January Curriculum Update

ELA

Reading: Continue with Guided Reading groups: using a variety of texts and reading strategies to increase student reading fluency, accuracy, comprehension, and expression. We will also use websites such as Raz Kids, Starfall, and Reading Bear to help us become better readers.

Mentor Texts for January include:

• Squirrel's New Year's Resolution
• Snowmen at Night
• Over and Under the Snow
• non-fiction books about winter

Word Work - We will continue daily practice of our Rainbow Words through fun, interactive activities.  Other phonics activities include work with beginning and end sounds, short vowels, Word Sorts, and an introduction to digraphs (th, wh, sh, ch).

Writing - Focus will be on Becoming Writers. Students will use a Writing Folder and their Journal as tools for daily writing practice. Writing projects include: Writing a Resolution, Writing about Winter Animals and Snowmen. Students will be encouraged to add details and description as well as write longer pieces of work.

Math

• working with numbers to 100 in a variety of different ways
• addition of numbers to 12, using a variety of strategies
• subtraction of numbers to 12, using a variety of strategies
• immediate recall of addition and subtraction facts to 5
• using mental math strategies for daily math problem solving

Science

We start January with a mini-unit on Seasonal Change: Winter. 

Mid-January we begin a unit called Creating Colour. In this unit students will:

• Identify colours in a variety of natural and manufactured objects.
• Compare and contrast colours, using terms such as lighter than, darker than, more blue, brighter than.
• Order a group of coloured objects, based on a given colour criterion
• Predict and describe changes in colour that result from the mixing of primary colours and from mixing a primary colour with white or with black. 
• Create a colour that matches a given sample, by mixing the appropriate amounts of two primary colours. 
• Distinguish colours that are transparent from those that are not. 
• Compare the effect of different thicknesses of paint. 
• Compare the adherence of a paint to different surfaces
• Demonstrate that colour can sometimes be extracted from one material and applied to another
• Demonstrate at least one way to separate sunlight into component colours. 

Social Studies

Students will determine what makes their communities thrive by exploring and reflecting upon the following questions for inquiry:

• In what ways do people cooperate in order to live together peacefully?

• How do groups make decisions?
• In what ways do people help one another at home, at school and in groups to ensure the vitality of their community?

• How do our actions and decisions contribute to the well-being of groups and communities?