Science Centre

Hello families,

We had a very exciting day at the Science Centre on Wednesday. We got to visit the exhibits, watch the IMAX movie Great Bear Rainforest and spend some time in the KidSpark hands-on area. My group bounced around to as many displays as possible, but there is so much more to see. I hope they tell you ALL about this exciting trip! BIG thank you to our parent volunteers for making the day go so smoothly, and Mme Potor for booking. All my pictures are at the bottom and apologies that they are mostly of my group. 

Last week, you may have noticed a very thin strip of bright pink paper in your student's pochette. This lists any overdue library books they have signed out. While we still have a few weeks left to sign out books, our librarian is starting to collect everything so that she can have a proper inventory. Please check if you have one of these tiny pink slips, and thank you for searching for those books.

Last week I also mentioned some coding sites linked to Google Classroom. We spent an afternoon trying them out at school, and students quickly became experts. In particular, Code.org is excellent for teaching beginning coding skills to kids. We did the Pre-Reader Express course, which is easy to navigate to, and you can set the language to French. The first level is a tutorial on how to drag, drop and connect blocks. Then, it gets into giving directions using a series of arrows. Each level gets a bit more difficult, with longer instructions, or the addition of a repeating block shortcut. Students are welcome to continue through these levels at home. Today, we worked on giving directions in a maze game using our bodies. I call the game "champs des crocs". Students have to navigate through a swamp with hidden crocodiles. As they advance, they explain where they are going using directional language (e.g., "à gauche"). If they step on a crocodile, we go on to the next person who has to start again. Everyone has to pay attention in order to use what we learn from each other (safe and unsafe squares).

In social studies, we are doing a few mapping projects this week, focusing on reading maps and noticing things like symbols and colours. 

While we are talking a lot about our local community, I thought it would be fun to do some art to celebrate our country. Students worked with watercolour to paint some detailed lanscapes from all over Canada. We talked about where each scene was from, and looked at photos of the real places. Students were excited to share if they had seen these places in real life. Ask your artist what Canadian landscape scene they painted, and what province or territory it is in.

Words of the Week

étoile, je vois, je dois, bois, j’ai soif, poisson, voilà, noir, au revoir, trois