Hello parents,
For the last few weeks before Christmas break, we are going to tackle a couple new things in both math and language.
In language, we are going to take a break from sounding out our daily rhymes and poems and focus on letter writing. We have already written some nice notes to Mme Shyama to thank her for her help, so we will recall how we did that to create a success criteria poster for how to write a nice letter. This will help us do a really good job in our next letters. Ask your student if there is a family member they would like to write to!
In math, we are in the middle of our first measurement unit and still need to tackle time and temperature. Last week, we graphed the weather through the month of November (we had been tracking this daily). Today, we got to look at some thermometers to learn about how they work and practice reading the temperature. We took the temperature in our classroom, noted it, and then took the thermometers outside and watched the temperature change before our eyes!
I also want to tell you about a fun December initiative our class is taking on. I have created a kindness calendar for Salle 211. I'm sure many children (and certain teachers whose names rhyme with camera) have chocolate calendars at home. Instead of chocolates, ours has a kind task that we will focus on during each school day in December. Each morning, a student comes to the calendar to find the card and read the kind act we need to do for that day.
On Thursday we began by writing thank you notes to Mme Shyama on her last day. Today we went outside and picked up some garbage from our school yard. Please ask your child what our kind task is every day!
Words of the Week
This is one of my personal favourites. I think ‘oi’ is a fun sound to say. In English,
it sounds just like ‘wa’, as in “water”. At first, children sometimes
use the letter a when trying to
write this sound. That’s just fine, they are similar. From now on, we’ll help
them listen a little closer and remind them that there’s an even better way to
write that sound. Our sound poster in class has a picture of a bird and the
word oiseau. If you’re doing rule
posters at your house, looking at this one is an immediate reminder of what the
sound looks like.
Grade 1: oiseau, froid, moi, toi, voiture
Bonus words: roi, loi
Grade 2s are also adding the 'oir' and 'oire' sounds. This is the very same 'oi' sound, just followed by an 'r' sound. There are tons of words that end like this... avoir, bonsoir, savoir, boire, voir... I've chosen just a couple.
Grade 2: oiseau, je vois, froid, au revoir, histoire