Mrs. Rachel's EES Class: January 9

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a great break. This week was all about getting back into our daily routine. Thankfully the weather was so much nicer than when we left for our break in December, that we got to enjoy lots of time outdoors this week as well!

Students were greeted Monday morning with some new morning work. Most of our morning work has a Winter based theme. Students work in different table groups on targeted tasks. Many of the tasks are designed to focus on goals set in each students Individual Program Plan (IPP).

After completing three tasks students are given the opportunity to engage in some free choice play. One of the choices after task work is completed is our Movement Room. Students can bounce on the trampoline, crawl through the tunnel, walk on the bench, throw balls at the target, rock in the recliners, walk on the stepping stones, or use the body sock. This room is among our students favourite!

This week we returned to our weekly library visits. Our visits to the library start with our librarian, Mrs. B, reading us one of her favourite stories. After the story, students are supported to choose a library book and then sign it out. Library books are kept in the classroom for the week and students can revisit their book as often as they like.

During our literacy whole group learning we continue to build our sound and letter knowledge. This week we looked at the digraph /th/. Here is one of the videos we watched to learn more about the digraph. https://youtu.be/o3INXFPrfJM. Students are learning to differentiate sounds that are voiced or unvoiced by feeling the vibrations in the throat. Words like moth and thumb have an unvoiced sound, meaning that if we put our hand on our throat we don't feel a tickle (vibration), where words like feather and weather the /th/ sound is voiced, we feel the vibrations.