Joyeuse Halloween!

Thank you for being so responsible about bringing, not wearing costumes. Everyone was very understanding and didn't complain that we didn't get to wear our costumes all day. I know everyone was excited to put them on, but it would have been a challenge to do our fine art work wearing the headpieces and big cumbersome costumes that we all had. The transition to costumes after lunch also went very smoothly, it only took us a few minutes to pull on our costumes and then we dove right into Halloween activities.

First of all, in the morning, Donnely taught us all about drawing with ink. We learned that ink was first used in China and then became popular all around Asia and the world. Donnely showed us a few examples of ink drawings and printing and we warmed up by practicing different strokes on a page. We used both paintbrushes with a fine tip and also sumac branches to paint with the ink.

After practicing for a while, our final project was to create an ink painting over top of a tissue paper collage that we had made at the beginning. Here are a couple examples:

In the afternoon we did a variety of different Halloween activities. First of all, the monsters listened to my autobiography ("The Paper Bag Princess"). Then, we played Halloween charades - super fun. Next, everyone decorated a mask, did some Halloween connect-the-dotes and had some free time (we watched some skits afterwards). Finally, I told my spooky story. 

Since I'm a musician in my other life, I really enjoy telling musical stories when I can. I chose a scary one for Halloween (although I don't think I really scared anybody). The song is called Erlkönig (or, The Elf King, in English). It's a German song with music written by Schubert in 1815. The Erlkönig is an evil creature, or spirit, who haunts sick children. In this song, a father is riding on horseback to get his very sick son to the doctor, but the Erlkönig is haunting the child and the son is frightened by visions of the evil spirit. The Erlkönig tries to lure the child away with promises of games, songs and golden clothes, but eventually threatens to hurt him if the child will not come. By the end of the song, when they finally arrive at the doctor's, the boy has died in his father's arms.
Although the lyrics are in German, you don't need to speak German to get an idea of the story (though it was pretty neat that our very own Jared translated some words for us). When I told it to the children, I asked them to listen for several things in the music. In the piano, you hear a repeated triplet rhythm representing the galloping horse. This rhythm persists until the very end of the piece, when it slows and then stops as father and son arrive at their destination. Meanwhile, the male singer actually plays 4 roles, and you can hear how he changes his voice to play each character. The narrator introduces and concludes the story in a mid-range. As the sick boy the singer sounds panicked and the notes are in his high range. As the father, the singer is quite serious and sings in a very low range. As the Erlkönig  the singer uses an almost sickeningly sweet voice and sings quietly. Interestingly, when the Erlkönig is singing, the music is in a major (happy-sounding) key because he is trying to trick the child, kind of like the witch we read about in another book (P'tit Jean et la Sorcière).
Anyway, I asked the children to share this story with you if they could. You might need to prompt them by asking them to tell you what it's about, or how the voices are different. Here's the music, if you'd like to hear it for yourself, or if they'd like to tell it to you with the music as I did. Hope you enjoyed your little music history lesson for the year!

Thank you also for all the donations to "We Scare Hunger!". Our class collected two overflowing boxes of food that the Me-to-We club will donate for us. Thank you for your generosity.

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

Finished Projects!

Hi parents,

Today I have sent home our October dictée rubric. You probably remember from curriculum night that this is a little check-up for me to see how everyone's doing with their sounds and printing. The writers were actually excited to do their next one today, and had obviously talked about it and set a goal for this time. Amazing, thank you! The rubric has some small changes to reflect the new sounds we have worked on in the last month. Other than that, it's pretty much the same. Using lower-case letters is still considered level 4, since I haven't emphasized it yet, but it's great to see that some students made that their goal this time. I also noticed some students making good sound guesses based on other words they know that sound the same. Have a look at the rubric when you get a chance and be sure to celebrate all the good stuff, and find one thing to set as a goal for next time.

Good news! We have completed our much-discussed inquiry projects! They look great and will be up for you to see when you come for your November interviews. Here's a preview:

In math, we have been learning about measuring temperature this week. The children already knew a lot about temperature, for example when the temperature goes up, it means it's getting warmer and vice versa. They also knew that rain turns to snow below 0 degrees Celsius, and that measuring the temperature helps us dress properly for going outside. We measured and drew the temperature both in our classrooms and outside. Here we are watching our thermometers. Unfortunately, it was actually a really lovely, mild October day, so we didn't get to see the temperature drop too much! We'll try again on a colder day.

Looking forward to tomorrow!
Tamara

Tuesday's Words of the Week

Here’s the last way to make ‘o’, and this happens frequently, particularly at the ends of words. Try writing a rhyming poem where each line ends with one of these ‘eau’ words!

l'eau, beau, bateau, chapeau, cadeau

Bonus words: ciseaux, couteau

As I mentioned...

This Friday is, of course, Halloween, but it is also our second art workshop with Donnely, and we may get messy. In order to keep our costumes clean for trick-or-treating, and in order to participate fully in the workshop, students are invited to bring their costume, or part of it, for the afternoon. In the morning they should wear art-friendly clothing as we will be painting. Please ensure that they bring only parts of the costume that they can put on fairly quickly and without assistance. I don't have enough arms to dress 20 children! Costumes are completely optional, we will have fun with or without them.

After the workshop, we will spend the rest of our day doing Halloween-themed activities including a special spooky musical story! Please do not send food or candy for our class. The children will all receive a treat from me.

Thanks, and have a spooky week!

First Art Workshop

We had our first session with Donnely this morning. Today we focused on drawing techniques using graphite. We used our imaginations to create a storm on a page using different textures and lines. We then worked on drawing each basic shape and turning into a solid by curving it or adding lines that move away from us. Finally, we searched for these shapes within objects and used them to sketch a giraffe, a lizard, a toy car, maracas and other things. Donnely thought we did a great job using the basic shapes in our sketches (even me!). We're going to try to apply this strategy every time we're drawing.

I'll mention this again next week, but we already talked in class about how next time Donnely comes it will be Halloween. In order to keep our costumes clean for trick-or-treating, and in order to participate fully in the workshop, students are invited to bring their costume, or part of it, for the afternoon. In the morning they should wear art-friendly clothing as we will be painting. Please ensure that they bring only parts of the costume that they can put on fairly quickly and without assistance. I don't have enough arms to dress 20 children! Costumes are completely optional, we will have fun with or without them.

Thank you SO much to everyone who already sent in their completed timeline and pictures. I'm loving the adorable baby photos! If you are still working on it, please send it in (and email me the pictures) by Monday. We are ready to glue everything together, so we need all the parts to be here. I can't wait to see the finished projects!
Also, most students still need a picture of their special person. Students have already done the writing part of this component, so they should be able to tell you who they'd like a picture of. If this wasn't included with your timeline photos, maybe you can choose and send this picture by Monday as well. Otherwise, we'll use our newly acquired drawing skills to do a portrait.

We also have bibliothèque on Monday, so please remind your reader to bring their book.

Have a great weekend,
Tamara

Bienvenue à notre château!

We had our second exciting theme day today. This one was dedicated to Anna, who loves princesses, and Evey, who loves horses.
To celebrate, our class was decorated with some beautiful fabrics and I had my pretty princess crown on. During reading time, we had some special library books about horses and similar animals, and princess-related things like castles and knights.
During French and Math time, we worked on a story in 4 parts, but today instead of assembling a pre-made story, we wrote our own based on 4 princess, prince and horse pictures. Each writer put the pieces in the order he/she wanted and wrote a sentence about each picture to tell the story. We exchanged stories with partners to see if we could guess the order of their pictures. Hopefully you can play this game at home as well. Ask your writer to tell you the story using the story cards!

In the afternoon, we learned how to play a kid version of horseshoes (lancer les fers de cheval). We had les Chevaux versus les Princes et Princesses. It was a tight game, 5-4 for the Royals. Everyone had fun and won a little prize.

 

 

 

Finally, we read a story about a knight who loves a princess but has a problem getting to know her... ask for details!

We Scare Hunger!

Dear families,

The Me-to-We club at Dewson is running a food drive this week and next. Our class is going to see if we can fill a box with non-perishable donations. Yesterday we talked about what kinds of foods don't go bad and would make healthy choices for people that need it. If you can contribute, that would be great.

I think I mentioned last week that we had been working on personal calendars in math (as part of our measurement unit). I am sending these home today with the hope that your child will be able to keep using it to keep him/herself organized. As we learn about upcoming dates (such as when the monthly Scholastic is due, appointments or family gatherings), they can be added to the calendar and it can be posted in your child's room, or appropriate spot in your home. You can also ask your child to add regular reminders, such as dictée every Tuesday and library every day 4. I think you're never too young to learn to use a calendar, I don't know where I'd be without mine!
Completing all 12 months of the calendar (finishing the numbering, adding symbols to represent days of significance and creating some seasonal art) was a huge task and took us over a week of math periods and still we could make more improvements. I encouraged many students to correct some of their backwards numbers, but in looking through them again, I didn't catch them all. Please feel free to point out any backwards numbers to your mathematician so that he/she can correct them and practice the correct way.

This week, we are looking at sequencing in math. We practiced the terms premier, deuxième, troisième etc., which many students already knew. We then worked in groups (really well) to put story cards in the right order and each member of the group participated in telling their assembled story to the class, in French and using the terms we had practiced. Tomorrow we have a special day planned and everyone will get to create their own story in 4 pieces.

Don't forget that Friday morning is our first art workshop. We've never gotten particularly messy, but Donnely suggests wearing old clothes, just in case.

Talk to you soon,
Tamara

o, au & eau

There are actually 3 ways to make the ‘o’ sound in French. Aside from plain ‘o’, we also have the combination of a+u and e+a+u. This week we have some words containing ‘au’. Some parents mentioned to me that they make posters that go around the house (e.g., e+a+u = o). I did this in my language classes in university and definitely found that staring at them as I fell asleep helped. If this sounds fun to you, great. If you have other good practice tips, please share them with me!

au, autobus, aujourd'hui, chaud, manteau

Bonus words: auto, je saute

Citrouilleville

Happy Monday!

We recently read a story called "Citrouilleville". Ask your student what happens in this story. We are working on extended endings for it, and we have lots of different ideas. How will your writer end the story? Ask about how we are creating the illustrations for our little books.

I am also VERY excited to announce that our workshops with our visiting artist are beginning this week! Each class will be treated to a series of workshops through the Artists in the School program. We are working with Donnely Smallwood. She is fantastic as an artist and as a teacher and she has some great projects planned for us. Our workshops will be every Friday morning for the next 6 weeks. Please try not to schedule appointments at that time and, as always, be right on time for school. We will be taking a break from our regular art periods for the duration of these workshops since they will equal the same amount of time that we would normally devote to art over the entire week.

A few other notes:
- Don't forget that we need the dictée cahiers tomorrow (Tuesday), as always.
- Please check that you have my correct email address. There are 2 Tamara Mitchells in the TDSB and I am number 2! I fear some pictures have gone to the other Tamara... some kids think you have sent me pictures that I have not received. Please check and resend if necessary! tamara.mitchell2@tdsb.on.ca
- I know everyone is excited for Halloween next Friday, and I'll explain early next week what our plan will be for the day. For now, please do not purchase treats to share with the class, I think a treat from me will be enough.

Time for marshmallows, homework & pictures!

Hello families,

It's time for our next social skills update. Of course, we talk about problem solving on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis, but today we completed our dedicated social skills activity. The challenge was to build a tower using mini-marshmallows and toothpicks. During this challenge, students had to focus on working as a team (we talked about how this involves compromise), problem solving together, and following instructions (i.e., not eating the marshmallows).
Everyone loved the activity, and afterwards, we completed our self and teacher-evaluations. Please have a look at this today and take some time to discuss the activity and how your student feels it went, with regard to the skills we were focusing on.

THIS IS IT! We're beginning to assemble the pieces for our social studies research project. I've mentioned this a couple times already, so you may already have some pictures in mind. Each researcher needs a picture of him/herself with his/her special person or people. (Of course, if you don't have a picture of them together, a picture of the special person is fine, and if all else fails, we can do a drawing).
Ways to send pictures to school:
1. Original photo clearly labeled (I'll make a photocopy and send the original back)
2. Copy (let me know that it's a copy and that it's ok for us to glue it down)
3. E-mail to tamara.mitchell2@tdsb.on.ca (I'll print it out)

The timeline template is also ready to be worked on and is coming home today. Each student needs to add 3 important events to their timeline. We brainstormed a list of significant events in class (see below). This could be helpful if you're not sure what kind of events are timeline-worthy. The squares are for pictures of each event, including the two events that I put on (when I was born & starting grade 1). I don't expect you to shrink your own photos, you can send your choices to me via one of the methods above and I will do the shrinking and printing and your student will take care of assembly.

When completing this work with your little researcher, please encourage them to do as much of the brainstorming and writing as possible. I know that you will need to help a lot, but really try to make it their responsibility to do their homework so that they can take pride in their project later. Also, while I encourage the use of dictionaries (such as Word Reference, linked), I strongly discourage the use of online phrase translators (such as Google Translate). They don't force us to think about how something might be said, and often don't do a good job translating anyway. I don't care one little bit about proper grammar or spelling right now, but I do care about each student trying their best to communicate their thoughts in French.

Please try to have all pictures sent in and timelines completed by Friday October 24th. Monday October 27 at the absolute latest. Hopefully this gives everyone lots of time, even if you have some busy evenings coming up. We definitely want to have our projects up on the wall by the end of October.

Thanks for all your help!

Words of the Week

This week we are reviewing the sound ‘o’. This letter makes the same sound as in English. Think “so”. Again, for each new sound that we learn, I love the idea of using 3-D letters or flashcards to experiment with the vowel combined with different consonants. We won’t be looking at each consonant in depth the way we are vowels, so this is a great way to make sure your child has a good grasp of the whole alphabet. Don’t worry if your combos aren’t real words, we’re just working on combining sounds in this game!

orange, octobre, soleil, mot, dos

Bonus words: Noël, zéro

What have we been up to?

This week in math, we are moving on to a measurement unit that will cover things like months of the year, days of the week, telling time and measuring temperature. We have already started creating our own personal calendars with the right number of days in each month, and notes about important dates so that we can help ourselves be very organized.
It's always helpful to review counting skills, and we will continue coming back to this throughout the year. Last week we worked through some math centres where we had to estimate, then count by 2, 5 or 10 to figure out how many items were in the cup at each centre. I loved seeing students group the materials and then skip-count to find the total.

We also learned some cool tricks for remembering the tricky multiples of ten (quarante, cinquante, soixante, soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt-dix). Ask your counter if he/she remembers this!

Here's a good idea for practicing sounds and getting into reading. We have been working with short poems and finding the sounds we know within. For example, in this example, we circled all the 'a' sounds in green, the 'e' sounds in blue, and the 'i' sounds in purple. These sounds provide great jumping off points for reading words. In fact, today, many students were able to guess the word "bicyclette", just by isolating the 'bi' and 'cy' parts of the words. If you aren't keen on marking up your expensive books (I don't blame you), you can always do this just by going through the book in advance and sounding out the simplest words with your finger as a guide.

I hope you enjoy the various items coming home today. Our colour mixing art project, a Thanksgiving turkey decoration and a little souvenir from my trip. We pretended to be miners today and broke open a geode to see what it looked like inside. It was pretty cool. Then, each student received a special rock (that I attempted to identify) from Alberta.

I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with your families. Here is what we are thankful for in Area 24:

See you Tuesday!

PS: Heads up! The school days will be shifting after this PA day. Day 4 library will now fall on Mondays. Dictée remains on Tuesday. Gym days (2 & 5) are now Tuesdays and Thursdays. A "school days" calendar can be found on the Dewson Blog if you're ever unsure.

Research Project

At curriculum night, I mentioned that we were beginning to work on a project in social studies that would require some at-home research. In an effort to complete most of the work at school, we have already done lots of brainstorming together and have compiled lists of important places, important people, responsibilities and significant events in our lives. Students will be able to draw on these lists when putting together the pieces of their project. We have a few more things to talk about before students will begin assembling their project, and one of these is how we show respect for each other. Of course, we would be able to come up with a long list of ways to show respect for each other at school, but I'm curious if there are any special actions that are specific to your family or culture. For instance, in some countries, people do multiple kisses on the cheeks, in other places, people bow to each other. Often, looking at people in the eye is respectful, and in other cultures it is the complete opposite. I invite you to talk to your researcher about what your family does that is very respectful. They can bring these ideas to school for our discussion later this week.

You might also like to start looking through your photos with your child. It will help them start thinking about important people and events in their lives. We will eventually need a picture of your child with their special person (or people), and more for events on their time line. (Don't worry about sending anything yet, I'll let you know when we're ready.) The time line is the other piece of this project that will be done at home. It will need to be completed with your help, and I'll let you know when it's on the way home.

I hope this research provides some enjoyable moments of reflection for you and your family!
Tamara

Words of the week

I missed the kids the last 2 days! I was in Alberta for a family wedding, but was thinking of them the whole time. I know they were in great hands. We talked about significant events in our lives last week, and I told them that I was going to a wedding, so I'm sure they'll be curious to hear about my trip. Here's a picture they can have a look at. I wonder if they can figure out who everyone is...

We have more i words this week, and in addition, a few y’s, which make the same sound. Keep making flashcards with pictures and underlining. “Y” doesn’t look like it should be a word, but it actually is, though the rules around using it can get complicated. Your student will see it often used, and use it, in the common phrase “il y a”. Note: In the word “famille”, the final ‘lle’ are not really heard. They add a bit of a “ye” sound I guess, but for your practice purposes, it would be better to not pronounce them at all, then to add a regular L sound. :)

Words: y, bicyclette, fini, petit, famille

Bonus words: stylo, pizza