You're Invited!

Dear Salle 113 families,

First of all, Happy Father's Day to all our dads and father figures! We hope you loved the acrostic poem we wrote about you!

As I mentioned on Google Classroom, you're invited to TWO things!

Please join us for the announcements on Wednesday and Thursday morning, 9:00 am, for the DEWSON WORLD PREMIERE of our poem video projects! They turned out great and will be yours to keep after the "premieres"! Big thanks to my choir friend, Will, for putting these together - he has way better skills than me!

I have also scheduled a series of short, optional, park meets for after school this week and next. The first was today and I already got to see several students. It would be nice to see everyone again before school wraps up, and of course, I'll bring our prizes! Please check the plan for the last 7 days to see when and where these are happening!

This week we are wrapping up the last odds and ends that we didn't finish last week and mixing in lots of fun. Highlights will be "Coding Game" independent time on Wednesday, movie afternoon on Friday and a field trip to the Aquarium next Monday! This Thursday, the kids are running the show. I've collected ideas from many students for what they'd like to do or learn and we will try to squeeze it all in! If your student wasn't at school on Friday or Monday, or they didn't have an idea yet, they can let me know tomorrow and we'll work it into the plan! We will end the day with a talent show, so if your child plays an instrument, does gymnastics, dances, can perform a magic trick, tell a joke - ANYthing - they can practice up and perform for us Thursday!

I will ask for you to help your child turn in ONE last thing, and that is a letter to their next *mystery* teacher that we will write on Wednesday morning. I do this every year, and I know teachers really do love receiving these cute letters from their future students so that they can get to know them a bit before they meet. I will pass these on as soon as the teachers and classes are confirmed!

A few of you generously purchased books for our class during the book fair before schools closed. We were able to read a few of these early in our online learning, but I've just received a couple more (merci Freya!). We will read this great book this week (celebrating Indigenous culture and including words in Cree), but unfortunately we won't have time to try the recipe at the end. Here is the recipe for Bannock, a bread made in many Indigenous cultures. I hope you'll try it, as I will!

Some students have asked about the book package that I sent home in April. The workbook and any copies are yours to keep, and I am happy to help students who want to try activities during independent time this week and next. The books and texts need to be returned to school. You can either bring them to the park (if you're coming to meet me) and I'll return them, or you can hang on to them for the summer and give them to your teacher in September. Thanks very much!

I expect you'll be receiving your report cards electronically sometime end of this week or next. I always like to mention a few things to keep in mind at every report card time:

1. Please celebrate your child's accomplishments! Everyone is doing lots of things really well!

2. I think working on our learning skills is really important. It's hard to improve other areas without strong learning skills, so please do read these comments with your child. 

3. Together with your child, please pick ONE thing to work on and set a goal! Whatever they pick, work a tiny bit on it EVERY day - just like brushing your teeth! This could be a learning skill or part of a subject area (e.g., French speaking). 

4. Please don't compare with friends or even siblings. Everyone has different strengths and comparing never makes either person feel good in the end. 

5. Let's remember that this report is a reflection of just a small moment in time, which was far from normal. This year has been topsy-turvy, especially for our class. For most other classes, teachers have had a lot more in-class time to refer to. I can only comment on what I've observed in the last 3 months, which has been almost entirely online. For some, online learning was a great experience, for others, not being in the room with the teacher was a challenge. I've tried to take all this into account in writing my comments and determining marks, but I still wish I'd had more time in-class to provide a more well-rounded picture. Hoping that next year is back to normal!

I want to say thanks for all your support over the past few months. The messages I received from so many of you were incredibly encouraging and kind. I don't think many more things could have happened in my personal life during these short 3 months (baby being sick on my second day back and needing to have my dad drive an hour in at 7am so I could work, isolating with baby for 2 weeks while teaching, endless covid tests, surgery, my grandfather, urgent house issues... after a while you just have to laugh!). But through it all, I've really enjoyed the time spent with our class and the new-to-me challenge of planning for online! I wouldn't want to do it indefinitely, but I think we made the best of it! I'm looking very much forward to seeing the kids again in September in their new classes and I am excited for them to have a more normal year - fingers crossed!

If I don't see you at the park or online, have a wonderful, relaxing, summer! You've earned it!

All the best, Tamara

(Decorating our acrostic poem for papa... until he ate the marker...)

Please submit Art for Pride!

Dear families,

Thank you for your thoughtful messages after my grandfather's passing. He was almost 97, so while I am of course sad, I am mostly feeling gratitude for his incredibly long life, and that he got to spend time recently with Wales (whose first name is actually Donald, like his great-grandpa). It's nice to be back now focusing on our class!

First, I need to ask your help with another initiative (poems are almost ready and I can't wait!). Some lovely teachers at our school are putting together a school-wide art project in celebration of Pride month. We did some black and white artwork for this project and this work needs to be submitted directly to those teachers. There is a Google Form and instructions posted on Classroom. Please be sure to get a good quality image and submit this ASAP so that we can be sure everyone's art is included! Many thanks! On Wednesday we discussed the messages of acceptance and love behind Pride month and gave examples of all shapes and sizes of families that we may already know. 

In addition to Pride, June is National Indigenous History month. Last week, after one of our own students brought it up, we had a repeat orange T-shirt day (there would have been one earlier in the year) and discussed what the word Indigenous means, what Residential Schools were, and what some of the issues were. We listened to Phyllis Webstad (the woman behind the orange shirt story) speak briefly and also listened to the book she wrote about her experience. We did some animal art (hopefully using the pastel and watercolour "resist" technique) in recognition of how important animals are to Indigenous culture, often the centre of stories passed down through generations.

Last week, we began trying out different types of poems. We used our ever-increasing bank of daily poems to create shape poems, where the words are written in the shape of the subject (e.g., a moon, for "La Lune"). We also tried writing colour poems, where we make basically a short and sweet list of items that match the chosen colour. This week, we used colours to begin working on acrostic poems (since it's a bit easier to think of nouns, rather than adjectives). However, we are moving on to learning a bit about what adjectives are, and the masculin and feminine French forms, so that we can write acrostic poems about people! We are still doing our best to sound out most words on our own. Very exciting! Please help your child submit their favourite poem this week!

I like to read a story each day, but sometimes I've gone off-book a bit and told oral stories. Twice now, I've asked students to help me re-tell an oral story called "Reine des Abeilles" by being the characters in the story and performing their dialogue. Maybe we will try this once more to encourage others to take a turn acting - we know this story very well now, please ask your student to tell it to you!

We got into some algebra last week and this leads us nicely into coding! We talked about how this is basically learning to explain how to get a desired outcome in computer language, small step by small step. We have started with puzzle-like activities that have us considering each movement on a grid and providing simple instructions. There are lots of great coding games and sites, and I'm sure many others that your kids already know of! My suggestions are linked in Google Classroom in the Math folder for the kids to play again if they like.

In Social Studies, hopefully you saw our "Projet sur un Pays" assignment that we've been working on. Most grade 1s are learning more about Canada, with me. Grade 2s each chose a different country from a list and have been working on gathering information about their country using some maps, info slides I prepared, and by watching some French videos on the Idello site I posted. Ask your student how to say "Hello" in the language of their country! I'd like for all grade 2s, and any grade 1s who wish, to present some of their findings on Thursday, so if they haven't completed their research yet, they should definitely stay to work with me during independent time! 

As part of our Local Community investigation from a couple weeks ago, we did a big mapping project where we cut out lots of buildings and got to design our own city, with essential services, places to live and places to work and play - all connected by roads of course!

Well, we're counting down to the end of the school year. I have lots of fun ideas for the last week and a bit of school, including perhaps a way for me to get all these estimation and Bingo prizes to the kids, so please be sure to read over next week's plan on Google Stream when it is posted.

Take care,

Tamara

Last Call for Poems!!

Dear salle 113 families,

Thanks SO much to the many students and parents who have sent me their poem recordings for "La Lune" and "Le Serpent". I have begun assembling the clips and I'm excited to share the finished product with you. A handful of students have not sent me any recordings yet, and I would feel badly if they were upset to not see themselves in the completed videos (which will be a nice momento of this virtual learning time in our lives). If your student would like to participate, please send me the clips by end of day SATURDAY (June 5th). Thanks!

We learned even more poems in the last few days, and we have also begun our final writing unit of the year - poetry - by writing out some of the poems we know so well. For this writing project, our challenge is quite different than in the past. Our students have become accustomed (with all their various teachers this year, I think) to coming up with ideas and then copying the words off the board. I continued in this manner for our story project, helping students get their ideas down on paper. Now, however, we already have the ideas and we know the French words! So, our challenge is to sound them out independently. I modelled this for students, making several (purposeful) mistakes with my letter choices - for example, the letter C and S can both make the 'sss' sound sometimes, so we just have to make our best guess. I want students to feel confident as writers and not feel that they can't do it or need to check every letter with me. Therefore, I'm giving only encouraging feedback during writing time, and teaching a few new sounds here and there. I have been BLOWN away with how much students have enjoyed this writing project and have really wanted to do MORE and read their work to the class. I'm so happy they love it! We might need more poem templates... I've asked students to submit at least ONE poem they wrote this week.

Last week, most students presented their stories to the class. We discussed how to be a good presenter, by speaking with a strong voice, using expression to reflect the feelings of the characters and showing the pictures. We also discussed how to be a good audience member, and we have given each other a LOT of positive feedback. I was very impressed with all of our presentations and everyone looked so proud to share their work! Bonne lecture mes amis! This week and next, I have another reading conference with each student during independent time. Please be sure to check the schedule posted in Classroom.

In math, we have been continuing to practice drawing and writing out addition and subtraction questions, and grade 2s have been encouraged to turn a repeated addition into a multiplication. We have also talked about dividing through fair sharing, and we will touch once more on a little intro to fractions. We are taking our number sense unit in a bit of a patterning/algebra direction now. Today we used a "math machine" which applies an operation, or set of operations, to a sequence of numbers, creating a brand new pattern. I'm excited for some algebra next week when we will have to fill in missing numbers, or find the secret code! I've asked that students turn in at least one assignment from this week - they can pick their favourite, or the one they feel shows their best work.

In social studies, students should now have completed their "Dans ma communauté" assignment, which was to reflect on the importance of one place in their immediate community. The writing page should be submitted. I provided a bonus assignment about a place in your neighbourhood which has closed due to Covid, and the impact that has had on the public and the people that worked there. Even if your student did not have time to complete this assignment, please point out businesses that have had to close as you walk in your neighbourhood, and help your student consider the ripple effect of this. Next week, we will have another independent project considering our Global community.

Thanks for your help during art yesterday making playdough! That was so fun! I loved seeing the kids in the kitchen helping with the preparations, and then building with their playdough. Your playdough should keep in an air-tight container for a few months. It's a great material for practicing letter formation, and you can challenge your student to spell syllables or words or build poem illustrations out of playdough letters!

Last Friday afternoon was also such fun, watching Ernest et Célestine together. I know many families made this a real event with popcorn and little siblings! Ernest et Célestine (the movie) is a wonderful story of an unlikely friendship with beautiful animation and French language. It is also a TV show with lots of episodes on YouTube!

Don't forget that this Friday is a PA Day for students! Enjoy another long weekend!

Tamara