What we're up to!

Dear families,

Happy March April break! 

This week has been a huge learning experience for me, but I've enjoyed getting to see the kids sans masks, introduce them to Wales and Sadie, and get a glimpse into your home lives also. I'm very impressed with our students technological abilities - I know you're helping, and I know they've done this before, but I appreciate how they stay muted, raise their hands, unmute and then mute again, do their best independently and let me know when they've completed a task. I hope they've enjoyed some of what we've done in the last 3 days. 

I probably don't need to tell you, but, we started with a little tour of my house, including counting up all the whales we could find (it was over double what I thought it would be.... yikes!). We did a float/sink science experiment at my sink, making predictions and noting our results. We even discussed why an orange floated with the skin on, but sank when it was peeled. So cool!

The grade 2s learned three new words describing the changes of state of matter and the grade 1s talked about how we conserve energy in our homes and learned the word renouvelable (renewable). Energy conservation is a great topic to continue discussing, especially as we have become so dependent on our technology right now.

In math, we continued some work we had started at school making bar graphs. We have practiced graphing class data a couple times now, and students are working on planning individual survey questions to ask the class. We are part way through this and will continue after the break, then graph this data as well. Looking ahead, after a bit more data management, we will look briefly at probability and then 3D geometry.

In French, we have been working on some procedural writing. At home, students completed their instructions for how to get ready for bed. There are some easy and fun ways to practice reading procedures at home, such as following a recipe or reading instructions for a game or lego set. I've also set our class up on RAZ-kids, which many of you are familiar with. Every student has a password image to access their account and they need my username. This and instructions are posted on Google Classroom, but I think most students have already logged in and started reading! Yesterday I showed students how to access their leveled French books and how to use some of the features, such as recording themselves reading and marking up the books with the pen or highlighter tools. Students earn stars for reading books and doing the quizzes and can use them to do fun things like creating their personal avatar. They seemed pretty motivated to get going on this which is wonderful! You will see they have access to English books as well, and unlike the French books, there is an audio option. Please encourage your readers to visit their French reading room daily!

On Pink Day, we wore our pink, read a story about a pink penguin who doesn't feel like he fits in, and discussed how we can help our friends if they are being teased about something at school. We drew pictures of a group of animals where one is different than the rest, and we plan to use these as inspiration for a story project later on.

We have tried to play some games together, eye spy and charades, which is a fun way to practice our oral French online. We finished off the week with a great dance party and I was so happy that the kids got to meet Wales. 

Whether or not we are back in school or online after the break, I would like to ask families to start collecting paper towel rolls and small boxes that we can use for geometry. Interestingly-shaped boxes are even better (e.g., toblerone boxes or J-cloth boxes). In addition, relatively flat items with texture, such as the mesh bags clementines come in, lids of large tins, corrugated cardboard etc. Please hang on to these recyclables! If we are still doing virtual, a few materials that students will need for some projects are white glue, crayons or pastels or markers, construction paper and thick white paper (at least construction paper thickness). These are not "essential" items, so I don't expect you to go out to buy them, but if you have these items at home that will be great.

One last reminder that tomorrow is the last day of the online book fair. Thanks to those that purchased books off our class' wish list - it is so generous. There are still a couple great read-alouds on that list, if you're interested. We read one of these gifted books, that arrived right before we were sent home, yesterday.

Wishing you a safe and relaxing week off from school,

Tamara