Grade 1 / 2 P’s Blog

Although we had a wonderful time in the Multi-purpose room with Mrs Matheson’s grade we all enjoyed being back in our own room this week and getting back to work! Mrs Pope would like to thank all of those kind mums who helped us to shift back into our room. She and Mrs Matheson weren’t looking forward to doing that and really appreciated the help.

This week we talked about Spring, and in our reading rotations we completed some Spring related reading activities. We made paper plate flowers and paper plate ducklings. Mrs Pope was a bit mean and instead of explaining the instructions to us she made us read and follow the instructions ourselves. We made some beautful ducklings but some of us made them a bit different to the instructions. Oops! We copied out and illustrated a poem by A.A. Milne, a very famous poet and we wrote our own acrostic poem using the letters of the word SPRING to begin each line.  We also talked about opposites and completed an activity matching opposites. Mr Mason, who looked after us on Monday morning was most impressed with how much we knew about opposites. 

Mrs Pope apologises for not sending any spelling home this week as she was still trying to complete the spelling tests from last term so she could make up our new lists. We will have words this week she promises!

During Integrated studies we planted some bean seeds in glass jars so that we could see them sprout. We wrote some fantastic stories called The Magic Seed. You wouldn’t believe what some people’s seeds grew into in our stories. Mrs Ryeland told us even more about plant parts during her Environmental lesson on Thursday.

During Maths we talked about the half and quarter fractions and Grade Two children talked about thirds as well. Mrs Pope cut up some apples and we all realised that fractions have to be equal in size or people are going to get very upset especially if you are dividing up bags of lollies into halves, quarters or thirds. We used play dough shapes, 2D shapes and unifix cubes to divide into fractions. The Grade Two children even used number lines!

Next week we are all going to start some mini projects on insects as part of our study of Spring. We all love doing projects!

Our last two weeks in the multi-purpose room were so jam packed full of activities!  We did lots of activities with Grade 1/2 M such as shared reading with a partner, some writing formation competitions, a maths rotation with heaps of experiments related to Mass, watched some films, listened to lots of stories read by Mrs Matheson and Mrs Pope and of course did lots of play practices so that we would be ready for our circus performances. We were so excited about performing!

Mrs Matheson and Mrs Pope were so proud of us all! We put on the most amazing performances for the other classes, the kindergarten kids and our parents. We rock!!

Mrs Pope would like to thank all of the kind mums who helped to drive us down to the hall.                                                                                                                      

We are all ready for a holiday now as we are all getting very tired. It will be fun to be back in our own class next term but we will miss Mrs Matheson and our friends in 1/2 M. Maybe we will get together with them for some activities next term!

Have a great holiday everyone!

We love being in the Multi Purpose Room. We may never want to go back to our old classroom! It is so much fun having lessons with 1/2 M. We love it!

Because this week was Book Week we have been doing some shared reading with Grade 1/2 M. We take a book or two out of our book box and read it to a buddy! We have also had some great stories read to us and we have done  follow up activities like drawing and model making.

On Tuesday we had a capacity rotational activity afternoon. We were put into small groups and did activities like working out how many litres were in different sized containers and how many cups, half and quarter cups there were in different larger sized containers. We guessed how many marbles were in a jar and drew our favourite marble. We tried to fit as many cubes as we could into three different sized boxes. We filled 5 jars with different levels of water and listened to the sounds they made when we tapped them with a teaspoon. We filled different sized containers with rice to see how many tablespoons we could fit in each. We drew pictures of full, nearly full, empty, nearly empty and overflowing cups. We played memories with capacity words and we matched up pictures of the container we thought could be best used to fill larger containers. It was a fun afternoon!

On Wednesday our classes had a party to celebrate our move. Mrs Matheson had done a lot of shopping the night before and we had some yummy things to eat. Thank you Mrs Matheson!

We have been practising our letter formations and on Thursday we had a competition to see who could write their letters the most neatly. Nathan, Nina and Flynn were our winners. Mrs Pope was very impressed with our work!

On Thursday between morning recess and lunch we had the film Dumbo. The Preps joined us. We didn’t have to leave our classroom to see it. We even have our own toilets and kitchen. The Multi Purpose Room is a great place to be!!!

What an exciting week this week was! On Wednesday Mrs Pope told us that we and Mrs Matheson’s class were moving into the Multi Purpose Room so that the builders could move our rooms. We were all so happy about our two classes spending some time together and Mrs Pope and Mrs Matheson were looking forward to doing some team teaching! On Friday we all helped to move the books from the Reading Room into Mrs Pope’s old Reading Recovery Room and the library books from our room into the Multi. Wendy, Sam’s mum, came to help us take down some of our work off the walls of our classroom and we took home a lot of work in our bags that night! Thank you Wendy for your help!

In the days before our big move we were doing some work on learning our adresses and phone numbers. During reading rotations we were making suitcases from boxes, decorating them and adding a label with our name, address and telephone number attached. We wrote postcards to ourselves from holiday destinations  (they didn’t all have to be  places we had really visited!) and addressed them to ourselves. We also drew pictures of ourselves at the beach for a mural and wrote rhyming poems using the word sand. 

In our spelling rotations we typed our words on the computer in text boxes and inserted a picture from clip art. Mrs Pope allowed us to use her chalkboard to practise writing our words. We wrote our words in alphabetical order on a wave to be pasted on our beach mural and we wrote our words in white crayon and painted them over with dye so the words magically appeared.

In maths we talked about flipping,sliding and turning the two dimensional shapes we talked about last week. To help us remember how to flip slide and turn Mrs Pope drew Bill’s hand print on the whiteboard, then Bill flipped his hand over and Mrs Pope drew it again so we could see the flipped shape. A few of us then slid forward, backwards and to the left and right on a grid Mrs Pope drew on the carpet in chalk. Finally we made a dolphin or snake spinner and Mrs Pope showed us how to make half and quarter turns. It was just like reading the half past and quarter past times on the clock! We finished off by making our own flip, slide and turn patterns with the wooden 2D shapes. Later in the week we talked about 3D solids which have sides and of course height. We talked about the cube, cone, sphere, cylinder, rectangular prism, triangular prism and hexagonal prism. Then we made these solids from their nets or patterns.

We can’t wait for next week. It is going to be sooooooo exciting!

This week was truly our week of circus work! Our reading and spelling rotations were all based on the circus theme. We made lunch paper roll clowns and paper plate lion heads, attaching rhyming poems we had written about them. We made lost clown posters and completed information sheets for anyone who may have seen them. We also made elephant finger puppets and wrote out an elephant poem in our books and illustrated it. During spelling we continued to learn to spell the months of the year. We wrote our words on clowns, balloons, fans and on the computer in text boxes, adding circus pictures from clip art.

In maths this week we talked about and drew two dimensional shapes. The two dimensions being length and width of drawn shapes. We learnt the names of triangles including equilateral, isosceles and right-angled triangles,  rectangles, circles, squares, ovals or eclipses, hexagons (6 sided shapes), pentagons (5 sided shapes), octagons (8 sided shapes), parallelograms (4 sided shapes made up of  two sets of parallel lines) and diamonds or rhombuses. We also learnt about symmetrical shapes which you can draw a line through the middle of and create two sides which look identical. We had fun trying to draw one side of some pictures to look exactly the same as the other. We also learn’t about shapes which tesselate. We chose lots of pieces of one shape and fitted them together to form a pattern with no gaps like concrete paving or bathroom tiling. We discovered that a lot of us have tesselating patterns in our homes!

On Friday we had a no work day because we had filled the marbles to the top of the jar and all voted for that!  Mrs Pope set up some rotational activites like playdough, chalkboard drawing, painting, drawing and colouring and listening post. After play we talked about lines of symmetry and tesselating patterns. Our rotations then changed to maths type things like completing symmetrical pictures, making tesselating patterns, using the maths construction equipment to build and make patterns, using pin boards, bead threading to make patterns and using the hammers, pins and shapes  to make pictures. After Chie took her Japanese lesson we were able to spend the last half an hour to play some of the games we had brought along to school from home. Mrs Pope managed to get some testing done so she was very pleased and Mrs Lugg kindly sorted our art work and took some photos for our digital portfolios which was so helpful for Mrs Pope. Gosh, it may have been a work free day but we were so busy!!!!

We talked a lot about compound words this week. We had to match up words that go together like bedroom, bathroom, playground, into and outside.

Our reading rotations were following instructions to make  things we might have at a birthday party. We made party hats and wrote party invitations. We made wrapping paper from the string prints we followed the instructions to make last week and also made some using our finger prints. We made starshine sandwiches and wrote our own instructions for a treasure hunt.

During  our spelling rotations we have been learning to spell the  months of the year. To learn them we have been cutting the letters for them from magazines, typing them on the computer in text boxes and adding a picture from clip art, writing our birthday month and decorating it and painting the words. 

During maths we continued to talk about time. This week we talked about the information we find on calendars. We were able to find the months of the year, the name of the year, the days of the week, the working week and the weekend. We also discovered that February has 28 days and 29 in a leap year and talked about how funny it would be to have a birthday on the 29th of February. We also talked about the seasons and watched how the earth travels around the sun and moves through the seasons on a website Mrs Pope found. We enjoyed that!

On Thursday we were lucky enough to watch the Grade 3 and 4’s performance. Wow they were brilliant!  We hope they enjoyed performing for their parents on Thursday night!

Mrs Pope would like to thank all of the parent helpers this week and would also like to thank Gaby, one of our blog readers for her kind comment!

This week we have been reading the months rhyme to try to remember how many days there are in each month. Mrs Matheson read it with us on Thursday. She was so funny, she tried to trick us, but we’re too clever!!!

We did lots of interesting things in reading rotations this week. We all followed instructions to make string print blocks which we are going to use next week to make wrapping paper. We made paper bag puppets and wrote our own plays for them. We made our own mini movies and wrote our own rhyming poems, typed them up on the computer and illustrated them. Gee we were busy!

We also worked really hard in spelling: using stencils, using chalk on the concrete outside our classroom and the magnadoodles to write our words. We also put our words in text boxes on the computer. This week we were all learning to write the days of the week because Mrs Pope is talking about time during our maths lessons!

We wrote some fantastic stories this week. Mrs Pope was really proud of us! We wrote a story called Disaster at the Zoo and one called Space Adventure. Some exciting and scary things happened in those stories. Stevie wrote more than he has written all year. One and a half pages! Wow! Go Stevie!

During maths we talked about the analogue clock. The Grade 2’s can read the clocks like adults. They are so clever! The grade 1’s are very clever too as they know their o’clock and half past times. Mrs Pope can’t trick them and she did try hard!

On Wednesday we all had a yummy hot lunch. It was delicious. Thanks to all the mums who helped with that!

Also, thank you to all the mums who helped us in the classroom this week! I hope everyone enjoyed their jeans for genes day!

The mornings have been very chilly this week and none of us have been keen to go outside to play much before the bell rings at 9.00 am!

Our reading groups had some interesting activities to do this week based on following directions or instructions. We made mini pizzas following a recipe. We did a book review about our choice of book in our book boxes by following a direction sheet. We completed a treasure hunt by following directions on a sheet and drawing and labelling the items we found. Finally, we followed instructions on the computer to open our own word document, name it, complete an activity and print off the activity. 

We also talked about how easy it is to work out which hand is your right hand and which hand is your left, by making a L shape with the fingers and thumb of your hands and noticing that only one hand makes the L face the correct way. It is quite important to know which is left and which is right, especially when you are following directions!

During spelling activities we all learnt how to make a text box to put our spelling words in on the computer. We also made our spelling words out of playdough.

During maths we worked a little more on subtraction number sentences or stories using cuisinaire rods and number lines. We also began our second look for the year at clocks. The clever Grade 2 children learned how to count the past and to sides of the clock. They can now read the clock like grown ups. Wow!

Rochelle spoilt us all this week. It was her birthday on Monday and her mum Cherie brought in an ice cream cake and a chocolate mud cake to celebrate. It was yummy! Thank you Rochelle and Cherie.

We filled the marble jar on Monday and all got icy poles! On Tuesday we almost filled it again when we had Library with Mrs Cooke! I wonder if we can finish filling it this week. We already have some suggestions for our next prize written up on the board!

Our new morning routine seems to be working well. Everyone is remembering to place their burgundy folders on their tables, open their Diaries and Read It books and change their reader. We have all got so many marbles in the jar for remembering to do that!

This week during reading activities we made models based on our reader stories, copied poems on the computer and illustrated them, wrote an acrostic poem of our own and illustrated it and listened to stories on the listening post. Will and Mrs Lugg are joining in on lots of our activities too which is great. We all like talking and working with Will and Mrs Lugg. Mrs Pope learnt something important this week. In future we don’t leave showing and talking about our activities until the next day because if we run out of time that day too we end up with a huge show and tell session, lots of lost activitiy labels and complete disaster! Nevermind we all know she’s still on L plates.   

Our spelling rotations are working well too. We all have our own individual spelling lists now but we do an activity each day in a group. This week those activities were Look, Say Cover, Write, Check and write the word four more times, writing our words on the computer in different fonts, colours and sizes, our test and playing a game called Missing Link where we wrote our spelling words out on pieces of paper, shut our eyes and our partner took away one of the words. We then had to guess which word was missing. Tricky if you have lots of words!

During maths we continued to talk about Subtraction, take away or difference between numbers. Michaela, Hamish’s mum, helped during one of our maths sessions this week and she thinks we are all brilliant at subtraction! We played lots of games as we usually do during maths, but our favourite would have to be Knock Down. It’s like ten pin bowling. Mrs Pope filled up some drink bottles with a little water to make them stand up and we took turns at bowling a tennis ball at them to see how many we could knock down. We had to keep our score using subtraction number stories. We have played two rounds and have three more to go. I wonder who will win when we do the total!

We have been reading poems about winter written by an author called Shirley Hughes. We have noticed that Shirley Hughes’ poems are written in short phrases and have capital letters at the beginning of  every line. She also uses lots of commas to allow us to take pauses and often the words on the end of many of her phrases rhyme. We have had fun using interesting voices to read some parts of her poems like whispering about the leaves falling from the trees and grumpy voices about the rain falling again. We like poems!

We wrote some fantastic circus stories this week as this term we are talking about performances and entertainment like the circus. Some people wrote adventure stories. We always read our stories out aloud to the class while we are writing them to help us hear where to put our full stops, make sure they make sense and to practise using our reading to an audience voices. We are all getting really good at writing stories and are writing longer stories than we were at the beginning of the year.

On Tuesday we were lucky enough to watch a circus film about human acts with 1/2 M. We were amazed at how clever those circus performers were!

On Thursday Will made us all hundreds and thousands sandwiches. He and Mrs Lugg were learning to follow instructions from a recipe book. They were yummy! Thanks Will!

Mrs Pope would like to thank all of the kind parent helpers who worked in our classroom this week. Our day runs so smoothly with their help and Mrs Pope loves it when everyone’s reading group gets heard every day!

Mrs Pope has changed everything around this term!  We are sitting in different places in the room and we now start our day with reading and spelling, followed by maths and writing after play.  Mrs Pope said we still have to fit in our Thrass and blend work but once we get used to the new organization we will get faster and there will be time.

During reading our groups now rotate through the listening post, a craft activity, a computer activity and a written activity each week. During spelling, our mixed ability groups rotate through testing, Look Say Cover Write and Check, a computer activity and a game or written activity. Mrs Pope apologizes for not entering our spelling into our Diaries this week but she felt that getting our new organization started was more important.

During maths we have been talking about subtraction. We have been using counters, unifix blocks and number lines to learn how to find the   answer or what we call the difference between two numbers when we subtract them. We played a game called the potato sack race which involved lots of subtracting. The grade two children played a game with a deck of cards called subtraction snap. They had to try to beat each other to find the answer to subtraction number stories really quickly.

We are still talking about jokes and the question marks at the ends of jokes. Here are some of the jokes we found this week:

What petrol do snails use?                             Shell.

Why do cats put mice in the freezer?               To make micey poles.

What do you call a camel with three humps?          Humphrey.

How does a dog stop a VCR?                  He uses the paws button.

What do you call a scared Tyrannosaurus?          A nervous rex.

How do you get a baby astronaut to sleep?                You rock-et.

How did the piano get out of jail.            With its keys.

What falls in winter but never gets hurt?          Snow. 

During the parent/teacher interviews Mrs Pope noticed how cold our chairs are to sit in now that the weather is colder. She has suggested that if our mums have an old cushion at home we might like to bring them along to school and put them on our seats to keep our bottoms a bit warmer. She also invites any parent who would like to come along and check out how cold our chairs really are to do so any cold morning next week!!!!

As we are hopefully going to get some wet weather this winter Mrs Pope has also suggested that either some gumboots for outside wear or some slippers or a pair of spare shoes would be good idea to bring along to keep our feet warm and dry and keep our classroom carpet clean.