Theme Day!

Thank you to all the moms and dads who volunteered to come to High Park with us next Wednesday. Can you believe 11 parents offered to help?? Wow, it's a new record! While it would be so nice to have 1 parent for every 2 children, it's just not possible in the Nature Centre space, and it's not what we paid for!
I sent home notes to those parents who I could not bring this time, but I do hope you can come next time and volunteer in our class soon. Please email me your availability. There is always something to do!
Thanks!
I will send home a paper reminder about our field trip on Tuesday. Be sure to check the note for last minute reminders.

Yesterday and today we had our 3rd theme day all about brothers. We were celebrating Markus and Lee who both chose their little brothers as their favourite thing on the first day of school! We started out by practising our partner reading, just the way brothers and sisters read together. Then, we worked on thinking of specific kinds of words (e.g., actions, places, adjectives) to fit into a mad lib about a brother. They were really funny!



This afternoon, we finished up our theme day by making growing patterns about brothers, doing a brothers v. sisters obstacle course, and reading a couple stories about brothers and sisters and things getting stuck in trees. Ask your listener how Léo tries to get his ball down from the tree and how Léa tries to get Léo down when he's stuck!

























































We also squeezed in our presentations for our completed seasons that we built (they look great), our november dictée (rubric to come Monday or Tuesday) and our final art workshop with Donnely. Our wooden sculptures are all painted and look fantastic. Donnely hopes to come back once more just so that we can admire each others' work once it's dry. Despite our aprons, some students did get paint on their clothes (me too!). We did try to sponge it out before it dried, but it will need special treatment if you want it to look like new again. I think most students remembered to wear old clothes, so hopefully it's no big deal.

Happy weekend,
Tamara 

Words of the Week & Centremania

E might win as the most complicated letter of the French alphabet. It can make so many different sounds depending on the accent or letters around it. In this case, when followed by ‘s’, it makes a more relaxed sound, as in “best”. Your student has probably already learned these words, but it might be a good time to go back to playing with moveable letters to play with different combinations.

des, les, mes, tes, c'est

Bonus words: il est, ses

We've had a lot going on recently in our class!

First of all, we are getting ready to start working at language centres. We will have 5 centres (partner reading, listening to reading, word work, writing work and meet with Mlle) that students will work at approximately once a week with their Club de Lecture. Every time that we do language centres, we will rotate so that each Club de Lecture gets time at each centre. On non-centre days we will continue with our established independent reading routine, during which time a Club may meet with me, and we may set up an additional calendar so that our listening stations are occupied every day. So far we have been introduced to the activities that happen at the "Jeux de dictée" centre and the "Centre d'écriture. Ask your students what activities they've practiced for future centre work!

In Science, we started working on a big construction project to show the four seasons in 3-D! Each group is working together to divide the seasons between them, put the seasons in the correct order and select materials to build each season. I saw some great teamwork today, and our math coach stopped by in the middle of our construction process and was very impressed with the scientists' creativity!

In math news, the children may have mentioned that I'm involved in a math course right now and as part of this, I'm taking an in-depth look at how math centres contribute to our learning. Yesterday we rotated through a series of patterning centres, some of which were tricky as the concepts had not been formally introduced. I was impressed with the problem-solving and teamwork I observed. It was fun to see the mathematicians making discoveries on their own or with the help of their teams. In particular, ask about the centre with the tree that starts out with 1 leaf, then 3, then 5 leaves. How many leaves did your mathematician predict the tree would have on the fourth day? Why? This was an introduction to growing patterns that we will continue to investigate this week.

Please remember to return the field trip permission form by this THURSDAY. Thanks!

Tamara

Weekend Update

Dear at-home doctors,

Once again, Dewson will be hosting a vision and hearing clinic just before the winter break. Whether you have your child's vision and hearing tested through this clinic, or by taking them for regular check-ups with your family doctors, I think it's a really important thing to do. It's surprising how many problems (e.g., reluctance to read, unsure of letter sounds, seeming to not understand instructions) can be solved simply after a thorough check-up. If you would like to take advantage of the opportunity here at Dewson, please return the form with payment by December 2nd. Thanks!

We had our 5th workshop with Donnely this morning and we spent our time adding more details to our wood sculptures that we started last week. Donnely brought lots of small interesting pieces of wood for us to choose from and she also encouraged us to raise our sculptures up using larger pieces. Ask your artist what they are building and if they've thought of a name for their sculpture. Next Friday is Donnely's last day with us and she asked us to be sure to wear old clothes as we will be using acrylic paint that is hard to get out once dry.

This afternoon we read an amazing book called Des Portes dans les Airs. We used our imaginations (and lots of great French) to describe what might be behind all the doors in the book. Thanks to an amazing program called "Un livre à moi", every student received their very own sparkling new copy of this book! Next week we will find time to draw and describe our own imaginary land, inspired by this story. I hope you enjoy it at home as much as we did here.

This afternoon we also took some time to review what a thermometer does and use one to measure the temperature outside. Unlike our previous experiment when it was surprisingly warm out, today we got to watch the "mercure" fall to just below 0 degrees. Ask your mathematician how they knew that it had to be 0 degrees or below - there was one BIG clue!

Lastly, as you know, every student wrote a goal for him/herself shortly after receiving the progress report. All our goals are very thoughtful and appropriate. Thank you for your help discussing this. Each student now has their goal written on a small paper taped to the corner of their desk. This will help me, and them, remember what they are working on. When I catch someone acting on their goal, I will add a star to their sheet. When they get to 10 stars, there is a small reward waiting for them. Ask your student what they are working on!

Words of the Week Etc.

This week we are reviewing the sound, ‘é’. E-accent aigu is like an entirely separate, extra, vowel in the French alphabet. You can think of the sound ‘ay’ in English, as in “May”. In addition to é words, I would like everyone to memorize the words “j’ai” (= I have, or sometimes, I am) and “et” (= and). They sound like é even though they don’t look like it, and we use these words all the time.

éléphant, bébé, école, et, j'ai

Bonus words: année, idée

This week, students are meeting their Club de Lecture. Every student in Area 24 is in a reading group with other students who share similar learning needs. Working with these groups allows me to help them with particular skills that they are ready to learn and at the appropriate challenge level. Each group has a colour name. Yesterday I worked with Club 'Bleu'. Today I worked with Club 'Vert' and tomorrow the plan is to work with Club 'Rouge'. We also have 'Jaune' and 'Violet' who will have their first meeting soon. Ask your reader if they have met their Club de Lecture yet and what activity they did at their meeting.

 We have begun our first science unit of the year on daily and seasonal changes. In the next several weeks we will investigate changes between day and night, the seasons and how the sun affects us. Our upcoming field trip will help us learn about how animals deal with the changing seasons. We began by working in our new table groups to make a poster of a season. Then, everyone presented one part of their poster in French.

Thank goodness I have observant students who tell me when I display our seasons in the wrong order! 

In math this week we are working on patterns. We already played some games together creating patterns with our bodies or with sounds (clapping). Students were able to lead us in creating new patterns and have started to label their patterns using the letters A, B and C. We took this a little further into colour patterns and shape patterns. Soon we will increase the challenge with patterns that have 2 attributes (e.g., colour and shape) and next week we will try out some growing and shrinking patterns. Ask your mathematician to create a pattern out of whatever material you have. Lego, cards, even cutlery would work. Ask your expert if he/she can explain the pattern using letters, or ask for a specific kind of pattern (A, B, A, B...).

This week there is also an emphasis on anti-bullying. Today we worked in groups to create skits demonstrating what a good bystander does to help a friend that looks sad. You may want to take some time to discuss what bullying is and what it is not. Ask your expert what a good bystander does! 

Continue reading for info about the field trip & volunteering ...

Field Trip & Classroom Volunteers

Dear parents,

It was so nice to meet with you all last week. It's great to know that the children have such great support systems at home and that you want to be involved in what we're doing at school. Thank you for everything you do! Please feel free to email me if you would like to meet again at any time.

A letter is coming home today about our first field trip of the year. On December 3rd we will be travelling to the High Park Nature Centre for a fantastic program on the changing seasons.
Please read over the information and return the permission form with payment by Thursday November 27th. On the permission form, you can indicate whether or not you would like to volunteer for the trip. Please note a few small differences in the information in the letter vs. the permission form info. I updated the letter to say that we will eat lunch upon our return to school, not at the Nature Centre as I had previously intended (they have another group coming right after us). Therefore, students do not need to bring their lunch, they will leave it at school. They may still bring a water bottle or juice box if they wish. We will ask our parent volunteers to bring a bag we can put them in. I'm excited about this trip! Two students have dropped their form without realizing it. If your child does not have their form tonight, please ask them to ask me for it tomorrow.

At the beginning of the year, many of you indicated that you are interested in volunteering in our classroom. There are always little things that you can do to help me and the students, from sharpening pencil crayons, to putting away work, preparing art materials and assembling Scholastic packages. Sometimes it's also nice to have a parent work with a reading group or listen to individual children read during our reading time in the morning. If you are still interested in helping out in the classroom, please email me your availability and I'll happily put you to work!

One last thing - in this wet, slushy weather, children frequently come in from recess soaking wet. There's nothing much I can do about wet socks and pants, and we can't have dozens of students calling home for dry clothes. We discussed how to deal with this weather, including stopping what we're doing if we're beginning to feel wet, hanging our outside clothes up to help them dry faster, and most importantly, bringing extra clothes just in case. A full change of clothes that we can keep on our hook is never a bad idea. Extra mittens and socks (even 3 pairs) are very helpful. We all know how uncomfortable it is to put wet clothes back on and we have 3 recesses a day to get through!

Thanks,
Tamara
tamara.mitchell2@tdsb.on.ca

A few amazing free time choices...

Construction begins

In our 4th workshop with Donnely this morning, we began construction of a wood sculpture that we will work on for the rest of our workshops. We began with some safety tips and we all wore goggles and gloves to protect hands and faces while we sanded down the rough edges of our wood pieces.

Next, we talked about balance and experimenting with different arrangements of the wood. We used carpenter's glue to attach all the pieces the way we wanted to. Our sculptures are now drying so that we can add smaller details next week. You can see the beginnings of the sculptures on our cupboards when you come for your interview.

  After recess, we had time to look back on our pastel and watercolour projects from last week. Each artist explained a little about their creation and we all got to appreciate each other's work. Donnely was very good at asking specific questions about each piece, and it was interesting how looking at our work brought up memories of other life experiences...

Today we also took some time to complete our November social skills challenge. This time, we worked in groups to complete a newspaper scavenger hunt. Each team had a reader, a timer and two more searchers. We used the newspapers provided for Remembrance day and found specific words, pictures, coins and dates. Every searcher is bringing home their own copy of this newspaper and would be able to point out some of the things they searched for.
During this task, students focused on working as a team, helping others or asking for help nicely and staying on task. Many children did well and were excited to get started. I did notice several students giving up easily when they felt the task was challenging. This might be something to talk about if you notice I've checked "usually" for Teamwork. The rubrics are on their way home tonight.

See you tomorrow or Friday!