Pursuasive text

Mrs Thompson the schools Literacy Specialist Teacher made a visit to our class this week. She came to teach us what it means to be persuasive. We started by inspecting an advertisement for apples and how advertisers use tools to persuade our likes and dislikes.

 
 

 Once we had discovered how to persuade someone we were given two ideas and told to split into groups in order to give our opinion and a reason why we have that opinion. We then came back together and had to debate and pusuadaue Mrs Thompson why our opinion was the best.

We then decided which we liked more cats or dogs, split into groups again discussing the reasons for this opinion, before making a poster to persuade it's audience.

As a follow up activity we discussed how advertisements are great examples of persuasive texts. We viewed two advertisements on YouTube one for Lego and the other for Furbies. We then had to write our opinion and one or two reasons for this opinion. I also think I have encouraged old forgotten toys to come out of the cupboards at home.

Creating and building a sentence

We have been reviewing what elements make up an interesting sentence. We use the sentence building tree to make sure we have a very detailed sentence. We start with the main sentence truck our noun group and our verb group. For example The rabbit(who or what) is jumping (the action). Once we have the truck we add branches to allow the sentence to grow. Where was the rabbit hopping and how was it hopping and with who etc. Each writing session is started with the students orally telling a sentence as a group.

As each part of the sentence is added I scribe the sentence so the students can transfer the oral text to the written text.

Once we have completed the task as a whole group we move into smaller groups with the setting decided. In each small group there is a leader who guides each group to construct a sentence of their own.

Once the sentence has been decided the group repeats the whole sentence five times together and then heads back to the tables to write it out. The groups are encouraged to help all of it's members to work as a team and to help anyone who is having difficulty.

Finally the group leaders nominate someone to read the sentence back to group and share any celebrations they have seen.

The children take great pride in the presentation of the writing knowing that they are to share it with the class. It is also nice to note that the teamwork fostered during writing sessions has created new friendships in our class.

Doubles

Room 10 is getting very good at identifying and mentally adding doubles together. We started by holding up 3 fingers on one hand, then mirrored that number on the other hand before adding them together. We practised saying the sentence double 3 is 6 before trying all numbers between 1 and 5.

We practised our double facts by learning the doubles rap

                                            

and watching a video of doubles number sentences

Finally to see if everyone had understood the concept we created doubles ladybirds. We each selected a number of dots for one wing and double the number on the other.

Next we will be looking at doubles plus 1 and doubles plus 2. This will help the students add groups together mentally rather than counting each group by 1's.

Bridging to 10

This week we have been learning how to quickly add together numbers to 10 (also known as rainbow numbers). This skill can help us transition easily into adding larger numbers accuratley. Bridging to 10 means all the different ways we add to make 10 for example 1+9=10, 2+8=10, 3+7=10 etc. The quicker we get at adding these numbers the easier it will be to at 19+1 or 84+6. We started our learning journey by reading 12 way to get 11 written by Eve Merriam. This allowed us to visually see the bridges we can make.

Once we had a good understanding of what it means to bridge to 10 we used coloured counters, flipping one counter at a time and recording the number sentence to 10. We also learn a new song to help us remember the number facts you can watch it HERE:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox4sdG4L3FY

We reinforced these number sentence by playing bridging to ten games on the interactive whiteboard.

You can practise these games here
We then made our own abacuses so we can practise bridging to 10 when we have numeracy warm ups in the future.

Spelling Songs

In our class we use music to help us learn. In this video you can see a few of the songs that help us learn how to spell our sight words. If you wish to sing along with us you can visit heidisongs here

Estimation

Estimation is a skill that allows students to identify large groups of objects from smaller ones. We brainstormed what the word estimation might mean and then read Great Estimations by Bruce Goldstone.

 We found that estimate means to make an measured guess. So we decided to estimate the number of students that attend our school. We recorded our estimations then set out with our recording boards to find out who's estimation was the closest.

 We visited each classroom and the students took turns asking the teachers how many student were in their class. Once they found out they reported back to class and we recorded the number next to the class number.

When we returned to the classroom after our investigation around the school, we used a calculator on the interactive whiteboard to total all of our student numbers.

 We found that we had 301 students in our school and that Chantelle was the closest with her estimation.

We then wrote about what exactly we did in our investigation and what we had learnt about estimating.

Tally Marks

This week we have been reviewing how to use tally marks when recording and counting information quickly. First we read the book Tally Cat Keeps Track by Trudy Harris. We then talked about why it is more effective to count using tally marks.

We agreed that is alot quicker to count by fives or tens and then add the extra numbers, than it is to count by ones. Isabelle also bought to our attention that it is neater and less confusing when it is time to count the collection of marks. We all had a try at quick fire tallies, in which I  wrote a number on the board and the students had to represent that number using tally marks.

 

Skip counting to 100

This week we have been refreshing our abilities to count to 100. We read the book 100 things written by Masayuki Sebe. This allowed us to see what 100 things looked like and also understand that it easier to count to 100 by grouping objects together.

Once we read the book, we worked together to group pop sticks into 10's and worked out that we needed 10 groups of 10 to make 100 pop sticks.

In order to assess the students understandings we ventured outside and set off independently to collect and group honkey nuts in 10's to reach 100.

Thomas peer modelled his counting to the rest of the group. He did such a great job I think I will employ him to be my assistant with future numeracy concepts.

Finally we returned to class to show what we had learnt with a concrete activity of skip counting in 10's to 100 and beyond. This activity allowed us to look at written numbers and identify patterns that skip counting can create.

Our Narrative Learning Journey

We began our learning journey by making foil characters and placing them in the sun then tracing and colouring their shadow.

We then used these characters to complete a story plan which involved thinking of a name for our main characters. The children were very creative coming up with names like Shiny, Tinman, Foilman and Princess Silver. We then brainstormed adjectives that could describe them, decided on a setting for our narratives and developed the main event or conflict for our story. Finally we created a title for our narratives.

Finally we used our story plan to write a narrative about the characters we created. 

Introducing Room 10 Year One and Two 2014

Welcome to our brand new Classroom Blog!

This blog is in the process of being created.  Come back soon to see what an exciting learning journey your Year 1 and Year 2 students will be embarking on this year!