As a school we are collecting non-perishable food donations that you can send in any time!
At our composer visit for opera today we learned about Recitative (res - i - ta - tiv accent on first syllable), Aria and Chorus and how they help tell the story through music.
We have some composer homework - to look for some operas to listen to on line so we have an idea about the music that goes with the words for an opera. We listened to many selections today that were very funny because we recognized them from movies, like the Minion movie!
We heard some selections in English and Italian as well. We practiced listening for the difference when the Chorus joins in to tell the story and when it goes back to Recitative.
I might be able to show you a body arm action that reminds me of Recitative!
We practiced writing sentences today with a model to show where the spaces should go between words, and where periods go at the end of ideas. This is often really hard work for students to demonstrate when they are beginning to get their own ideas down, so sometimes we do work that incorporates a little bit of both. This gives routine spacing and printing practice as well as opportunity to use phonetic knowledge and any sight word knowledge for getting our own ideas down on paper.
Writing often looks like a supportive combination of sight words given, spacing and periods given and then a lot of phonetically spelled words with less consistent spacing. We are thinking of so many things during writing and all of these are June outcomes for Grade 1! Please be patient with what you see in this process for your child.
Early writers are thinking about:
1. sounds we hear
2. letters that match the sounds
3. how to form that letter
4. knowing if it should be an upper or lower case
5. being aware of spacing within a word
6. awareness of little words we know
7. thinking of leaving a space for each new word
8. rereading to see if we still know our idea we are writing
9. struggling sometimes to reread because we are just learning to do all of the above!
10. this can then be frustrating!
11. reading enough of what I wrote to know what comes next, then repeat steps 1 through 8 to get the next word down!
12. knowing if in fact, I have reached the end of the idea for a period.
13. knowing that I've just reached the end of the line and I can carry on down on the next line
14. oops, part of my sentence is on this line and part on that line
15. oops, this is lower case but I made it as big as my upper case
16. Oh, now I forget which letter goes with that sound
17. I know it, but I forget how to form that letter...
The cycle and list of potential writing, decoding, encoding hiccups - could go on, it is an endless cycle of really hard work for young writers!
Things that really help!
- chalkboards
- dry erase
- paint
- a brush with water on a chalkboard
- print with finger in all kinds of stuff
- bathroom crayons in the tub
All of these things help support confidence and repetition and lend a hand in easing anxiety about mistakes on paper.
On paper, knowing that pictures with great detail tell a lot! Knowing my words (ideas, talking) can be written down and read over and over again, so sometimes just scribing ideas (writing for them) and really raving over any writing your child chooses to put down on paper is huge!
Most importantly, at school we stress that it's ok to make mistakes here (the adults then need to know that we can't correct all the mistakes, we need to focus on one thing at a time, so we don't discourage new writers from sharing ideas!)
We make a distinct connection between reading and writing, in that, when we reach a word we're not sure of... we can skip and go back, we can think of the beginning sound - in writing we do the same and leave some space for sounds we think are there but we just aren't sure. This serves several purposes - it encourages writers to take risks, use phonetic knowledge, try hard words, and keep writing! And it also encourages and reinforces those spaces between words.
Math Then...
We practiced a new dice game where we roll the dice, add them up and write the number in the first line, then write the next three numbers that follow. This gives some making tens, doing additions to 12, recording information from dots to numeric symbols, knowing order and sequence to write without checking a number line and basic directional printing practice for numbers. This can be an easy quick game at home, using dice or playing cards, (more or less for higher numbers). In class we will eventually do a "draw bag" style, where students pull a number out of a bag (or two numbers to add) then go through the same process.
Some of our goals: to be able to start anywhere and count forward up to 100.
Be able to start anywhere and count forward and backward between 1 and 20
Recording our ideas as we recount "next" numbers in this game is very helpful to memory making
This will eventually be a game we do going backwards from 20 as well! So if I rolled or drew an 18, I would record 18, 17, 16.
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