Thank you!

Wow, I am overwhelmed with the lovely cards, messages and gifts I received today. It was like Christmas morning! You didn't have to do that, but it was really thoughtful. Thank you.

We had a fun afternoon with treats, stories, presents and time for games and art. The stocking your child is bringing home was sewn by them and they look adorable.

Once again, have a fantastic holiday and I'll see you in the new year!
Tamara

Happy Holidays!

Dear parents,

I forgot to remind the kids that tomorrow is Pyjama Day! I hope I'm not the only one!!! Also, as I mentioned before, you are welcome to send juice, or a nut-free, store bought treat for our celebration, but this is completely optional.

Today, students are bringing home their beautiful stained-glass Ménorahs that we made a few weeks ago as well as some decorative bells that we made today. A few more things are coming home tomorrow. Hope you like! Tomorrow morning we will also participate in Dewson's carol sing-a-long first thing, so please try to arrive on time to school!

You'll remember that recently we sent letters to Santa. Well... he wrote back! Today we received a long letter, in French, in which Santa described a typical day at the North Pole (see below). I also wanted to show you an example of our last journal entry. Each student completed a sentence and picture explaining which holidays his/her family celebrates.

One BIG surprise today...

 Area 24 is now proud to have this piano in our class! I am looking forward to finding ways to use it with the students, and have students use it, without causing too much of a disturbance on the floor. I'm sure you'll hear more about this once we start using it!

If I don't talk to you again, have a very restful and joyful holiday and start to the new year!

See you January 7th!

Best wishes,
Tamara

Last week!

Wow! I can't believe the holidays are here already - this year is flying by!

Here are a few things to ask about this week!

Today we are going to the vision & hearing clinic. If your child was registered, ask him/her what kinds of tests they had to do! I anticipate you will receive a note sometime soon if there are any concerns.

In language, we have a new sound: 'ç'. The curvy thing under the c is called a cédille, so we call 'ç' a c-cédille. The cédille makes the normally hard 'c' sound like an 's', as in "garçon". We'll keep hunting for more words that use this letter and I'll post a picture later.
Our new words of the week are:

bon, fait, beau, maman, Noël

In math, I will be guiding students through a fairly advanced graphing project. Today, students will come up with their own question and choices that their friends will choose from, for example, Est-ce que tu préfères les chats ou les chiens? Then they will ask 10 friends (hopefully in French) to select their answer and note the results in a chart. Later this week, they will use this information to fill in a bar graph and do their best to present it in a visually appealing way. If we have time, we will also look at a couple pictographs and figure out how to read this type of diagram. Ask your child about their graphing project! What question did they ask and which answer was the most popular?

This week we will also be finishing up our puppet shows of what friends do together, and also using the puppets to show how to solve a problem with a friend.

Some of the primary classes at Dewson will be having a pyjama day on Friday. Students in area 24 are invited to wear their PJs to school if they wish. In the afternoon we will have a small holiday celebration. If you would like to send juice or a snack, that's ok so long as it's store bought and clearly marked nut-free. There is no need to contribute anything, I will provide a little treat for everyone.

Please don't feel that you need to get me a gift for Christmas. Teachers are thinking of a way that parents can contribute to a charity in lieu of gifts, so you may receive information about this in the near future. However, if you do wish to give me a gift, maybe think of something that our whole class could use. I often spend my own money on French books, Kleenex, paper towels, pencils, erasers, pencil crayons etc. Thanks!

Tamara

3 ways to make 'é'

Dear parents,

Yesterday your student wrote a French letter to the Père Noël (actually, we copied the letter we wrote as a group the other day). I have already made photocopies and mailed them all to the North Pole in one big envelope. I thought you would like to see your child's writing, so I've sent home the original. Enjoy!

This week we have tackled another common French sound - 'é'. There are three main ways to spell this sound, "é" (e accent aigu) being the main one. But while "é" sounds like 'ay' all the time, "er" and "ez" also make the 'ay' sound when they come right at the end of a word (see examples below). We have already started trying to use 'é' in our writing when sounding out! Here are some words we found in our books today...

You may notice that all of the words on our 'er' list are verbs in their infinitive form. They can also end with 'é' when written in the passé composé tense (see "mangé"). I didn't even try to explain this, but just said that it can appear both ways depending on the sentence, and it sounds the same.

Did I mention that we made puppets to use in Social Studies? I think so. Well, we started making up short skits today and we had a couple presentations. The skits are based on activities that friends do together. Some ideas were play tag, play hide and seek, sing and dance... These are great ideas for recess (hint hint)!

Here are our Christmas stockings all sewn up and decorated! Thanks to the family members who helped us with the complicated crafts and me with the prep work to get all the material ready. All the holiday crafts will definitely come home by the end of next week!

Tamara

(PS - So sorry about the fuzzy pictures... some day I'll upgrade!)

Venn Diagrams!

Happy Wednesday!

The new words of the week are:

ou, qui, quoi, mercredi, ici

A couple students have already lost their green sheet with the words, but I don't know who. If you discover it's your child, remind them to ask for the green word sheet again tomorrow.

At our parent-teacher interviews in November, one common concern was that children aren't eating enough of their lunch. Since then, I have been staying with the class a little longer to make sure everyone has gotten started. I've also arranged for two grade 5 students to sit at our class' table every day. They started this week and are helping us open thermoses, and are keeping an eye out to make sure everyone is eating the main part of their lunch. If this was a concern for you, I would really appreciate some feedback on how lunch is going now (particularly this week). If you have noticed an improvement, or if you haven't, could you please email me to let me know? I want the kids to be at their best for our post-lunch math lessons! Thanks!

Ask your child about math this week!!! Monday, we started learning about another type of diagram (we have already done a lot of work with bar graphs and will do another project using these next week). We are using Venn diagrams to help us sort and classify objects according to their attributes.

Yesterday, we sorted buttons into two different circles. The rule for one circle was that the buttons were big. The rule in the other circle was that the buttons had 2 holes. Then, we moved the circles together until they overlapped (creating a Venn diagram). We talked about how the buttons we put in the middle have to be part of both circles, and follow both rules. The buttons that went in the middle were big with two holes. This is a fairly challenging idea, but I'm happy with how the class responded. Many students were eager to place buttons in the appropriate area, and they even recognized when a button didn't follow any rule and needed to be placed outside of both circles!

After this activity, each group was given a Venn diagram and a bin of materials to classify. They had to come up with their own sorting rule. Here are some pictures of what we did!

 This group was given Lego. The red circle is all RED, the blue circle is all THIN pieces, therefore, the middle area is THIN, RED pieces of Lego.

 This group was given large beads which are sorted into RED beads, SQUARE beads, and in the middle are RED SQUARE beads.

 This group had a set of plastic building materials with people. As you can see, one circle is for only GREEN pieces. The other circle is for PEOPLE. The middle area is for PEOPLE that are mounted on a GREEN base.

 This group had to use flat sides that attach to form 3-D shapes. They put all GREY sides into one circle, and all SQUARE sides into the other circle. The middle area contains the GREY SQUARE sides. They sorted every last piece in the bin!!

 Oooo, this group had the animals! They sorted them into animals that are mostly BLACK, animals that are mostly YELLOW and animals that have some black AND yellow. (Later we talked about how it can be very difficult to have two colour rules because you can't have something that's ALL black and ALL yellow at the same time, it's better to think of a different rule for the second circle. We did another animal sort using Meat Eater, Plant Eater, and Eats meat AND plants.)

This group had wooden blocks. There are blue blocks neatly arranged in the blue circle, and rectangular blocks in the red circle. In the middle are the blue rectangles.

One challenge was that the tendency is to create a third rule for where the circles overlap. That's not the idea! The rules shouldn't be, for example, red, green and yellow. That's three different rules! It would be better to say something like, yellow, triangles, and in the middle, yellow triangles. Clear as mud?

You can practise making a Venn diagram and sorting at home using whatever materials you happen to have. Lego, blocks, toys... Try making up a sorting rule and see if your child can guess it. Then, let them sort the same materials using a different rule and see if you can guess it!

One more chat & chew idea! We were talking about activities that we do with our families, for example, play baseball, watch movies, play games, go skating... Your child would like to know what kinds of activities YOU did with your family when you were growing up! Coming up, we will be acting out different situations (things we do with friends, how to solve a problem) using paper bag puppets that we made today! The picture above is of our community rules (the wrong thing to do, then the right thing to do).

In art, we have been using our time to decorate for the holidays! I mentioned the Menorahs that we made for Hanukkah - they look AMAZING on the windows (see below). Tomorrow we are doing a Christmas craft, and we also had time to draw some pictures of whatever holiday(s) we want. From these, I had a hard time selecting the next two Artists of the month, but I eventually settled on two that represent different traditions.

In other news, one student had the great idea to start a story writing club for when we have free time. This is them during their first session!

Talk to you later,

Tamara

What we're up to...

Hello everyone,

Just a reminder that December Scholastic orders are due tomorrow!

You've probably noticed that I've been sending home quite a bit of old artwork this week. I wanted to make space for some of our new stuff, especially so that we can decorate our class with some holiday creations! Yesterday, one of our students gave a very detailed explanation of Hanukkah which prepared us for making stained-glass window Menorahs. They are up in our windows and look amazing when the sun shines through! Next week, we will do an equally amazing Christmas craft. Pictures of the Menorahs and our new artists of the month coming soon!

We've also been busy learning how to conduct a simple survey. We've been asking friends to answer questions, like "How many letters are in your name?", and then counting up the totals to see what the most popular answer was. Not long from now, we will put this skill together with our graphing skills, which have been coming along nicely, to invent our own question, conduct a survey and create a graph using the results. This is really advanced stuff!!

As you know, for social studies we've been talking a LOT about rules and responsibilities in the community, and the kids have shared some of the rules and responsibilities they have at home. Now we're going to talk some more about special people and events in our lives, starting with our families. Today, during our discussion, I asked students to tell me what types of activities they enjoy doing with their families. I was super impressed that once one student did the hard work of trying to answer completely in French, everyone else tried really hard to find the words for their answer in French too. This is why everyone deserves a big Bravo today! Keep talking French - I love it!

Words of the week!

The new words are:

dans, froid, enfants, si, de

You should also be aware of a rule for all Dewson students that was announced last week. Dewson is asking that home toys be kept at home, and school toys be left at school. For our class, I think this rule will really help us stay on task when unpacking and packing our bags in the morning and in the afternoon. If your child is bringing something for daycare that's fine, but the toy should stay hidden in his/her backpack. I will start keeping toys brought into class overnight to help reinforce this rule. We were reminded today, so it shouldn't come as a surprise!

With our reading buddies today, our students had the chance to practise reading their own "Citrouiville" stories in French - it's not easy to read and remember all the words. I know your children are eager to bring their stories home to share with you, so they will do so once they have a little more practise reading them in French, and once we've had a chance to share them with each other. Ask your child how much of his/her story he/she is able to read after practising today!

Don't forget tomorrow is your last chance to donate pennies! Also, Scholastic is due Thursday and Friday is a PA day.

Here are even more pictures of some of the things we've been doing! 

Collecting pennies...

Making graphs (lots of birthdays coming up!)...

Finding words with 'en' and 'an'... 

"En" and "an" sound almost exactly the same, but it's not like the English "an". Think "on", but without closing on the "nn" sound. Your child is really the best teacher for these more complex sounds. Everyone will at least know "dent" and "enfant", and from there you can probably get a better sense of the sound!

This morning we also had a special presentation by our nurses on social skills. We coloured in our bears based on our families, our pets and our personal preferences and we noticed that nobody had exactly the same bear as anyone else. Then we talked about ways that we can be even friendlier. Below are a few of our drawings!

Also, ask about your child's sequel to "Citrouiville". Most of us are done, or close to done our stories and they are ever so creative! We will attempt to read them to each other next week!

More pictures!

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Please note the change to the end date of our penny drive - now ten days earlier. We have already filled TWO bags!!!! This means our class has provided drinking water for 2 people for the rest of their lives!!! Amazing!

Today I sent home the December Scholastic catalogues. As per my note, if you would like to order gift items in secret, you can email me your order or send it in a sealed envelope, and I will contact you when your order arrives rather than sending it home with your student! To ensure that we receive our orders before the break, please get your orders to me no later than next Thursday the 6th (the 7th is a PA day).

Thanks to one of our moms for sending these additional pictures from last week!

Happy Monday! Here are a few notes as we begin the week. Please scroll down to see some pictures from the field trip!

Pizza forms and T-shirt orders are due TOMORROW!

The new words of the week are as follows. We have not made flashcards at school this time, but I highly recommend that as one of your first at-home activities!

mardi, lu, vu, en, il

This week we are beginning our first Social Studies unit. We will be discussing relationships, rules & responsibilities in the home, school and community. We will be reviewing the rules that we established for our classroom at the beginning of the year, the rules we needed to follow to stay safe on our trip, the rules we were asked to follow at the nature centre, and other rules that are posted for the general public (for example, street signs). This unit is an easy one for you to engage your child in, as it applies to our life both in and out of school. I'm quite certain you have already done a lot of work on this subject in your own home.

Today students are going to tell me about some rules that they have to follow in their homes. It would be interesting if you could share with your child a rule that YOU had to follow when you were growing up. For example, my dad had to sit at his kitchen table until he cleared his plate, even if he didn't like what he had to eat. My brothers and I always thought that was SO strict! Also, what was one of your responsibilities or chores at home?

I'm also looking for some volunteers to help me prepare the materials for some holiday art. If you have some time in the next week or two, that would be awesome! Thanks! (tamara.mitchell2@tdsb.on.ca)

Have a great week,

Tamara

Pictures from last week!

Meeting our guides...

 
Lesson & Pizza Making...

 

Starting our hike...

Finding pizza ingredients...

Looking for different animal homes... do leaves keep us warm?

 When he hawk sings her song, the squirrels must find a tree quickly!

 

Other stuff... 

The weather graph we made together using the weather cards from our calendar - individual student versions are now on our hall bulletin board.

Dracula's house?