This Thursday is the big Festival! I'm looking forward to it and I'm sure that we will have a ton of fun. The one tricky part of the day for me is pick-up. I am still obliged, as I am everyday, to make sure that each child has been safely collected by a caregiver. On Thursday, this will not be able to take place under the overhang and it's always a bit confusing with the Festival going on around us. Here's what needs to happen:
1. If your child normally takes the bus and will not be, please write me a note. Without a note, bus kids will get on the bus!
2. If someone else (someone other than the people I see everyday) is picking up your child at 3:30, please send me a note.
3. The kids will be allowed to start enjoying the Festival at 2:30. There will be plenty of teachers on duty outside, but we will not attempt to keep classes together. I will clearly explain that when students hear the 3:30 bell, they must stop what they're doing and run to our meeting spot in the basketball court area to meet me, and you.
- Please reinforce the importance of listening for this bell and coming to the meeting spot right away. We always end up having to search through the Festival for those 2 kids that didn't come, and it can be stressful until we find them. Let's try to avoid this.
- Please plan to meet us at 3:30 in the basketball court area rather than under the overhang, and pass this on to anyone else who is picking up for you.
4. If you are at Dewson sooner than 3:30 and are happy to be responsible for the care of your child, you can certainly let me know earlier than 3:30. Please find me outside (I'll be wearing a very snazzy orange duty vest) and let me know that you've found and assumed care of your child so that I don't worry about him/her at 3:30. (It's a good idea to do this if you will be manning a game station at 3:30 and are happy to let your child continue to play.)
5. Unclaimed children will be brought to the office at 3:45 like always. Unclaimed backpacks will be at our meeting spot - don't forget to pick these up before you leave!!
Sound like a plan? Questions? Just email me or call the office.
At school we are busily writing our rough drafts of our stories, learning to measure surface area and getting ready for our open-house. Last week with our reading buddies, 9 of us had the chance to use our new iPads. We tried out a few apps that support French literacy: Lire-Tôt, Jeux pour lire and A+ Spelling Tests (with high frequency word lists that I created). Ask your student if they've had their first turn yet!
The grade 1 scientists have been looking deeper into living things. We've identified the main parts of the human body, sorted our food into the food groups and discussed which groups we need more or less of, we've considered where animals, plants and humans fall in the food chain, we've talked about why animals can become endangered, and we are watching eagerly as our bean seeds turn into quickly growing plants. Just a little more to cover in science this year... We're almost done!
Words of the Week
Grade 1: This week we are learning how to conjugate regular -er verbs in the present tense, focusing
on the first person only (je). This
is one of the structures that our students use regularly. I’m not going into a
lot of detail with students (e.g., which verbs this rule does and does not
apply to) - as they learn more about conjugating, they will learn when this
rule does not apply. For now, we will
begin simply by trying to remember that when you say (and write) “Je [fill in
action word here]...”, that action word usually ends with an e, even though we don’t really hear it.
A fun game this week might be a Wheel of Fortune or Hangman
style game. Let your student be in charge of making up short sentences
beginning with these words, and you guess the letters - making sure they
remembered the final e!
E.g.: _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
J e c h e r c h e m o n c r a y o n.
je marche, je cherche, je chasse, je me lave,
je
nage, je parle, je regarde, je vole,
je donne, je joue
Grade 2: We are extending on the grade 1 challenge and adding ALL of the "people" (not just "je") for regular verbs that end in -er (e.g. parler, sauter, écouter). I am highlighting the endings of each verb because they stay the same for most verbs with the -er ending. What I'd like grade 2s to do is write out the verbs Sauter, Travailler and Écouter in the format that I have used for Parler, using the correct ending for each person. That's 1 verb/night.
PARLER SAUTER TRAVAILLER ÉCOUTER
je parle
tu parles
il/elle/on parle
nous parlons
vous parlez
ils/elles parlent