parent letter 11/19

19 November, 2010

Dear P1 Parents,

We’ve had a busy few weeks in P1!

Two weeks ago we began a new Unit of Inquiry titled “A Great Place to Live”. We have been inquiring into how people make homes in different places and in different ways. We have been reflecting on what a home is, why people need homes and why homes are different (specifically talking about environment and availability of materials). Our class trip to Olasiti this week left us with not only incredibly muddy feet and grateful to parent volunteers (thank you Lisa, Vasudha and Ilan!) but, with a greater understanding of differences in houses here in Tanzania.

Shape, number facts to 5 and 10 and patterning continue to be our focus in Maths. In Literacy we continue looking at the reasons people write and read. We began talking about elements of stories (plot, characters) and have read a number of non-fiction and fiction text related to homes. Our writing focus has been putting space between our words, using capital and lower case letters properly, and including “what” and “who” in our Weekend News recounts. Our high frequency words of the past few weeks have been: I, a, the, you, and; and we’ll look at: or, in, as next week.

If you are interested in seeing photos from our field trip or our visit with our  P 5/6 buddies, I have posted pictures here:  http://chekechea1k.blogspot.com/

Have a lovely weekend,

Chelsea