Last day in grade 1/2 class!

Today was my last day with the grade 1 and 2 class! It was a great experience getting to see how to manage a mixed grade class, especially with the UFLI program. Today was 100 day so that was the focus of todays activities! On the worksheet above the teacher inserted a picture of all of her students on each of their worksheets and used the 100 year old filter on their faces to make them look “old.” The students have been practicing sounding out words (which they have also been doing with the UFLI program) to help them with spelling/writing which was the purpose of this worksheet. I noticed some students were very confident with their spelling and others needed extra support especially being reminded to sound the words out which helped a lot. In the curriculum content this could be connected to language features, structures, and conventions.

Due to the fact that this class was grade 1 and 2 the teacher does the UFLI lessons separately. I’ve been wondering how teachers plan and organize lessons when teaching two different grade levels. I noticed that although the grade 1 and 2 BC curriculum is quite similar the UFLI levels are quite different. During the UFLI lessons for the grade ones the teacher gets the grade twos to work on their activity (in this case it was the “When I am 100 years old work sheet”) However in previous lessons I’ve noticed sometimes students do partner activities such as a math dice rolling game or get to colour in their sketch book. When the grade ones are finished their UFLI lessons they switch with the grade twos, so the grade ones are now doing the activities/worksheets and the grade twos are participating in their UFLI lesson with the teacher. One benefit the teacher does have in her classroom is she has an EA who is designated for one student however she does provide assistance in keeping students on track (especially for those who are not doing the UFLI lesson). In the picture above you can see the students participated in a phonemic awareness drill, visual drill, auditory drill, blending drill and new concept.

I honestly can’t remember the particular drill being practiced in the photo above however I’m thinking it could have been the blending drill focussing on words ending in “dge.” The following pictures show the rest of the UFLI lesson.

I thought the exercise in the above photo was great for practicing to sound out words. All the teacher did was draw four lines (because there are four letters in “most”) and then the with the teacher the class sounds out the words and fills in the lines.