Thank you again for coming to our open-house last week and for all the positive feedback. If you have any great pictures or videos that you'd be willing to share with me, I'd love to see them and post them on the blog!
You may have noticed a lack of subject-specific information over the last couple weeks as we prepared for our concert. Now that we're back in our normal routine, we do have several important projects to work on in the last weeks of school.
In French, we're currently exploring, albeit briefly, poetry. We are very lucky to have a student-teacher, Mlle Herter, with us for many mornings over the next 2 weeks and she will be leading this short unit. We will be focusing on why people write poems, differences between poems and other types of texts (e.g., stories, letters, procedures), using comparisons within poems and slightly different, but just as important role of punctuation within a poem. Already today you may be able to ask your poet a little bit about this - Why do people write poems? Do you need a majuscule at the beginning of each sentence? Why is it important to use les virgules et les petits points when writing a poem (otherwise what will it sound like)?
Mlle Herter is here for 3 weeks from Switzerland to complete the last placement in her year of training. She is very nearly qualified and already has a job that she will be starting in August. She is interested in studying the differences between education in Switzerland and in Canada, but is also eager to do some teaching. From my perspective, it's wonderful to have a second teacher in the classroom, particularly one whose first language is French. The children know that she doesn't understand much English at all, so they've been speaking entirely in French, and have been doing such a good job of working around words they don't know, rather than saying them in English.
In Math we have begun our last unit, a very short one on probability. This is a fun unit because we get to play lots of games! We have already reviewed or learned the terms
certain, impossible, possible, probable & improbable
Ask your student to give you an example of something that is impossible or certain, or something that is not certain, but possible.
Ask your student what the chances are of rolling a die and it landing on a 6 the first time. Ask them to explain to explain why they think that.
We're also quickly finishing up our writing on our place in the community. Most of us are nearly done doing our write-up of why it's important. Then, depending on time, we will do some mini-presentations. At the same time, we will begin one more short science unit on the needs of living things. We will be talking very generally about what plants, animals and humans need in order to survive. I'm hoping we'll have time to do a partner-research project on a favourite animal.Should be fun!
A few reminders:
1. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the Me-to-We book sale. All books are $2 or less. If you'd like to send money for books, feel free. Books are on sale at lunch only.
2. The Scholastic order that came home today is due back FRIDAY. Sorry for the quick turnaround, I should have given this out last week but forgot. This is a great opportunity to stock up on French books for the summer.
3. As per the note below, Mme Gaudreault needs all our library books back by the end of this week. It sounds like she may be willing to lend out books over the summer - please take advantage of this! You might be able to talk to her Thursday afternoon when you're here for Festival.
4. Thursday is the Dewson Festival. Thanks to all those parents who have already volunteered to help out. Please check back for important details on pick-up soon!