Our week at a glance

This week we will be starting another cycle of small, focused literacy groups with the help of the educational assistants and all the other grade 1 teachers. The focus of these groups will vary but will focus on letters and letter sounds, CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant), and other sight words from the FRY's first 100 sight word list.

As a class, we have focused on short vowel sounds with a focus on each sound per week. Now that we have focused on each vowel, we will continue to reinforce this learning through word work, writing and guided reading and continue to improve our distinction of these similar sounds. You can practice this at home by spelling some CVC words. CVC words are short, 3 letter words with a consonant-vowel-consonant order that are read exactly as they sound.

During guided reading, we will incorporate some reading comprehension strategies as taught to us by Miriam Trehearne, the literacy specialist we were very lucky to have come to our school recently. We have also started using a Story Wall to improve our fluency, comprehension and decoding skills. Ask your child about the story on our wall that we are reading and illustrating!

In math, we are focusing on our mental math skills. Part of this work relies on developing fluency with some of those basic facts. We are playing games and working with partners to master our DOUBLES and FRIENDS of 10 addition facts! You can practice these at home; ask your child to teach you a simple game using a deck of cards.

In preparation for the Kenneth Taylor School opening on February 10th, we have been talking about the HEART values. At KTS we are Helpful, Empathetic, Accepting, Responsible, and Truthful. Ask your child to give you an example of a time that they have shown HEART.