Trash Theatre *Pictures added

Monday and Tuesday were our first two workshops with Crystal and Liam, from Trash Theatre. We learned that they like to use recycled and natural materials to create the props for improvized plays they put on, and this is what we will be doing together. In our first session, we got to learn about, see and touch some amazing natural wonders that Crystal and Liam have collected, such as owl pellets, fossilized dinosaur poop, turtle shells and a variety of animal skulls. Ask your nature ninja what other cool objects we saw!

In our second session, we used the cardboard you've sent in to begin making some masks and other props for our eventual plays. Many thanks to our grade 5/6 helpers for supporting us with the cutting etc.

We will continue our work with Trash Theatre next Tuesday and the performance will take place sometime on Wednesday (TBA).

Trash Theatre

Dear Salle 211 families,

We were very sad today to say au revoir to Joah, whose family is on a plane right now to the Netherlands for the remainder of this year. We sent him off with some kind words, homemade cards and a little treat. We hope to remain in touch with Joah until he returns next winter. Have a wonderful adventure, Joah!

As you may know, each class at Dewson has the opportunity to work with a visiting artist at some point during the year, and it's almost our turn!!
Over the next 2 weeks, we will have 4 sessions with Trash Theatre. I don't know much, but I hear it's something to do with creating art and drama using natural and recycled materials. I'm sure it will be very exciting!

I have two favours to ask with regards to these workshops.
1) We need each student to bring in a thin cardboard box for art purposes. A cereal or cracker box would work perfectly. If you have more than one sitting around, please send them in for others who may forget.
2) We need some help during two of the sessions. If you are available at one or both of these times, please let me know. We would very much appreciate the extra hands!
Tuesday January 31, 12:45-2:00 pm
Tuesday February 7, 12:45-2:00 pm

We will let you know when the final performance will take place (some time on Wednesday the 8th).
We would love to have an audience!

Pictures!

Wow! The skaters have improved SO much since last time!!
A big thank you once again to all our parent volunteers, and especially to my own dad, Mr. Mitchell (former trainer for my brothers' teams), who drove in from Bowmanville and led interested skaters in some drills. Ask your skater what they worked on!

This afternoon in grade 1 science, we tested a bunch of materials to see if they were absorbent or not. Some surprising ones were the cork and the styrofoam, which to some of us seemed like they should be absorbent, but it's a good thing they're not since their usual job is to contain wet things!

Grade 2s - don't forget your homework this Friday!!!

Skating

Hi parents,

Just a reminder that tomorrow (Wednesday) is our next skating excursion. We will leave promptly after attendance so please be on time for school.
Please send your skater with their skates and helmet in a bag that they can manage on their own. Students that are borrowing equipment from the school should also bring a strong bag to carry their stuff.
Please ensure that your athlete has a good breakfast before school - it takes a lot of energy to get there and back!

Thanks!

Expert Surveyors!

Dear families,

I apologize that I am SO late posting the words of the week. To make it up to you, I'll give you an extra weekend on next week's sound and words (see below). Let's try very hard to all have our mot de la semaine books here on Mondays so that my tiny tree-saving pieces of paper can be taken care of and not lost in backpacks.

I am also very late in introducing Mr. G, a teacher candidate from York University, who will be working with our class every Wednesday for the next couple months and then take over much of the teaching in April or May. Please make Mr. G feel welcome around our school!

This week, we began our final project in our data management unit and are about half way through working on it. Through this project, each student will show their ability to gather information, sort it in a tally chart and present it in two types of diagrams that we have learned about. Already, each student has planned their survey question, including 3 choices, and visited another class to gather information. Each student practiced knocking and asking permission and then asking their survey question in front of our class first, and then went off in independent groups of 2 to do the same in front of another, sometimes much older, class. I've heard from some teachers that our students did a very good job and spoke very well in French. I think many students were excited to have their clipboard and visit other classes, but we were definitely nervous too. Everyone should feel very proud of having done this!
Now, we are all working on our first diagram, a bar graph. This time, students are doing all the hard work that I've done for them in previous diagrams, including drawing the axes with a ruler. So far everything is looking very good. Please ask your surveyor what their question is (they can tell you in French), what class they visited, how they felt about that experience, and what their results were!

In language, we are now investigating procedural texts (or instructions). We all have experience following written instructions since we followed a cookie recipe back in December, but students also remember following instructions to build lego or block structures. This would be a great time to involve your student in following a set of written instructions if you are assembling something, or following a recipe at home. We have already written some instructions together (Comment recevoir un petit jeton) and we used this example in order to write out our success criteria for future instructions. We know that we need to have a title starting with "Comment", a list of the materials necessary to do the job, the steps, helpful drawings and any other useful tips or warnings (e.g., Quand tu as 5 petits, tu peux échanger pour un grand jeton.) Now, students are working on explaining another school procedure that is new in grade 1 and 2 with the goal of helping prepare the kindergartners for grade 1. Ask your writer what he/she is explaining and what the first step might be.

In grade 1 science, we are beginning to investigate the properties of different materials. These investigations will help us make decisions about what materials might be appropriate when we go to build something. This week, we have investigated different types of chairs and we did some centres to identify materials that are lisse and rugueux. Ask your scientist what those words mean! At each centre, there was one example of each. One partner (the student), closed their eyes and the other partner (the teacher), placed the objects in their hands so that they could feel for the difference. Ask your scientist what types of objects they felt and if any of them were surprising (e.g., we would think a rock would be rough, but...).

 

Words of the Week

We are now going to start increasing the number of grade 1 words per week until we reach 10.

This week we have the sound ‘ui’. We’re all familiar with this sound because of one of the first words we ever learned, “oui” (=yes). It sounds just like the word “we” in English.

It is common to see students write “je swi” for “je suis”. This is exactly how it sounds, and they’re using what they know about the letter w, so it’s all good. Because “je suis” is so frequently used, we’ll start correcting it in our writing now so that we get in the good habit of spelling it correctly.

Grade 1: oui, huit, puis, fruit, je suis

Bonus words: juillet, cuillère

Grade 2: oui, parapluie, nuit, puis, je suis

Words of next Week

The letter C can make three different sounds in French. On its own it can be either soft (‘s’) or hard (‘k’). The vowel that follows can help you decide which it is, but there are always exceptions. In general, a c followed by an e, i, or y is soft. A c followed by a, o, or u is hard. When a c has that funny little thing that looks like a 5 under it (called a cédille) it is always soft. You’ll see in our words with c-cédille that those c’s would normally be hard, but the cédille breaks the rule. This is a lot to remember, so I haven’t shared all this with the kids, they just know that ç makes ‘s’.

The third sound that c can make, when followed by h, is ‘ch’ - sounds like the English ‘sh’.

Grade 1: ça, garçon, glaçon, le chat, le chien, 

le cochon

Bonus words: la vache, le cheval

Grade 2: balançoire, garçon, glaçon, 

le cochon, la chèvre

Have a great long weekend!
Tamara

P.S. - You know that in my other life I'm a musician... In the past, I've let my students and families know when I had a solo coming up at church, and it's been a joy to see them there. This gig is a bit later in the evening, but it's going to be super fun. All doo-wop music from the 50s & 60s. Please share with anyone who might be interested!

Scholastic Ideas

Scholastic orders for January are due on the 19th. Please note the numbering system in the catalogues has changed, but the way you order books remains the same.
My apologies, I don't think I wrote a book recommendation in December. Here are a few cool things from this Club de Lecture catalogue:

- #5F5, Pat le chat - This cat has a dry sense of humour that I find hilarious... hopefully the kids do too!
- #11F5, Trio National Geographic Kids - Often, kids who aren't interested in working on reading stories can connect with non-fiction books about animals. We have some of these in our class and they are quite popular.
- #31F5, Livres-CD de Munsch - If there's anything these kids like more than a Robert Munsch book, it's getting to use our listening centre. Listening to reading is one of our literacy centres. If you'd like to carry this into your home, these are three fantastic books with CDs.

As I've mentioned before, there are usually some sets of small books that our students can read more independently - they are Nos. 15F5 and 19F5 (and are also non-fiction).

Welcome back!

Bonne Année, salle 211!

I trust everyone had a wonderful holiday. I've heard some stories and look forward to hearing more tomorrow.
We are diving right back into our work and reviewing our rules and routines. You may like to take the time to review our 4 class rules with your child since we have all probably gotten out of some of our good habits over the break. Here are our 4 very simple classroom rules again:
1) J'écoute (I listen and sit appropriately in order to do this without bothering others)
2) Je participate (I participate and try my best)
3) Je suis gentil (I am nice and encouraging toward myself, my friends and gentle with our classroom materials)
4) Je dis des mots gentils (I say kind words to myself and others)

Here is what's in store for the near future subject-wise:
In French, we are going to start this week on some procedural writing. I usually find this genre to be fairly accessible and fun since we can talk about recipes, instructions for a game or craft, and there is a specific structure to follow. Try to show your writer a set of instructions that they can follow (like we did with the cookies) for some extra reading practice!
Words of the week are continuing right away, and are listed below. At this point in the year, I usually start increasing the number of words per week since we have grown so much already as readers and know a ton of French sounds. I won't be doing this for grade 2s, but it might be a good idea to add an extra 5 minutes/day of French reading or sound word practice. We are ready for this!

In math, we are continuing for just a couple weeks with our graphing unit (my favourite!). Right now we are working on collecting information and representing it using either a pictograph or bar graph, both of which were introduced in December. Soon though, each student will get to plan their very own unique survey and represent their findings in an organized way as their cumulative project in this unit. Here are some students asking practice questions and working on diagrams before the break! Ask your grapher how to get a niveau 3 or even 4 on a diagram.

In science, grade 1 students will begin investigating materials and structures. We will talk about natural v. man made structures and perform many experiments to test the properties of different materials (e.g., heavy/light, floats/sinks etc.). There are tons of activities and experiments that relate to this but are easier done with just one or two kids at home, rather than with a group of 15 at school. The "Cardboard Boat Race" from Catch the Science Bug is just one good example of this and is linked to this blog in the Science Links list. I often just google "science experiments for kids" to find stuff like this. Hope you can carry this unit into your home!

In art, we will finally finish our Van Gogh paintings, which we had to set aside for all of December! I know that several students have been talking about this project at home - so cool for me to hear about! Thanks!

Other reminders and upcoming dates:

- If your student brought their indoor shoes home, they need to come back!

- Please label all winter clothing so that we can get them back to you if they go missing.

- If you received a slip from the library, keep searching for those books!

- Please return any borrowed classroom books ASAP so that we can keep sharing them.

- Report cards and interviews are coming up in about a month - there are a couple PA days in the calendar associated with this.

- We go skating again on Jan. 25 and Feb. 1 - all parents are welcome to join us at the arena, I'm covering TTC for the volunteers that I've been in touch with.

- We are beginning our second round of show-and-tells. You can look back in the archives to see when your student's next date is. I also put it on our monthly calendar in class.

- Our final big field trip will be on May 5th to the Science Centre!

I think that's pretty good for now. Take care!

Words of the Week

Before the break, we were introduced to the sound ‘en’, which can also look like ‘em’. Well, there are two more ways to make this same sound: ‘an’ and ‘am’.

“Maman” was a bonus word in September, but now we have the tools to be able to catch that final syllable. Again, search for this sound (and others) before starting to read a book. See if it’s in a word you already know or that you can sound out. That way, when you get there, you’ll be able to read more fluidly.

Grade 1: maman, dans, enfant, grand, janvier

Bonus words: le camping, avant

Grade 2s worked on all the 'en' sounds before the break, so this week, we will review another sound, which we all probably know well, but haven't focused on: un. We know it well as the number (1), but this sound pops up in other words as well.

Grade 2: un, lundi, brun, chacun, emprunter