February 24-27

 Dear Parents,

What a busy and fun filled week we have had in grade one!  Read below to hear about some of the highlights!

Just a Reminder:

We will be going on a community walk on Monday March 3 in the afternoon.  Please have your child come dressed for the weather with comfortable footwear and appropriate outdoor clothing.

Pink Shirt Day

This week we recognized Pink Shirt Day in many ways in Grade 1! We began the week with an amazing assembly by our Kindergarten and Grade 3 communities presenting their learning and wish to spread kindness. We participated in a Pink Shirt Day Challenge where students looked for acts of kindness and recorded these actions on a sticky note and collected them on our class Pink Shirt. On Wednesday, we participated in a musical presentation by Mary Lambert and a virtual author’s visit with Teoni Spathelefer, author of Little Wolf.  She read her book and spoke about the importance of using your voice to overcome bullying. Click on the link below to learn more about the origins of Pink Shirt Day.  

https://www.cbc.ca/kids/watch/video/1.6744256

 Learning Intentions

• Describe personal learning strengths and abilities.

• Express, request, obtain, or refuse consent relating to personal boundaries.

• Explore how some First Nations, Métis, and Inuit view personal characteristics as gifts that can contribute to individuals and the community.

Math

In math we have continued to build our understanding of addition.  When building our conceptual understanding of addition, we introduced students to problem solving situations where adding is joining two groups or where adding is 2 parts that make a whole.  Students have been using a variety of models to organize their thinking, such as a number line, counters, and ten frames.  

Learning Intentions:

• I can show when I add

• I can describe parts that make up a whole.

Combining Parts to Make a Whole

Sometimes you know the size of parts, and you want to figure out the size of the whole. Adding can help you.

For example, if there are 4 adults and 2 children at the park, you might want to figure out how many people there are altogether.

You can add 4 and 2 to get the total, or whole, of 6.

---

Figuring Out How Much to Add

Sometimes you know the whole and one part, and you want to figure out the other part.

For example, if there are 8 birds in a yard and 3 are robins, you might want to figure out how many are not robins.

You can think about what to add to 3 to get to 8.

You can add 5 to 3 to get 8.

---

A New Model to Show Part-Part-Whole Situations

Another way to show the connection between parts and a whole is called a bar model.

A bar model shows the whole in one rectangle, or bar.

It shows the parts in another bar of the same length.

Early on, students might use linking cubes to create the whole and to create two parts that together are the same length as the whole. Then they can use the bar model to record what they did.

The whole is 8. The parts are 3 and 5.

•

You can use a bar model when you know the whole and one part, and you want to represent the other part: This bar model shows the problem “There are 8 people. 3 are adults. How many are children?” You can count or use a 10-frame, a number path, or linking cubes to figure out what number goes in the empty part of the bottom bar.

•

You can use a bar model when you know the parts and you want to represent the whole: This bar model shows the problem “There are 3 adults and 5 children. How many people are there altogether?” You can count or use a 10-frame, a number path, or linking cubes to figure out what number goes in the top bar. In a bar model, the small boxes always represent the parts and the large box always represents the whole. The size of the boxes that represent the parts should give a relative sense of the size of the numbers, but the size does not need to be precise.

---

Helping Your Child

When you and your child encounter a situation where two parts make up a whole and the numbers are not very large, invite your child to figure out either the missing total or the missing part amount.

For example:

•	You can figure out the number of people in a car’s back seat if you know how many people are in the car and how many people are in the front seat.
•	You can figure out the number of pieces of cutlery on the table if you know how many spoons and how many forks there are.

Literacy

This week we continued to learn about consonant digraphs, when two consonants make one sound.  We focused on “th” and “ch”.  Please take a look below at our home practice to help support your child in their literacy learning.