Dear parents,
Tonight is curriculum night for Dewson. I hope many of you are able to join the Zoom meeting hosted by our admin. If you miss it, no worries. I included most of our class info in my first day letter, but any questions you have about our program or routines, you can always ask me, and any operational or Covid questions, you can always call the office about.
The primary team put together a few slides that outline the curriculum this year, with a couple handy links for parents and I've included our class timetable. I will post this on Google Classroom for you to peruse at your leisure. Again, if you are not yet set up on Google Classroom and are having trouble, please email me. I can reset your student's password and that should help.
Mr. Lee also sent home a school "days" calendar and noted which days he has our class (days 1 & 3). This is important because the class will be outdoors for nearly all of this time. A little rain or snow or cold weather will not cause us to come indoors, so it is essential that students come dressed for success, especially on these days. Students may leave indoor shoes at school if that's ok with you.
I have to say that I am really enjoying working with this class. Your children are very thoughtful and engaged and they care about each conversation that we have. We have been talking a lot about how our recesses are going, and how we have a tricky zone this week - all concrete, not much to do, near the gates - and students were wonderful at contributing positive ideas for how we could use this space, and even brought some activities to school the next day. They are very much about problem solving with me and reflecting on why something may be a good or bad idea. Thank you so much for encouraging this thoughtful behaviour, it's lovely.
Words of the Week
This week we are reviewing the sound ‘e’. In French, this letter makes a different sound than in English. Think “book”. Again, for each new sound that we learn, I love the idea of using 3-D letters or flashcards to experiment with the vowel combined with different consonants. We won’t be looking at each consonant in depth the way we are vowels, so this is a great way to make sure your child has a good grasp of the whole alphabet. Don’t worry if your combos aren’t real words, we’re just working on combining sounds in this game!
le, je, de, me, te
Bonus words: ne, se
In language, we are beginning to read in French by finding the sounds and words we are learning daily in the morning message. Students enjoy coming up to circle letters with their personal whiteboard marker! We write regularly in our journals, answering a simple question by completing a sentence starter. We are also learning new poems and songs all the time, and have started making a picture card for each one to build our menu of poems we know! Ask your student to perform their favourite song or French poem so far!
In science right now, we are talking about the seasons. We have already sorted some of baby Wales' clothes into seasonal bins and talked and written about our favourite activities in each season. We will be doing some fun 3D art as part of this investigation, and talking about what animals do as well.
In math, we are working on number sense, and starting to associate the French number words (written) with the number or a representation (drawing or collection) of the number. Lots of practice and games. See if you can do all your counting in French at home, for instance when counting out your move in a board game.
In art, we are talking about colours (and learning that vocab as we go). We did a stunning colour mixing art project (one of my favourites) using paint, oil pastels in only the primary colours and bingo markers. Students also helped me make posters for each colour to put on our word wall.
Take care for now!
Tamara