2, 4, 6, 8

I have started planning for all of next week. The reading and writing rotations are finished! Our reading sound for the week is "og."

Today Tanya passed an email on to me with a suggested lesson structure for "The Numeracy Session." The top of the page says, "The maximum number of children engaging in the maximum amount of mathematics for a maximum amount of time" (Ann Maree Gervasoni, 2000). It starts with a mental maths activity (whole class), then the main teaching activity (whole class), then small groups and individuals, and share time/reflection at the end. One thing that I would like to work on is creating engaging tune-in activities to get their brains ready and excited to do maths. Each week, we do three number lessons, one space lesson, and one measurement lesson. Right now, we are focusing on odd/even numbers, skip counting, measurement without using a ruler, and naming shapes.

Here is a picture of some caterpillars that the kids made for one of my lessons about even/odd numbers. They used two different alternating colours so that one colour was even numbers and the other colour was odd numbers. The kids enjoyed this activity and it gave them a good visual aid to see which numbers are odd and which are even.



Today the kids were given their first homework assignment so that we could practice doing it in class. Homework is much different from the way it is in America because the kids have only one assignment for a week, instead of one assignment every night. This week we just did a practice round of homework in class. After this, homework will be assigned every Friday and is due back the following Thursday. At our staff meeting, all of the grade 1-2 teachers decided to use the same format for homework because they have had parents complain about their child getting more or less homework than children in other classes. Every child has a homework notebook and their assignments are pasted into them. This week, they are doing a Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check activity with the "ig" spelling words.

The pictures belows are our Dendrite Pictures! This is one of the activities that we did after talking about our brains. Dendrites are like tiny trees in your brain and every time you learn something new, you grow one of them. Everyone grows thousands of dendrites everyday. Over time, a dendrite can become stronger and thicker if you keep practicing that skill or using that knowledge. However, dendrites can also disappear or become weaker if they are not used. These paintings were made by dropping some food dye onto paper and then the kids blew the dye around using a straw. They loved it and are fascinated by the idea of growing dendrites! After they were done with their pictures, they told us when they had grown a dendrite that day. I had taught a few lessons on that day (such as the even/odd caterpillars and a friendship lesson) so it was really rewarding to hear them say that they had grown a dendrite after doing one of my lessons.