Happy Tuesday!

Dear families,

I hope you had a wonderful long weekend in the beautiful sunshine! Thanks to the kids for wishing me a happy birthday last week and to all of you for the work you continue to submit. I appreciate it! 

As report card writing time approaches, it is really important that I have some work samples in every subject to refer to, though I will draw heavily on my observations and conversations with students as well. I'm at a bit of a disadvantage having had so little in-school time with our students, so every sample I can look at will help me assign a more accurate grade. If you know your student hasn't submitted much work, and also keeps their camera off or doesn't participate much, it would be helpful to try to work on this a bit!

I hope everyone is enjoying our drama workshops with Mme Daphney, from The Travelling Stage. I think she's a wonderful leader and is working hard to get us involved though we are not in the same space. We have one final workshop left next Monday morning. I would love to see even more participation! Also, Mme Daphney would really appreciate if we could have our proper names in the Zoom boxes so that she can call us by our names (some families have generic names, like "kids", or other things). 

I was really impressed with the art I saw happening this afternoon! We learned just a little about Van Gogh and other artists that shared his style or were influenced by it. We learned that he liked bold colours, thick paint and dramatic brushstrokes. We focused in on his Sunflowers and then did our own flower paintings using some of his techniques, such as spirals and bold colours. Bon travail les artistes!

Since I last wrote, we have almost completed writing our French stories. We worked on a page a day and just have the title page left to do. Immediately following this (tomorrow), I will ask students to begin presenting their stories to the class by reading them aloud. The stories are not long, but I hope students are proud of their work and are excited to show it off. I've asked students to practice reading their stories aloud, perhaps to their families or stuffed animals! 

We have added several French poems to our repertoire, including some long ones like, "Il etait une vieille dame" and "Je m'appelle Joe". I hope you've seen the poem recording assignment, if you weren't nearby when I was explaining it to the kids. I'm asking everyone to record themselves reciting two of our earlier poems while they listen to me using earphones. Detailed instructions are posted on Classroom. I've received several submissions already and have started putting them together - I think it will turn out great!

In math, we have been really practicing our numbers and many students have enjoyed doing skip-counting solos and being challenged to count higher or backwards! We are still reviewing this each day as well as practicing some addition and subtraction questions both with and without manipulatives. Financial literacy is it's own strand in the new math curriculum, which is why I've put a lot of emphasis on counting our pretend money and working in questions with money, such as our "class store" which I think we all found fun. It's definitely a good time to take your child to the store with you, if you can, and point out prices, see if they can add up how much a few things will cost, and talk about how you plan to spend or save money! This week we will get a little intro to some simple multiplication (as repeated addition) and division (through equal sharing). I hope we are able to apply some of our skip-counting and the addition/subtraction facts we worked on a couple weeks ago do these more complex problems, and I am also emphasizing the importance of showing a complete solution which includes numbers, perhaps a picture of the problem and even a number sentence. We have been keeping all this counting and number work fun by playing number bingo and estimating how many suckers are in my jar at the end of each math class. I sure hope we are able to get back to school so that I can give out all these prizes!

Before wrapping up science, we tackled a pulley-building construction project. It wasn't easy, but I saw lots of people with their materials prepared (thank you) and having some success with their machines! I've also loved hearing about how students have taken what we have been learning in school and applying it on their own time, not just in science, but also acting out poems or counting or continuing an art project. It's so rewarding for me, so thanks for sharing!

We have moved on to Social Studies and will tackle the local and global community. We have had several discussions now about jobs, what people need to live and what services we rely on in our communities. We made a long list of important places and will be doing a project this week where each person will investigate one location a bit further. After assigning the different places tomorrow, we will need your help to go for a community walk and perhaps taken a photo of our location (e.g., the library). Then, students will either draw it or make a collage of it, and I will help them consider the service this place provides and what the consequences would be if it were no longer there. As Covid has caused so many of our small business to close, this is a very real concern right now, and maybe something to help your child consider for this project. Be sure to ask after school tomorrow (Wednesday) what their assigned location is!

Friday afternoons (in online school) are for fun! I have enjoyed coming back after Mme Hutchinson's time to play games or dance with the kids. The last two weeks we did online puzzles together, with all participating students able to move pieces around at once! Check our weekly plan to see the fun day we have coming up this Friday!

Take good care!

Tamara

Joyeuse Fête des Mères!

Happy mother's day to all our mothers, grandmothers and mother figures! We made you a card on Friday and hope it was safely delivered on Sunday!

So sorry for the confusion this morning. Our first supply teacher must have cancelled last minute without notifying me, and I was on my way to our appointment when I got the email from the new teacher asking for the links so it took me a while to get it sorted out... I know you couldn't get in until she did - hopefully you found some useful links on Google Classroom to pass the time. My apologies. 

I expect your student has told you, I've had an exciting week at home. Last Sunday (hours before my vaccine was originally scheduled) I got news that there was a positive case at my son's daycare. We are fine - W had his second test this morning - but daycare had to close for 2 weeks and he needed to isolate just in case. So, he's been home with me and will be this week as well. I've gotten a glimse into your lives trying to manage work and childcare! Fortunately, it hasn't been too bad - he's an excellent napper - but the kids have been putting up with some background noise and I've had to dash off to change a diaper here and there. Actually, they are so sweet with him and have enjoyed seeing him on camera as much as I've enjoyed sharing him. But I really appreciate their patience and yours!

Last week was Children's Mental Health Week, and we celebrated this throughout the week by playing games such as emotions Charades, where, rather than acting out an animal or action, students had to show an emotion on their face and we had to guess how they were feeling and why they might feel that way. We discussed why reading each others' feelings is important and several students identified that if we are paying attention to how others feel, we can help them feel better. We made little emoji feelings booklets naming just a few of the long list of feelings we identified. Being in tune with our own and others' feelings is important every day - not just one week of the year - and I hope when we are back together at school, we will continue looking for these cues and supporting each other when we can.

Last week in math, we finished up working on measurement. We learned how to use a ruler to measure in centimetres and talked about when metres are a more appropriate unit. We also learned about measuring capacity by counting how many scoops various containers could hold, and mass by predicting which would be the heaviest and lightest items and weighing the selection using a scale. 

We are going to begin our number sense unit now. I learned from Mme Tatiana that students have previously worked on their number recognition and counting skills for the lower half of the value range for each grade, so we will be working a bit more with the higher numbers. To begin, I've posted some number grids for students to complete and refer to as we practice counting together, and hopefully individually. I've also posted a few materials that might be helpful, or make working with numbers more fun. A deck of cards, dice, Monopoly money, Canadian coins and bills... We need lots of practice and don't want it to get boring! This is a great month to play lots of games that involve numbers and counting - such as Snakes & ladders, Dominos, Monopoly and Uno! Try to use French number names as you play! Also, just for fun, I've suggested that if students own an article of clothing with a number on it (like a jersey or "you're #1" sweater) that they wear it on Tuesday! Later this week we will also start working on filling in an addition & subtraction grid. I'm all about using manipulatives to help us solve number problems, but it's handy to have some of the basic facts memorized (for instance, 5+5=10). Once we do the hard work to fill in our grids, we should keep reviewing it so that in the next part of the unit, we have a few addition/subtraction facts safely stored.

We applied our measuring skills to science last week as well, using a ruler or tape measure to track how far our wheeled toys rolled down the ramps we built. We had a lot of fun with this activity, raising our ramps little by little and seeing that our cars went further each time. I didn't leave a ton of time for discussing the actual purpose of the ramp as a simple machine, but in quickly showing a picture of a ramp built for my grandfather's walker, students very quickly explained where they have seen ramps in the community, who they serve and why they're important. On Thursday, it was so fun getting outside (or close) for science! We talked about natural and man-made structures that we could see, and looked at the materials around us. We have two more simple machines to talk about in grade 2, and a few more inquiries into materials and structures and plan to wrap this up this coming week, culminating with a neat virtual field trip around the world this Thursday.

Speaking of Thursday - I've had to adjust our weekly schedule already as I've learned of our second X-Movement workshop in the morning. There is a second, full-school X-Movement workshop that afternoon, but I don't know that all of our students will want to do it, so I'm going to go ahead with our regular science class - which is a very exciting field trip - at the same time. Students who choose to go to the X-Movement workshop will be able to do the virtual tour later during independent time. 

This afternoon we began a story writing project which we will work away at each day for a few weeks. I'm skipping some of the written planning steps that we would do at school because it's so difficult to help individual students when we are all writing different things, but, I have created a template that should prompt us to consider all the story components we need. We are also going at it a bit backwards, beginning with some illustrations today. Once we have our story told in drawing, I think it will be easier to put into words - less wondering what comes next. Finally, I suggested that students base their story on their drawing that we did way back in April on Pink Day - an animal that doesn't fit in with the rest. Today we completed drawings of our main character, where he/she lives and the problem with what the main character wants to do. We helped each other brainstorm ideas for this!

Last week we continued adding to our oral poems, and also added the French chorus of a catchy popular song "C'est la Vie", which I've posted in Classroom. The verse lyrics are in Arabic, but I've found a French translation that we can learn - but the whole song is immediately fun to sing to, clap to and dance to!

We also re-told the musical story from the previous week, "Pierre et le Loup" - but this time, instead of the symphonic accompaniment by Prokofiev, we brought our own musical instruments and created our own accompaniment! We assigned each instrument that we had to a character (e.g., our maracas were the duck) and those students could play when their character was in the story. Our "orchestra" did a great job of playing when it was their turn, and stopping for the story to continue. We got to hear each character, just as we did in Prokofiev's version. Really neat and fun activity!

Thanks for helping your reader prepare for their conference with me. Students had clearly chosen and practiced their book and I got through almost everyone. We will definitely take some time now to review or learn some more French vowel combinations. I'd like to read with everyone again soon, but next time I will choose the book!

I also wanted to share that I finally mailed our cards to Mme Speid - we made these at school the first week I was with the class. She was very touched and shared a picture of baby Victor surrounded by the cards!

Have a great week!

Tamara

Happy May!

Dear families,

I hope you've had a lovely weekend. I'd like to give you a little recap of the past week and what's upcoming. But first, thank you so much for the submissions of work that I've received so far. I've started to add due dates to previously completed assignments in all subjects in the hopes that I'll be able to look at some of our student's work up close. I won't ask for everything to be submitted, but if you could have a look for things that have a due date (they should alert you) and upload photos of those items for me, I'd really appreciate it. I know that for work completed by hand this often involves an extra step of getting the photo from one device to another, but I really appreciate your efforts to help me keep the work organized and in one place. That said, if email is much easier, please don't hesitate to send images that way.

This coming week, as you know, I have tried to schedule a conference with each child to read a book from RAZ kids. I'm really looking forward to this, and if this format works, hopefully we can do more conferencing during independent time. Please ensure that your child has chosen a book and knows what day and time to come back to the meet (I will remind them as well). This week we may also try a new Google Meet feature during French or Science time: breakout rooms! It will take a little fiddling the first time, but should allow me to work with individual grades in science, or students working out of the same workbook in French. Thanks in advance for any support you provide with this, like everything!

You've probably noticed some routines emerging in how our days go. Each morning we begin the day with our message, which allows us to review sounds and vocab. After this, we have been working on building our repertoire of oral poems. We began with "Un petit lapin brun" and have since added 3 more poems with actions which we review daily. These are amazing for oral language and vocabulary building, and there are so many drama, writing and art extensions that we can do, in time. We are working on reciting our poems in unison, unmuted (!!), so that maybe one day we can perform one on the morning announcements! At some point each day I tell a story, but last week my stories weren't always from a book - once the story was completely oral, where students had to listen and imagine. Another day, the story of "Pierre et le Loup" was told really by music, with me narrating overtop. In this work by the composer Sergei Prokofiev, each character is represented by an instrument. So, for example, when you hear the strings, that means Pierre is in the story. Ask your listener what instrument was used to represent the little bird! 

As you know, in French, students should have completed their personal recipe assignment - the last procedure we will write - and it is one of the assignments to turn in (just the writing side is fine). We will take this week off from a large writing project and do some work from the books I sent home. I would like to start another larger writing project soon though - we will brainstorm, plan and write stories! 

In math, last week we tackled some geometry and spatial sense, reviewing 2D shapes and finding them within our 3D boxes, which we then got to build something creative out of. We played lots of "Qui suis-je?" and some students took turns giving the clues describing the characteristics of 2D and 3D shapes. Next week we will continue on with a variety of measurement tasks beginning with non-standard units, into centimetres and metres, and finally measuring mass and capacity. Please check our Google Classroom Stream for special materials and the math pages that will be needed this week!

We are about half way through our look at Structures and Materials (grade 1) and Simple Machines that help us Move things (grade 2). Last week, we all participate in a few simple machine tests involving the wheel and axle and the lever. We tried moving a heavy object using just a finger, and then tried again using marker "wheels" and a ruler as a lever. Most of us found that it was easier with the help of a simple machine. Many of us also tried to flatten playdough with just our hand and then with a rolling pin, another great example of a wheel & axle. This coming week, we will investigate other machines including the inclined plane (ramp), and grade 1s will continue investigating the properties and uses of different materials. Note that this Thursday the weather looks nice, so we will attempt to do our science outside. We will go on a field trip to our back yards, balconies, porches - if those aren't options, let's open a window! I know this might be an internet/glare/battery life problem (plan ahead!), but it's just a half hour that we can hopefully chat about natural v. man-made structures out in some fresh air - no worries if it's not possible where you are.

You may have wondered where Social Studies is hiding. It is always my preference to alternate between science and social studies so that we can focus fully on each one, but I'm excited for some of my ideas when we make the switch in a couple weeks!

In art, last week we had a super quick tutorial on cubism, looking at works by Paul Klee and Picasso. We learned that this style includes the use of shapes (perfect with our math), colour and taking things apart and putting them back together in a kind of disorganized way. We tried to recreate a painting by Klee by designing a face in the same style. Students chose between two options for each feature, which I showed them, but added their own personal touches as well. They looked amazing to me through my screen but I would love to see close ups! 

Here are (finally) our texture collages from a couple weeks ago - I hope I didn't miss any!

I think that's it for now. As always, please check our Google Classroom stream regularly as I do make an effort to post our schedule and material lists ahead of time, and sometimes I make adjustments depending how things go or when I learn of special events. One thing to note for this week is that I've thrown in a theme day on Friday (crazy hair/hat day). Trying to keep things fun - can't wait to see what we come up with! One final favour - if I can ask you to encourage your student to have their camera on when possible. I don't like to ask or pressure the kids, as I completely understand that there are tons of good reasons why cameras might be off, but it's so nice for me to know I'm talking to humans, and also important for me to be able to observe and have conversations with all students, especially since I'm not collecting nearly as much written work before report card season. Merci!

Take good care,

Tamara