Dear families,
Happy May! The kids were excited to look at our May calendar - we have some exciting events coming up! I will make a list for you:
- This Thursday is our final workshop with X-Movement. The second one, last week, was really fun. I'm impressed with the participation and respect for the guest instructors shown by everyone in my class.
- This Friday, the 6th, there is a primary talent show. I know less than the kids do about how this is working, but I know we have some performers, so I'm excited to see it!
- Next Wednesday, May 11th, we have a very exciting BIG field trip to the Science Centre! This was booked on fairly short notice by the primary team and all 8 primary classes are going! A blue note with details came home Tuesday. We do need help, but space for volunteers is limited, so do send back the blue slip if you are interested, and I'll let you know if I need you. Please check your email for the permission form, which was sent electronically by the office. We can't go without this! Also, we are going by bus, and it is about a 40 minute ride each way. If your student is at risk of becoming carsick, please let me know and I'll make sure they sit at the front.
- At some point later in the month - hoping for May 17, we will go on a little walking outing to check out places in our community for another social studies project. No limit on how many parents can help on this one! I'll send home a note closer to the time.
- On Friday, May 20th, we will participate in the Dewson Dance-a-thon (the organizers must have known it's my birthday)! This is such a fun event, and an important fundraiser for our school. Students have brought home information on how to fundraise for this event. Please feel no pressure, every student will get to dance, but even small donations are appreciated. Envelopes are due back on the 20th.
- On Wednesday, May 25th, we will have our rescheduled walking trip to Dufferin Grove Park with the teacher from Forest Valley. No additional permission is needed for that.
- In addition to all that, of course this Sunday is Mother's day. We hope you love your bracelet - the kids were so excited to make them for you! Happy Mother's day to all the mothers and mother figures out there!
- In my previous two posts, I shamelessly advertised a show being put on by my little singing group, The Redeemers. Unfortunately, the venue double-booked, so our performance is cancelled for now. Apologies to anyone who had planned to come.
Last week, we did some sand art. We worked on ocean scenes (because, sand) and the kids did such a careful job getting the colours just where they wanted them. They followed my detailed instructions so carefully so that we didn't waste sand, or end up on a very colourful beach!
In math, we have done one final number sense problem for now, which students did on their own, and then self-evaluated using a simplified rubric. The strategies we learned in this unit, and the way we learned to show our work, will continue to help us in every math strand. We have already moved on to a quick unit on location, movement, and coding. We are reviewing French terminology, for example, à gauche, à droite. We are doing a few mystery activities involving following instructions to put things in the right locations, and we will also play a neat crocodile game to practice our directions with our bodies (ask about this next week!). I think our students are most excited about trying some coding activities on the laptops. There are 2 sites linked in Google Classroom that we will try in-class. Students are welcome to dig deeper into these at home!
The mapping component of our social studies unit works very well with what we are learning in math. We completed our city maps, and students referred to a checklist to make sure they included everything necessary to aim for level 4.
In language, we have continued to work on writing poems. Last week we learned about cinquain or diamante poems, which focus on adjectives again. Students helped me write one, and then tried their own about a family member, a place, an animal, or even a food they like. This week, we are tackling Haiku poems, which are usually based on nature. We are learning to count syllables in words so that we can follow the 5-7-5 formula. This skill will also help us catch more sounds when sounding out.
You know that we learn lots of oral poems in our class - we try to do some every morning. We have continued to add to our poem menu all year and know about 30 little poems and songs now! One of our recent additions is "Un petit lapin brun" - it's so cute, please ask your student if they can recite it for you!
In addition, I sometimes skip the book and tell an oral story at the end of the day. Students are used to me having a story 'in my head' and can follow along quite well without pictures. Recently, I told a really funny one called "Le lit de grand-mère". It's repetitive, which makes it easier to remember. Even having only heard it once, I bet your student could retell it to you!
I have been really incredibly terrible at posting our words of the week, even though we have been consistent about working on them at school. Since I last posted them, we have learned a few new French sounds... (I am posting a lot that we have reviewed at school - don't feel you need to review ALL of these words and phrases at once - it is just good information to have if you are learning along with your child and helping them with reading).
In November, I mentioned that there were other ways to make the sound ‘é’. They are ‘-er’ and ‘-ez’, but only when they fall at the end of a word, not within. You may want to play a sneaky game of -er v. -re. It is not uncommon, at this stage, to confuse the order of letters that form a sound, but ‘er’ and ‘re’ are two completely different sounds. Challenge your writer to find the mistakes in the words you’ve written (end some words with ‘re’ instead of ‘er’)!
déjeuner, février, chez, aller, manger, vous avez, visiter
Bonus words: vous allez, jouer
Next - that crazy E again! We’ve learned about the accent aigu (é), now we have all the others.
è = E-accent grave
ê = E-accent circonflexe
ë = E-tréma
Any of these accents help the e make exactly the same sound as the French ‘es’ sound. Think of “les” or, in English, “best”. “-et” makes the same sound when it’s at the end of a word.
When it comes to all these accents, it can be tricky to remember which one goes which way. I like to act them out. I see the accent aigu as a plane taking off, or a salute. The accent grave looks like a plane landing. The accent circonflexe is like a little hat! Encourage your child to show you which accent the word needs by acting it out with their body!
mère, père, tête, juillet, la chèvre, après, violet, forêt
Bonus words: chère, frère
Here are 2 more ways to make the ‘es’ sound. ‘ai’ and ‘ais’ make the very same sound. Included in this list are some I (Je) statements. Encourage your child to write 5 sentences beginning with each one. E.g., 1. J’aime le lait. 2. J’aime les chiens.
j’aime, lait, l’air, je vais, je fais, je sais, maison, mais
Bonus words: il fait, partenaire
And our final sound rule for this year! Rather than focusing on a sound that some letters create, we are focusing on a sound that is not created. Two months ago, we learned about the sound ‘en’. However, when an action word ends with ‘-ent’, the nt is SILENT! This will occur all the time in the 3rd person plural of most verbs. Pronouncing the ‘-ent’ is one of the most common reading errors made by French immersion students, even in the junior grades. This is a hard rule to explain, and I haven’t gone into conjugating with our grade 1s. I’m explaining that we need to think about whether the word is an action (something we do) and if so, we ignore the ‘nt’. To my delight, we are starting to get it!
Quick review: Les parents travaillent.
(not an action word - normal ☝) (☝ action - ignore)
les oiseaux chantent, les grenouilles sautent, les enfants parlent, les chiens courent, les chats dorment, les amis jouent, les parents travaillent, les feuilles tombent, les avions volent
Bonus words: ils peuvent, elles aiment
Now that we’re experts in tons of French sounds, we’re reviewing all our sounds within slightly more complex words. Each week, challenge your expert to figure out which sound is found in all the words on the list. Suggest that they circle all the ‘a’s in green, ‘e’s in blue, ‘i’s in purple (for instance). Here are the a, e, i and o words we've worked on so far...
pas, mars, avec, mal, calme, la balle, le canard, avril, le rat
je peux, je veux, j’ai peur, les cheveux, genou, mercredi, jeudi, jeu, cheval, *elle*
souris, gentil, fille, triste, tigre, lundi, mardi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche
gâteau, trop, le zoo, gros, grosse, tôt, gomme, je dors, pomme, colle
une rue, numéro, j’ai vu, bureau, une tortue, une fusée, une tulipe, j’ai bu, j’ai lu, turquoise