that will contain a growing list of neat French websites  that you can check out with your child and will help practice skills we are working on in class.

2. Volunteer schedule calendars found in the "Home Connections" tab above. There are currently schedules for parent volunteers for November and December and there will soon be calendars for the following months.

Thanks!

Xo Mme Byrd

Back on Track for November

Hello Firstie Parents!!

It’s the beginning of November now and it’s time for me to get back on track with our classroom blog. My apologies for the blog hiatus. My husband and I have just moved and completed major renovations of our new home and my personal (and school) life has been very busy as of late.
 Enough about me... Let’s get on with the exciting things that we have been doing for the last month in Room 7. October was a fun filled month. We learned a lot about fall and the change of seasons, learned new reading strategies, explored math concepts like basic shapes, patterning, sorting various objects and even measurement using non-standard measuring items. On October 15^th, we had a very exciting trip to the Canadian Agricultural Museum (more commonly referred to as the Experimental Farm) and we learned a lot about corn, apples, pumpkins and saw lots of cute animals. Thank you to all our amazing volunteers and thank you to those parents who took pictures so we will be able to share those memories with parents who were not able to attend.

Other exciting things that happened in October were::
-picture day!! (Look for your child’s class picture in their note tote today)
-True Sport Assembly (medals handed out to runners)
-Halloween!! (All of the Grade 1 classes participated in a fun afternoon of Halloween activities and the classes were divided into groups and rotated through various Halloween craft, story and activity centres in the Grade 1 classrooms. We finished our day by watching a short film of Charlie Brown’s Halloween.)

Upcoming events:

-         November 12: Primary Choir trip to Hillel Lodge (to sing for Senior Citizens)

-         November 15: Interviews in the evening (Please see small slip of paper in your child’s note tote with your scheduled interview time. Please note that due to a large number of requests for specific times and due to challenges coordinating sibling interviews, it is possible that your interview time does not suit. Please contact me by email if this is the case and I will try to make other arrangements.)

-         November 16: PD DAY!!! No school for students and interviews scheduled for morning for some parents

-         November 23 : Broadview Dance-a-thon!! (Please see the pledge envelope that went home in your child’s note tote. The money raised will be used to fund many exciting projects here at Broadview)

  

**Please note that LIBRARY DAY always falls on a DAY 5 of our schedule. It is not scheduled by day of the week, therefore, due to this week’s PD DAY, library books will now be due back on Fridays as this will now be a Day 5.

Things to Look out For:

I will hopefully be adding a few new items to the blog (and getting back to weekly posts about what we are doing at school) in the coming weeks. Check back soon for these items:

-links to great French websites for your child
-November and December calendars/volunteer schedules
-information about “Math Bags” a new ‘homework’ system coming soon

xo Mme Byrd

Week #4

Another wonderful week of learning and exploration has come to an end. It’s hard to believe that we have been in school for almost 1 month! This past week, we had a few exciting things happening at Broadview.

 

On Thursday, we all went out in the school yard to run for our Terry Fox Cancer Awareness campaign. Madame Byrd was very impressed by how many laps we were able to run around the school yard! I was even more impressed to see that the students ran laps again the next morning for Kilometre Club!!

 

This Friday, we welcomed our new LUNCH MONITORS to Room 7. Three lovely Grade 8 students will now be helping supervise during lunch time in our classroom. While we will still have teacher supervision during this period, we are very happy to have these lovely, mature ladies to help with thermos opening, rule enforcement and much more J.

 

Many of you parents may have noticed that there is a new initiative for morning drop off. As many teachers and administrators were finding it very difficult to supervise and manage students in the fenced in area of the primary yard, Broadview has decided to ask parents to drop off students, say their goodbyes and then vacate the yard to allow for better sight lines and consequently better supervision. I know these changes may take some time to get used to but please know that it is in the best interest for all of our students. Students are still asked to line up their back packs at our “Meeting Spot” and I will meet them there each morning.

 

This week we also started our Show and Tell presentations and they were a huge hit. It was so nice to learn more about our fellow students. I realize that the link to the Show and Tell schedule is not working and I am working on fixing it. In the meantime, if you are unsure of your child’s show and tell date, please send me a note in their note tote.

 

Lastly, we continued our “Les structures” program this Friday and made structures that also included patterns (our focus in math this week). Below are a few pictures of the phenomenal structures we built.

A horse barn.

 

 

A wonderful plan of the horse barn.

 

 

A fantastic treehouse.

 

 

 

 

XoMme Byrd

 

Week #3

Another fun-filled week in Room 7 has come to an end and while we were all very excited it was Friday (a few inclement weather and indoor recess days this week made us all a little stir crazy), many of us were sad for the weekend to come because we had so much fun this week!

 

For starters, we started our Home Reading Program on Wednesday and we are very excited to have LES DEVOIRS (Homework)!! It’s one of the great things about this age group-they are thrilled to have work to do at home and there were no groans or complaints about receiving homework. For more information on our home reading program please click on the link or go to the tab above that says “HomeConnections”. Remember to send those books back by Monday or Tuesday at the latest. As with library books, your child will not be able to bring another book home on Wednesday if they haven’t yet returned the previous book.

A note went home this week about our upcoming show and tell presentations. Presentations begin this Monday September 24th and I am very excited to hear about each child's special interest or talent. For more information about the Show and Tell presentations, please click here.

We also continued with our Daily 5 centers and focused on letter recognition in French, capitalization and punctuation, sentence writing, spacing between our words, strategies for reading difficult words, and much more. As part of the Daily 5, we write in writing journals to practice the skills we are learning. Every Friday, the students have one-on-one time with me to show me the entries they have worked on and we discuss various things such as their spelling strategies, capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure, topics, etc. The students get to show me what they are proud of and what they have been writing about. This Friday, I was blown away by their creativity and accuracy in the writing journal entries they showed me.

 

One of the most exciting things we started this week was a program we call

“Les structures”
Our structures program will be a weekly thing and will take place every Friday afternoon (obviously there will be some weeks when we will not do it due to PD days or holidays, etc). Structures will take up most of the afternoon and is a wonderful, interactive, cross-curricular activity. In a nut shell, the students will pair up or work individually and will be given a large sheet of drawing paper. They will then be given an assignment. This week’s assignment was to design and build a structure of their choice. We discussed what a structure was and wrote out many examples. The students then draw out a detailed plan on which they include labels of what they have drawn, a list of building materials, sometimes a small legend to understand their drawing, etc. They must then have the plans approved by Madame before collecting their building materials (these will always change and could be lego, wood blocks, Play Doh, recycled containers, etc) and starting to build. The students then work as a team and speak in French. They use critical thinking and problem solving skills to build a structure that will be structurally sound and visually appealing. When they have finished their building, they prepare a small presentation. When we have all completed our structures, we take turns listening to the presentations given in French by our peers. This Friday was our first ever “Structures de vendredi” and I think that the students LOVED it. For more info about this program, curriculum ties, and info about photos of your child’s weekly creations, please click here.

Another great week with my firsties has me feeling very grateful for such a wonderful class of excited and engaged little learners. Can’t wait for another week of fun!

 

XoMme Byrd

 

Week #2

Hello parents! Well I`m a little late with my weekly blog post but we have been busy, busy, BUSY!! in Room 7 this past week. Our Meet the Teacher Night was a great success (at least I think it was.. I would love for you to leave a comment and let me know what you thought. There is a spot below this post where you can leave a comment!

I was so pleased to see so many of you last Wednesday and I only wish that I could have had more time to chat with each family and let you know what we've been working on these past weeks. Also, I had been hoping to give more info about this blog and what information I will be posting and where on the site you will find it. So... I figured I'd post a little tutorial now.

#1   I aim to post weekly “newsletters” to keep parents informed about what we are working on in the classroom. You can find those weekly newsletters by clicking on the “Newsletters” tab above.

#2 I will be posting information about home connections on this blog as well. At the Meet the Teacher Night, many parents asked me about homework or things their child could work on at home. Please check out the Home Connections page for info about our home reading program that will be starting this Wednesday September 19^th , and future homework possibilities.

#3  I will be posting more information about our literacy and numeracy programs in the Literacy and Numeracy tabs above.

#4 Please remember to become a follower (see “Firstie Followers” in the right side bar, click and become a follower) so that if you leave comments or questions (which I strongly encourage you to do as this site is meant to be an interaction between parents and teacher but also between parents of our class) we will know who has left the message.

That’s all for now! Please check out the other pages for more info!

What a Great First Week!! (and Important Info for Parents)

What a great first week!!

I want to say a quick thank you to all of you parents for all of your support and words of encouragement this week! We had a wonderful first week in Grade 1 and we are looking forward to many more even more exciting and engaging weeks of school.

This week, we introduced our Daily 5 (for more info about what the Daily 5 is, check out this link) method of teaching literacy. We practiced writing in our writing journals, we practiced reading to self and reading with our partners, we introduced our math centers and problem solving journals and even played some great math games!

We also worked very hard to establish our classroom rules and routines. Every morning, we line up in the small primary yard. We put our backpacks in the lineup and play until the school bell rings. We enter the school and head to our classroom (Room 7), where we change into our indoor shoes (**if you have not yet sent in a second pair of shoes for your child, please do so as soon as possible) and put our note totes into the bin where Madame Byrd can check for notes from parents.

**Parent Tip: If you have a note for me, please put it in your child’s agenda and leave the agenda open to that page so that I know that I have mail from you J

Then we meet in our meeting area for calendar time and sharing and start our school day.

For more information about what we do on a daily basis and other good parent tips, please attend our Parent Teacher Info Night on Wednesday September 12^th from 5:00pm – 6:15pm for a fun & information-filled evening!

First Day of School!!

What a GREAT first day of school! Or as the students said "Fantastique!!!" It was so nice to meet the members of our little class and to get to know them a little bit today. It was also really nice to meet so many parents this morning!

After you dropped your son or daughter off, we proceeded to our new classroom, read a funny book by David Shannon about a little boy who didn't always follow school rules,

 

 took a tour of important places in our school, started an art project about "Les super heros de la rentree" (Back to School Super Heroes!) and had our very first big kid recess!! The rest of the day was full of name tag projects, Drama with Madame Leslie Bricker and even more recess! (This was a shocker for most- "Three recesses Madame?!? That's crazy!")

Our day went very smoothly and I hope that tomorrow will be just as exciting and full of learning!
I feel it is imperative to have good communication between school and home and I hope this blog will help you as parents feel connected to your child's education and to what is happening in our classroom. Please remember to "follow" our site (see "Firstie Followers" on right side bar)

 so that if you would like to ask questions or comment on any blog post (you can do this at the bottom of the blog post), I can know who to respond to :) Also, please remember to check your child's note tote and agenda, as this is another big key to communication between home and school.

A demain les amis et les parents!!

Classroom Sneak Peek!

Hi parents and students!

I was so happy to meet some of you on Friday when you came in to see class lists. Our classroom is still a work in progress but it is starting to feel like a really cheery, engaging place to learn! For those of you who haven't made it in to the classroom yet, here is a little sneak peek Room 7, your child's classroom for next year!

Your child's Grade 1 classroom!! Our room is Room 7. It is located on the 3rd floor of the school. When you come in the main entrance, go right and then up the stairs all the way to the top. We are the last classroom on the right.

This is our learning carpet where we will start our mornings.

 

 

This board will be for our classroom "chores". We will work as a team to take care of our classroom and each student will have a different task each week.

 

 

This is our reading center!! A cozy place for students to read quietly by themselves or with a friend during our Literacy Centres. For more information about "Les cinq au quotidien" (Daily 5), our literacy program, please click on the "Literacy" tab above.

 

That's it for my little sneak peek, please check back for more information about classroom rules and routines.

 

 

Bonjour et bienvenue!

Welcome parents and students to Flock of Firsties, our Grade 1 French Immersion class website for the 2012 - 2013 school year. My name is Jessica Byrd and I will be your child's teacher this year. I am very eager to meet all of you in September and I am hard at work preparing to embark upon a fun and engaging learning journey with your child.

 As you can see, this website is currently a work in progress but please check back frequently for information about what we are doing in class, newsletters, information about home work and home connections, and much more. This site is intended to help keep parents informed and connected to their child's educational experience and create a strong link between home and school. I feel that communication between educators and families is extremely important and always welcome your feedback and questions.