Dewson Festival

Wow, Thursdays in Area 24 are turning out to be very exciting. First we had our community walk, today our field trip, next week is our open-house, and the following Thursday is the Dewson Festival.

If you haven't been to Festival before, it's an extremely fun afternoon and evening of games, rides good food and much more. The kids will be given a few tickets each to use in the afternoon and we will all be able to enjoy some time at Festival before school ends. The Festival is not over until 6:30, so usually parents decide to meet their child at school and hang out for a while. You can also send money on the day so that your child can buy more tickets to use before you arrive. We'll talk a lot more about how this day will work closer to the date. For now, please look for the form coming home tonight inviting you to volunteer. Festival is not possible without a TON of parent support. Please consider donating an hour or 2 of your time at one of the stations. You can send the form back to me, or directly to the office. Thanks in advance!

We had a great time at Food Share learning about bees and how they help make food for us to eat! Our hosts got us thinking and read us 2 books about bees.

To teach us about the body parts of a bee, two students got dressed up as bees. Ask your scientist why they are holding that funny long yellow tube, a hairbrush, and are wearing pockets around their legs.

Later, we went outside and had a quick tour of the Food Share garden.

Next, we got to taste some apples with honey. We tried 2 kinds of honey - one from somewhere in Ontario, the other made right at Food Share. Ask your scientist which honey they preferred and why.

Finally, we played a relay game where we had to collect pollen and we did the bee dance!

Thanks again to the parents who helped us stay organized!

Here is Dewson's new canoe that we helped plant this week.

Have a great weekend,
Tamara

Last Words

Dear parents,

This week will mark our last set of words of the week, and our last dictée. We will continue reviewing what we have learned and revising our writing right up until the last week of school. It has been exciting to see the children grow as readers and writers, and begin to remember how to spell high frequency words, put into use grammar rules that we have learned, and use the resources in the classroom to help improve their writing. It is my hope that the words of the week lists will be a handy review tool for the summer. It's important to keep up the routines you have established so that the transition back to French in September is as smooth as possible. If you need the words of the week, they can be found by going back through the archives on this blog. I will leave this year's posts up until mid-August.

Here is the last set:

The verb être (“to be”) is challenging because we always have to consider who we are talking about (boy or girl) and make the necessary agreement (usually by adding an ‘e’ for a girl). It’s ok if students have not mastered this yet, but as you continue to practice, it’s something to talk about. It’s also helpful to compare être to avoir as there are some similarities (e.g., tu es v. tu as).

Je suis fier(e) de toi.	On est en retard pour l’école.
Tu es mon ami.	Nous sommes tristes.
Il est gentil.	Vous êtes calmes.
Elle est gentille.	Ils sont des garçons.
Lili est une bonne chanteuse.	Elles sont des filles.

If your researcher forgot about their homework this weekend, or forgot to bring it back to school, please help them remember for tomorrow. We will need their information for our writing task. (This was a small green or blue piece of paper with a question that they need to ask you about their place in our community.) Thanks for your help!

Area 24 had 5 participants in the hula hoop contest last Friday afternoon. 

 Here is our enthusiastic cheering section!

The record for a member of area 24 was 31 minutes and 52 seconds. Pretty amazing!

Dewson's Gardens

Hi parents,

Please look for the note that came home today about helping to plant Dewson's gardens. There's an exciting butterfly project going on, explained in the note, and each class will be doing some gardening to contribute to it.
Our time is Monday from 2:00-2:25 pm, but you are invited to stop by at any time Monday (am or pm), or Wednesday morning to help whoever is planting at that time. The whole schedule is included on the note.
If you can come, or even if you can't, I'm told it would be helpful to have some extra trowels and watering cans. If you can bring or send these, that would be great. Please make sure they're clearly labelled!!

Please see the previous post about the research assignment for this weekend. I had to explain it rather quickly, but I think everyone knows what to do - if not, it's explained in the post below. The template is bright green or blue, and if you could remind your researcher to bring it to school Monday, that would be amazing. We'll need to refer to it while we're working.

Have a great weekend,
Tamara

Our own piece of the community

So, the project I began describing the other day goes like this:
Each student has drawn one place in our community. It might be a restaurant, house, store, church, bank, park, or something else located along the stretch of college street that we will be exploring tomorrow.
Not only will students be completing a sort of community treasure hunt on our walk, but they will also let me know when they see their place, and they will take a picture of it.
When we return, we will use the picture we took to draw a store-front for our place. We will then figure out where it belongs on our big class map.
The other part of this project involves a bit of research. Each student will use what they've learned about persuasive writing to convince us that their place is very very important in the community. They already did a fantastic job today convincing me that Pizzaville is even more important than I would have thought, and what might happen if it did not exist.
Students will be encouraged to ask a parent for their opinion about why the location they selected is important and incorporate their findings into their paragraph. I will explain this research assignment clearly on Friday and ask the researchers to ask you about it over the weekend. It won't take much time, but it's good practice gathering information and considering different points of view.

Once we've all created our store-fronts and information sheets, we'll have a big co-created community map and information on how each place plays a role in the community. I'm beyond excited to see how this shapes up. Ask your student what place they drew from the bucket, and if they've started thinking about why it's important in the community.

Sweet students!

Merci, mes amis, pour la belle carte et pour m'avoir aidé à célébrer mon anniversaire!

Thank you, everyone, for the cards and even some gifts (all not necessary) for my birthday! It was very sweet!

Last week we began learning about how to write a persuasive answer to question. We know that our goal is to convince someone to share our opinion. To do this, we begin with a statement of our opinion, then we try to think of 3 good reasons, and finally we repeat our opinion at the end. This form is helpful for writing in general and will lead to some good paragraph writing in future grades. At the moment it is helping us become more aware of our majuscules and petits points! We have already answered questions such as:

Est-ce que l'école est important?

Preferes-tu les chats ou les chiens?

Est-ce que je devrais planter des légumes ou des fleurs dans mon jardin?

Pour mon anniversaire, est-ce que Mlle devrait manger un gâteau au chocolat, ou une tarte a la citrouille?

Ask your writer what they wrote to convince me of their opinion one way or the other.

Now that our fairy tales are complete, we have started reading them to each other during our end of day story time. You'll get to see all of the stories when you come to our open-house. Here's a teaser…

That was our Picasso art project. We're now learning a bit about Monet and Impressionism. Ask your artist what they know about Impressionism and what they're trying to show in their paintings.

What I'm most excited about at the moment is the project we are about to begin in social studies. We've already read and talked about what a community is, and this Thursday we will be going on our community walk. During our walk, we will be hunting for various places that we know a community may include. We will also be taking pictures of certain buildings/places that we are going to include in our very own class map that we will construct. More on this soon!
We still need one parent to come with us on our walk. Thursday from 1-2 pm. Please email me if you can come! Thanks a lot.

Here are the words of the week:

Je      (fille)	Tu	Il ou Elle
Je suis content(e).	Tu es content(e).	Il est content.
Je suis triste.	Tu es triste.	Il est triste.
Je suis fâché(e).	Tu es fâché(e).	Elle est fâchée.
Je suis calme.	Tu es calme.	Elle est calme.
Je suis fatigué(e).	Tu es fatigué(e).	Tamara est fatiguée.

Have a good one!

Walking excursion - help needed!

Dear families,

I have received almost all of the RSVPs for our open-house. Thank you. We do have a very big crowd scheduled to come in the morning, and a small audience for the afternoon. If you were planning to come in the morning, but would be able to come in the afternoon, please let me know. Thank you SO much! If you cannot change your plans, don't worry, we still want you all to come!

The following important note is coming home today. Please email me ASAP if you can come along! This is not the Foodshare trip, just an afternoon stroll in the community!

Upcoming Walking Excursion for Aire 24

Dear Parents,

For the next few weeks we will be working on a social studies unit about communities. We will be discussing and investigating what makes a community (buildings, people, services, outdoor spaces etc.) and how everyone contributes to creating a community. As part of this unit, I would like to take Area 24 on a community walk. We will walk along College Street from Ossington Ave. to Montrose Ave. and back, taking note of the buildings and services we pass so that we can use this information for an exciting class project.

At the beginning of the school year, all families submitted a walking excursion permission form, which allows me to take the class on walking trips in our neighbourhood. There is no further form to sign before this excursion. Our walk will take place next Thursday May 22 at 1pm. We will need 2 parents to accompany us to make sure we stay safe. We will take about one hour of your time. If you’re available, please email me promptly at tamara.mitchell2@tdsb.on.ca (don’t forget the 2).

Thank you,

Tamara Mitchell

A message from Me to We

The Me to We Club is organizing a book drive to support the organization Room To Read. We will sell the books over several lunch periods and donate the funds to Room To Read. This is an organization that focuses on literacy and gender equality in education across Asia and Africa. Here is a link for your interest. www.roomtoread.org

What makes this organization unique is that they hire local people to write and illustrate books in the various dialects of the country in question. Donating books is optional. If students or their siblings have outgrown books, they could consider donating those.

If you would like to donate a book or two for this cause, they can be sent to school over the next 2 weeks and placed in our class box.

Bitstrips!

Dear parents,

Our reading buddies (now our computer buddies) helped us get started with a really fun program called Bitstrips. Each member of our class has, or will, create a character that looks like them and which can then be used to build comic strips. Our first activity is to create our character and an introductory comic. You can check out our work here. See if you can guess which child is yours before scrolling over!

Here are the sentences for this week:

This week, we are practicing the verb avoir it its entirety. It’s helpful to speak and write different sentences that begin with the various forms of avoir. Don’t feel like you should only use my ideas!

The 10 reading words for the week beginning May 12^th are:

J’ai les yeux bleus.	On a mangé le déjeuner.
Tu as mon crayon!	Nous avons fini notre travail.
Il a mal à la gorge.	Vous avez bien écouté.
Elle a une corde à sauter.	Ils ont lu 2 livres ensemble.
David a un chien.	Elles ont les cheveux longs.

Don't forget to RSVP for our open-house by the end of this week. Thanks!

Field Trip

Dear parents,

A note came home today about an upcoming field trip to Foodshare. This will take place in the afternoon on May 29th. We will just be walking over, but still need some parents to help us out. If you are available and interested, please check the appropriate box on the form.

This excursion is very inexpensive. They ask only a $2 donation. If you feel you'd like to give more, this is your choice. Please send only what you are willing to donate, I will NOT provide change. Thanks for your understanding.

The form and your donation are due back by Thursday the 22nd. Thanks!

For more information on Foodshare, click here.

Good News!

I'm very pleased to say that our lines and overall behaviour was MUCH improved over the beginning of this week. Thank you for having those conversations at home, they obviously helped out!

Bravo Aire 24! 

Un autre jour comme ça demain s'il vous plaît!

Castles

Hello parents,

Thank you for all the boxes! We have more than enough now and have started building. On our first try we encountered some problems with the tape, which was not quite sticky enough to hold some of our cylinders, cones and spheres together. We'll continue working, maybe with plain old white glue next time!
Here's a picture of all the recycled materials we've collected this year and which are going into this project. Ask your builder to name the shapes they used in their construction project, beginning with the cereal box. By the way, I was impressed with the selection of cereals you sent in. Looks like Area 24 families are all incredibly healthy!

Thank you also for starting to return the RSVPs to our open-house. I have received just under half of the responses and every single one is for the morning. This is no problem so far, but if many of the families who have not yet responded also need to come in the morning, it will be quite crowded and hard to look around in the classroom. If you have not responded, or if you have but you are flexible, please consider whether you may be able to join us in the afternoon. That would really help us create an enjoyable atmosphere for our special day! Thanks in advance!

Now for a bit of not so nice news (I don't like to post this on our happy class blog, but it is the best way for me to communicate to everyone at once). This week, Area 24 students have been having an unusually hard time being respectful toward each other. The hardest times have been when we are lining up and going either outside, to another classroom, or returning to our class. I have seen students pushing each other in line, running in the hall to a different spot in the line, yelling in the hall, or even just leaning on the person beside them causing a domino effect. We have discussed this issue MANY times and we all agree that we know how to be respectful and what to do if there's a problem. Despite our conversations and some practising, it seems people are still being hurt or bothered during an activity that should be very safe. I think it would be worth taking a few minutes at home to discuss this and remind your student of what your expectations are for his/her behaviour at school. I'm sure this will make a big difference and we'll be back to our steady selves by the end of the week.
Thanks for your time and help with this.

I'll leave you with some sentences to practice. Enjoy!

The 10 reading sentences for the week beginning May 12^th are:

J’ai les yeux bleus.	On a mangé le déjeuner.
Tu as mon crayon!	Nous avons fini notre travail.
Il a mal à la gorge.	Vous avez bien écouté.
Elle a une corde à sauter.	Ils ont lu 2 livres ensemble.
David a un chien.	Elles ont les cheveux longs.

.

You're Invited!

 Dear Area 24 families,

The following invitation is coming home today. We are very excited about this special event and hope very much that each child will have at least one supporter in the audience! Hope you can make it!

Mlle Mitchell

May 1, 2014

Area 24 Open-House

Dear Area 24 Parents,

Area 24 made some great puppets with Donnely earlier this year, and for several months now, we have been working on our adapted fairy-tale dramas. At the same time, we have been learning to play the piano. In a short time, we have progressed from playing a simple 5-note scale, to reading music to learn simple, fun, songs. Students will soon be graduating and leaving Area 24’s piano behind. Before that happens, I thought it would be great for all students to have the opportunity to show you what they have accomplished on the piano and share their puppet shows with you. To this end, the students and I have been planning an open-house which will occur on Thursday June 5^th. In addition to the show, during your visit, you will be able to go on a guided tour of our classroom to look at some of your child’s recent work and art projects!

We really hope you can join us on June 5^th either in the morning (9:30 - 10:30 am) or afternoon (1:15 - 2:15 pm) for this special open-house, hosted by your very own children. Parents, caregivers and close relatives are welcome. Please RSVP by Thursday, May 15th so that we know how many guests to expect at each performance. 

Hope to see you in June!

Mlle Mitchell

tamara.mitchell2@tdsb.on.ca

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Répondez, s’il vous plaît

Area 24 Student: _____________________

☐                 Yes! We will attend the morning presentation from 9:30 - 10:30 am. Number of guests: _____

☐                 Yes! We will attend the afternoon presentation from 1:15 - 2:15 pm. Number of guests: _____

☐                 We can make ourselves available for either presentation.*  Number of guests: _____

☐                 Unfortunately we are unable to attend.

* You will receive a note with your time immediately after the RSVPs have been counted. Thanks for your flexibility in helping us manage the space we have available!