This week students were greeted with new morning table tasks, celebrating different winter festivities. During this time, the students continue to further develop skills in the areas of task independence, task stamina, fine motor, communication and academics. Students are supported to complete three or more targeted tasks before moving onto a high interest activity, an activity that they are working for. Skills such as colour recognition, one-to-one number correspondence (counting each object in a set), visual discrimination (the ability to detect differences and sort objects accordingly), letter and word recognition are just a few of the skills being targeted this week.
Students gather together multiple times a day in whole group shared learning, our circle times. Every shared learning starts with a choice regulation activity, this activity is meant to prepare our bodies and brains for learning. These activities focus on calming movement, breathing strategies, and activities to enhance focus. After our regulation, students are reminded of learning expectations with our group plan and whole body listening.
Monday and Wednesdays our focus for our shared learning is on building reading readiness with activities such as developing a greater understanding of our Sound Wall (see previous posts for more information). Tuesday and Thursdays the focus shifts to our number sense and math concepts. We start our circle time with a choice of number songs that target counting by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's. Then we participate in our interactive number talk. Students are shown a number on a dice, currently numbers 1-12, and we practice the multiple ways that we can represent that number in words, on a number line, using tens frames, in quantity, and with place value. Students have been learning about 2D shapes and patterns. Next week we will learn about 3D shapes and continue working with the shapes in various patterns.
Students were excited to get to enjoy time outside on our playground equipment. Next week, we will go on another community walk on December 13 or 14, weather permitting.
Upcoming Dates
- Dec 10 - Deadline to order for Dec 15 Healthy Hunger Lunch (Mucho Burrito)
- Dec 13 or 14 - Community Walk - weather permitting
- Dec 15 - Gingerbread House Decorating Night
- Dec 22 - Last day of classes (8:00 am to 2:30 pm)
Festive Days Ahead
- Some of our Grade 6 students have taken a leadership role and proposed to their teachers and Ms. Clark and Ms. Elies-Guss. From the 19th to the 22nd there will be theme days. While participating in the theme day is optional, we are encouraging all to participate! The days are as follows:
- Dec 19: Festive Hat Day
- Dec 20: Festive Sweater Day
- Dec 21: Winter Solstice - Student are encouraged to wear blue or white
- Dec 22: Pajama Day
