Goal Setting & Interviews

Dear parents,
Today, you are receiving our Initial Communication of Learning (Progress Report). I hope you enjoy reading the report card with your child, celebrating all of their accomplishments, and talking about next steps. We will do a small goal setting activity this week, so I would like to ask for a favour in preparation for this. If you could please talk to student about one thing they are doing very well already, and then help them pick one thing that they could work on improving right away (just one!). It can be very simple, like packing their bag on their own, or tidying up quickly when asked. We will write down our goals, and begin earning stars for doing them!

Yesterday you should have received your interview time confirmation. It was a very small green slip. Please let me know if your time no longer works for you, and we will rearrange. Students are invited and encouraged to come with you, this way, they can show you some of their work and be part of our discussion. Please do your best to be on time, and I will do my best to stay on time. I know you have other places to be!
While you are visiting, here are some things you might want to do...
- Check out the book fair in the library
- Check below, in and above your cubby and check the lost and found (the clothes line in our hallway) for items you can take home
- Check that your extra clothes bag is still complete
- Admire our leaf art that we made a while ago. We collected leaves, made rubbings using wax candles, and painted over with watercolours.

Thanks again to the parents who came on our library outing yesterday. We listened to some stories about giants, including a puppet show of "Jim and the Beanstalk"! Afterwards we went over to Fred Hamilton and had perfect weather for some fall outdoor play.

Jour du Souvenir

Dear families,
First a few reminders...
1. Monday is our library outing, so please make sure students are dressed for being outside no matter what the weather.
2. Report Cards come home Tuesday. I haven't gotten a hold of all your other teachers yet, but I will confirm your interview times on Monday. I think I've been able to accommodate all requests.
3. Don't forget to send your green activity bags back Monday!

We observed Remembrance day today with a beautiful assembly in the morning (at which we were VERY well behaved) and several other activities. We had an opportunity to read about and share stories about people we know who may have served or been affected by war. I was able to share some stories about my own grandfather who was in the Navy during WWII, and is still kicking in his 90s! We were given some Remembrance Day activity books, which many students started at school and have brought home. We also painted some coquelicots, which we wore to the assembly, and did some beautiful marshmallow print poppies which are on our bulletin board.

For her show & tell, Emmylou decided to bring in her mom, Mary, to talk about her work in renewable energy and do a little activity with us. We got to see some pictures of the wind turbine in Toronto, and we made our own pinwheels. We loved seeing them spin!

Thanks, also to Mary, for our new building blocks. They have been a popular addition to our class!

This week, our guided activity was again to make patterns, this time with pattern blocks, and without the use of the template, like with the beads.

Did I share this yet? This is old, but I don't remember if I showed you our cool box painting session. Mme Barnett (who is frequently our lunch supervisor), rescued this box from a moving van across the road. There was some debate as to whether it became a castle or a submarine...

Also, several week ago, we did a colour hunt in our classroom. We made piles of objects that matched each colour and took a picture of each group. Now we have these cool colour posters!

If you haven't yet heard, I told another oral story last week. It's called "Tipingee", and we've been having a lot of fun acting it out this week. Please ask your student to tell you the whole story - I'm sure they can do it! Here are some pictures of us acting it out and a brief outline of the story.

Tipingee lives with her mean aunt (sa méchante tante) who makes her do all the housework.

She even has to go to the forest to cut wood for the fire.

Until one day, Tipingee has to go to school, and the mean aunt has to do all the work herself. But the firewood is too heavy, so she calls for help. A man appears out of the forest. 

He offers to help her, and in exchange, the mean aunt agrees to give him Tipingee to be his servant.

But Tipingee, having returned from school, heard the conversation and asks her friends to come over the next day, wearing the same colour as her.

When the man comes to find Tipingee, he can't figure out which girl is the real Tipingee. So he asks them, "Laquelle entre vous est Tipingee?"

And they all answer, "C'est moi Tipingee, c'est elle Tipingee, c'est nous Tipingee toutes!"

Oh boy, is he ever mad! He marches right into the mean aunt's house, and she promises that the next day, Tipingee will wear a different colour, and he'll recognize her.

But Tipingee overhears again, and with her friends, tricks the man two more times!

He becomes so upset, that he decides to take the mean aunt back to his house to be his servant, and Tipingee and her friends live happily ever after!

La Fin!

C'est l'Halloween!

Dear families,
I apologize I am sooo late with this post - lots of stuff going on!

First, we are missing several activity bags this week. Please return these tomorrow so that we can complete our exchange!

Second, there are a lot of important dates upcoming, some of which I failed to get on the November calendar. Please consult the TO-DO list, to the left (viewing on a computer screen) for the current and upcoming due dates and event dates. This week alone, picture orders are due (you can do it online), interview time forms are due and information verification sheets should be signed and returned, if you haven't already done so.
I have also sent home a note regarding our next walking trip to the College/Shaw library. It will be next Monday, the 12th. Please return the pink slip if you would like to volunteer. Thanks!

As I'm sure you know, Progress Reports (for us, "Initial Communication of Learning") are coming home next Tuesday. While I put a great deal of effort into writing all my reports, I think it's much more helpful to speak in person. We encourage all parents to sign up for an interview time on the following Thursday evening or Friday morning. On the green form, please select the date that best suits you, and write down a few times (e.g., 4:30, 5:00 or "anything after 6:00") that would work. If you list your other teachers, we will try to coordinate your times so that you don't overlap or have to wait around. I'll send a confirmation of your time home as soon as I receive all the forms - hopefully Friday.

Here are some bits and pieces from last week...

We had a fun Halloween day with our walk around through the school, a few rounds of Halloween charades, decorating our class with patterned garlands, learning the popular song "C'est l'Halloween" and making our own skeletons, counting out how many bones we wanted to use. Here we are in our costumes!

Our Halloween relay race had to wait until the next day when the rain slowed down. This involved keeping a ghost balloon up in the air, tossing some bean bags into the cauldron and then flying around a tree on a witch broom. It was a close race!

Our guided activity was to draw and write about our costume.

Throughout the week, we used our class pumpkin for a few activities. First, we predicted whether we thought it would sink or float in a bucket of water. Lots of us thought that it would sink, since pumpkins are heavy. Ask your scientist what ended up happening!

Another day, we each had a chance to reach in and pull out some gooey seeds. Each student made 2 piles of 10 seeds. We counted all the piles up, and it turned out there were 426 seeds in our pumpkin. Close to some of our medium guesses (which ranged from 15 to 3 million).

When we had counted them all up, I washed and roasted the seeds, and we got to try them at afternoon snack!

Here are some Halloween creatures we read about...

Un squelette

Un fantôme

Un monstre

Une citrouille

Une sorcière

Last Tuesday, we were lucky to participate in a movement edgeucation workshop, organized for our school by Ms. Kowal. We moved and danced to some amazing music, trying a variety of actions and movements, going in different directions.

Rock Star Pose

Stomping

Getting low and swinging arms!

The Lasso

Calm your body

Here are a few neat things that have happened during our indoor centre time...

Magnet families!

Independent writing practise by copying the morning message. 

(Next time they are challenged to use lined paper!)

I met with some students who were regularly self-selecting activities that were too rowdy for indoors. They came up with a great, positive solution to this problem. If they are not selecting an appropriate activity, they would like me to give them a specific challenge. I tested it out by asking them to build a farm and then sort the animals into farm and wild. Not only did they work together to do this, but they ended up making different enclosures for each animal (cows, dogs...). They even cleaned up as soon as I asked them too. I was very pleased with this result. Let's hope this strategy keeps working!

More to come soon!