Happy Holidays!

Dear Salle 211 families,

Thank you so much for the beautiful cards and generous gifts, it was very thoughtful of you.

During our second, and last, workshop with Jessica Runge yesterday, we performed our 4 Nutcracker-themed dances complete with a narrated story. I have videos that I would like to post together with the story, but unfortunately I couldn't get the videos uploaded before I had to leave yesterday, and I can't do it from home, so you'll have to look forward to that in early January. I hope the kids enjoyed the workshops. If they are interested in dance, Jessica does after school classes and sent each dancer home with some information.

I have also sent home some of our recent artwork, our nutcracker booklet (which we didn't have much time to complete, but could be a fun activity over the holidays) and some French books. I was pleased that almost everyone had a number in mind for how many books they should take home. Happily, but unfortunately, everyone needed so many books that we ran out quite quickly. I let students take home a classroom book in lieu of yellow-level books if they didn't get enough. Please ensure that all books are kept in a safe place and are returned to school on January 4th!! We really need all those yellow books to come back right away so that we can all keep exchanging. Right now, the drawer is empty! Classroom books cost around $10 each so it is sad when they get lost. I am very happy to loan them out, but please make sure they come back! Thanks!!

I wish you and your families a very happy and relaxing holiday. See you in the new year!
Tamara

What we've been up to!

It's been so busy the last couple weeks! Enough with the reminders (there are still a few at the bottom), here's what we've been up to...

In language, we've been working hard on finishing up our letters to our family friend or relative. We used our letter to Santa (who wrote back, by the way) to create a list of criteria for writing a successful letter. We needed to include 5 things: the date, the name of the recipient, some nice words to start off, a question or information about our life and then a nice goodbye. The letters and envelopes are now complete and ready to go. I'm sending the envelopes home unsealed just in case you want to see what your child wrote. Please help your child seal the envelope and put it in a post box. I also included a little explanatory note for the recipient. Hopefully we'll receive some letters back! *A few students are still in need of an address!

In math, we tied up our unit on 2-D shapes with a short experiment about symmetry. Students remembered from SK that if you can fold something in half and it matches, it's symmetrical. In grade 1, we moved up a level and used Miras (like magic mirrors) to test if shapes were symmetrical and to complete shapes that were only half done. Check it out!

I've now had a chance to tell yet another musical story - The Nutcracker! Many students were familiar with the story, or had even seen the ballet. I highly recommend going if you can - the National Ballet has it on right now, and it's great for kids. It would be especially good for our class now that we have read the book, listened to the music and worked on making up our own dances to tell the story. 

There were 6 dances in particular that were featured in our book: first, the fight between the toys that come alive (in the show it's mice) and the Nutcracker; second, the waltz of the snowflakes; third, the dance of the sugar plum fairy (la fée dragée); fourth, the chocolate dance (Spanish dance); fifth, the duet between the grand-duchess and the shepherdess (Pas de deux); and finally, the waltz of the flowers.

In our dance workshop with Jessica, we are not only learning lots of locomotor movements and doing some leading and following, but also, we are working in groups to create our own Nutcracker dances! We have a group of dancing toys, two groups of dancing snowflakes and a group of dancing flowers. Ask your dancer which group they're in and to show you their movement. Each dancer is teaching the rest of their group their creative movement and we will put the dance together that way. 

Dancing Toys

Dancing Snowflakes

 Dancing Flowers

Reminders:

It's pyjama day tomorrow. I'll be bringing my super-stylish adult onesie for the afternoon. In the morning we are walking over to the YMCA for our dance workshop, and I'd rather be wearing clothes. But, hey, as long as we can move freely (and the PJs include pants), I suppose it doesn't much matter whether the kids are in PJs.

PLEASE BE ON TIME FOR SCHOOL!!!!!! We will be leaving ASAP after attendance. If you are later then than 9:10 getting to school, you may end up having to walk your student over the Y after signing in!

I will be reminding students to take all their belongings home, including indoor shoes if they need them. I will also remind them to take as many books as you say they should so that you can keep reading in French over the break. This is SO important! Please relax and rest and don't work too hard - but - please treat your daily reading routine with the same importance as brushing your teeth. Thanks!

More reminders!

Hi all,

Just a few more field trip forms need to come back! Those students came home wearing bright pink bracelets so that they don't forget! Thanks!

HUGE thank you to everyone who already sent back an address for our letter-writing project. We need the rest tomorrow, if you please!

I don't know if it has been broadcast publicly, but Friday morning there will be the annual holiday sing-along in the gym. Parents are usually welcome to join. Unfortunately, we have a conflict with our dance workshop, so, while you are still welcome to go sing your heart out, we will not be there. Domage!

Speaking of Friday's dance workshop, don't forget that it is at the West End Y. We will be walking over there immediately after attendance (as close to 9:00 am as possible). Please be extra on-time for school!

Also, I should mention that it is very important that we keep up our at-home reading routines over the break. It is crazy how quickly we forget what we've learned when we stop practicing. Students are most welcome to take home several books to get you through the 2 weeks. Please tell your reader how many books you would like them to bring home. I'll remind everyone on Friday.

Thanks!

One busy week left!

Hi families!

This is it! Last week before the break. It promises to be a very busy one. Here is a quick overview:

Monday-Friday

- assorted parent-teacher meetings
- please return your report envelope for re-use next time (keep the report!)

Tuesday

- Words of the Week

Wednesday

- Nature Centre permission forms due

- Hearing/Vision clinic @ Dewson for those that registered

- Library

- Show & Tell

Thursday

- Dance workshop in AM @ Dewson (make sure kids are dressed for movement)

Friday

- Dance workshop in AM @ YMCA (still need parents to walk us back and forth!!)

- PJ day (make sure kids can still dance or wear dance clothes in AM and bring PJs for PM)

- Everything goes home (let me know if you need school shoes to come home over the break)

- Please do not send treats to share. It will be a fun day and students will each receive a little gift from me. That will be enough.

In other news...

I mentioned last week that we had started learning about how to write a nice letter. We used our letter to Santa to identify 5 important parts of a letter and we noted these on our success criteria chart. Our next task was to work with a partner to write a letter to a teacher in our school. We sent letters to Mme Robinson, Mme Faraone, Mr. Greene, Mr. Ginestier, Mme Gaudreault, Mme Abbat and Mlle J. We made sure we said something nice before asking a question. Please ask your writer who they and their partner wrote to and what they said. We have had written responses from 3 teachers already, and some others answered our questions in person. How exciting!

This week, though we will be busy, I hope to have each student write their own letter to a family member or friend. The holidays are a fitting time to send greetings to loved ones that we don't often get a chance to see. On Monday, we will think about who we would each like to write to and begin writing our letters. By Wednesday or Thursday, we should be ready for envelopes and we will need addresses. I will send home a little paper for you to fill-in with the address of the person your child has decided to write to. Please make sure these are returned to school by Wednesday so that we can address our envelopes and get our letters mailed before the break. Hopefully we will receive more letters back! Don't you love mail that isn't bills??

Words of the Week

If the ‘on’ sound is ever forgotten, show your student a picture of a candy and it’ll come right back! Then you can say “C’est bon!” (Good stuff!)

This is another sound that doesn’t exist in English. The easiest thing is probably to ask your child to teach it to you. Ask them how to say “no” or “candy” in French. To describe it in English, say the word “on” with your lips closed almost all the way, and don’t close to the ‘n’. You’ll feel it in the back of your throat. This sound can also be written as ‘om’.

bonbon, mon, ton, non, nom

Bonus words: bon, son

Great Concert! Next... Dance!

Salut Salle 211!

Great concert tonight! It was my first time hearing what the kids have been up to in choir, and I was impressed! Bien fait mes amis!

I am happy to share with you that next Thursday and Friday, salle 211 will be working with a visiting artist - visiting dancer to be more specific. Our dance teacher's name is Jessica Runge. I believe this is her first time working at Dewson, so I'm excited to see what she has in store for us. We will have 2 half-day workshops with her. Thursday morning we will be at Dewson, Friday morning we will be at the West End YMCA, in a bit of a better dance space. It's not very far, but I still need at least one parent to walk with us there and back. If you are able either to walk there with us at 9:00 or meet us there and walk us back at 11:30, that would be excellent. You are welcome to stay the entire morning as well and participate with us! Please email me if you can help out.

Words of the Week

Words of the week

E might win as the most complicated letter of the French alphabet. It can make so many different sounds depending on the accent or letters around it. In this case, when followed by ‘s’, it makes a more relaxed sound, as in “best”. Your student has probably already learned these words, but it might be a good time to go back to playing with movable letters to play with different combinations.

les, mes, tes, des, c’est

Bonus words: il est, ses

In math, we have started a very short unit on 2-D geometry. So far, we have done some shape sorting and discovery using Venn diagrams, and we have used shapes to make pictures. 

We will be working on naming the most basic shapes correctly and discovering what attributes a shape has to have in order to earn it's name. Today, our Venn diagram taught us what a square must have in order to be called a square. Ask your mathematician how many rules are involved in a Diagramme de Venn (this confuses a lot of students, even in older grades) and what the rules for our 2 circles were today (see picture).

Today we worked together to write a class letter to Santa. Vika took it with her to mail, so it should get to him on time for Christmas. Ask your writer what we said in our letter. We saved a copy so that we can use it as a reference in the next two weeks as we write our own letters to teachers and friends. Ask your writer about a nice way to begin a letter. Is it polite to begin your letter by asking for something? If you have received any letters or cards recently, take this opportunity to share them with your writer so that they can get some ideas of what people say in their letters to each other!

See you Thursday eve,

Tamara

Boring but important stuff

Dear parents,

Today you received the permission form for our trip to the Nature Centre. Since the trip is just a few days after we return from the break, I thought it best to get all the paper work taken care of ahead of time. Please return the second page, signed, by December 16th. The first page is the information for you to keep. If you are interested in volunteering on this trip, please check the appropriate box on the permission form. I'll get back to you as soon as all forms are in!

Don't forget, this Thursday evening is our choir concert. Details were in my last post! Please let me know if your child is unable to attend.

This Thursday you will be receiving your child's progress report. I realize they are very late this year, thanks for your patience. Better late than never?
The progress report is intended to give you an idea, not only of how your child is doing in the various subject areas (Language, Math etc.), but also, and more importantly, how your child is doing as a learner. It is always true that when we have strong learning skills, it is much easier to make progress in the subject areas. The two go hand in hand, but learning skills lead the way. Therefore, I have taken care to be accurate and specific in my comments in the learning skills area. Please take the time to read over this carefully with your child. It is a good opportunity to check-in about how they think they are doing as a good learner and how they think they can do an even better job.

Since this may be your first progress report, I will also give you a heads up to the marking system. (I will go over all of this with the kids as well on Thursday, so they will be able to interpret their report card.) In the learning skills area, E is for Excellent, which really means that you're doing a great job all the time. G is for Good, which means you're meeting expectations and doing well most or all of the time, but there are small ways in which you could improve even more. S is for Satisfactory, which means that sometimes you're doing just fine, but other times you need to be reminded, so keep working on it. N means that you need a lot of support with that skill, so make this your goal going forward.
On the subject side, there are 3 choices, Progressing Well (as expected with some support), Progressing Very Well, or Progressing With Difficulty. In the next two report cards, these will be replaced with more specific letter grades, and the subject areas will be broken down into strands. I have been very conservative with my "Excellent"s and "Progressing Very Well"s. It's tough to earn these marks because it means you're going above and beyond what was expected. It might mean a student has made a connection to something that was mentioned in passing, but was not explicitly taught, or the student is always successful, not just most of the time. It's great to have a goal, but let's focus more on little, manageable, ways that we can improve, and not so much on grades.

Finally, there are a couple etiquette rules around report cards that will be true for every report this year, and in future grades as well. Here is what I will explain to the children:
1. Do not open your report card envelope until you are with a parent or guardian.
2. Your report card is private. Do not share your marks with friends, this doesn't make either person feel good. (Important!!)

One last thing, in the envelope, I will also include an interview invitation. Please consider setting up a time for a very brief chat with me, particularly if we have not yet met (though all are welcome). I think it's always good to touch base in person, even if there are no particular concerns or questions. I am available on the 14th, 15th or 17th until about 6pm. I can also meet at 8:30 am or some lunch hours. You can get back to me either be sending the invitation back, or by emailing me at anytime (tamara.mitchell2@tdsb.on.ca). Thanks!

Talk to you soon,
Tamara

Loupscaroux

Hi parents,

I know I mentioned that I told the class the Cacahuète story and that we had illustrated it using paint and pastel. Did I mention that I told them another oral story last week called Loupscaroux? They loved it and now, after a couple more times hearing it, could easily tell it to you! Yesterday and today we worked on turning the oral story into a real book. Everyone contributed one page of the story. It's fabulous!

We also did a little drama work today - most of the class narrated, with just a few hints here and there. Three students acted out the character parts. Here's the little girl singing the wolf to sleep:

We have also had time recently to complete a couple holiday crafts. Our class is all decorated!

Tomorrow, students will be uncovering the results of our last science experiment in our seasonal changes unit. We each made predictions about what we thought would happen to our sun and sky papers that we put in the window. Some predictions included, the paper will get hot or cold, the glue will stop sticking and the sun will fall off, or the paper will melt. Tomorrow we are going to take the sun off of the blue paper to see what effect the sun really had. Please ask your scientist what happened! Next up in science, Everyday Structures and Materials.

Sadly, this week we have had to say goodbye to both of our student teachers, Mlle Martinson and Mlle L. We wrote them some lovely cards and gave them flowers. We are sad to see them go, but know that they will definitely visit us again. Now our poor class is stuck with just one teacher all the time. We'll have to work on being patient when we need help!

Concert details

Hi parents,

I now have all the details of next Thursday's concert. Students are asked to wear dark on the bottom and white on the top. They should arrive at 6:00 pm and meet me in our classroom. They can leave their coats and belongings here. At this point you are free to go find your seat in the gym (trust me, you'll want to get right on that). At 6:15 I will walk the students over the music room. If you arrive later than 6:15, please have your singer go directly there. The grade 1 choir is up first and the concert begins right at 6:30. After our group is finished performing, I will bring our class back to Room 211 and babysit until you are able to come collect (no charge!). Please do not leave the gym early, it will not be a long concert - I believe there are only 3 groups performing - and everyone deserves to have a great audience. We anticipate that you'll be out of here by 7:15 at the latest.

I'd also like to make you aware of another special event, even though it's not for over a month. Our first field trip (to the High Park Nature Centre) will take place on Wednesday January 6th. Information and a permission form will be coming home soon. I know that many families plan trips over the holidays and sometimes miss a few days of school before or after. If you have not yet made plans, please take this into consideration so that your child can come with us on this fun excursion.

Tonight your child has a note from the Me to We club - I believe they are selling bracelets as a fundraiser. Those forms, if you wish to order, are due December 11th.

Today was a very full day in Salle 211. In the morning Mlle L prepared a science experiment for us to do involving whether various materials would sink or travel across water. This links up with our next science unit on Structures and Materials, which we will begin shortly, but the real goal for this experiment was to practice making predictions and then doing a test to find the result (but not changing our original prediction!). Students managed themselves very well at the 5 different centres. Ask your scientist which materials survived the float test.

In the afternoon, we did another set of centres, this time around patterning. The centres included making colour patterns and naming them, continuing a growing pattern, answering a question that involves a shrinking pattern (we worked on these kinds of patterns last week), and finally, using a scale to show how an equals sign means that both sides of an equation are the same, or equal to each other. Ask your student to tell you about their favourite centre! 

Here are tomorrow's Words of the Week 

(I switched week 13 and 14, in case you're keeping track)

This is one of my personal favourites. I think ‘oi’ is a fun sound to say. In English, it sounds just like ‘wa’, as in “water”. At first, children sometimes use the letter a, or wa when trying to write this sound. That’s just fine, they are similar. From now on, we’ll help them listen a little closer and remind them that there’s an even better way to write that sound. Our sound poster in class has a picture of a bird and the word oiseau. If you’re doing rule posters at your house, looking at this one is an immediate reminder of what the sound looks like.

oiseau, froid, moi, toi, voiture

Bonus words: roi, loi

Upcoming Concert

Hi parents,

I have just learned that there will be a grade 1 & 2 concert on Thursday December 10th beginning at 6:30 in the gym. Our students will be performing in grade 1 choir under the direction of Mr. Matheson. I expect that students will be asked to arrive at school by 6:00. I'll share more details as I get them. Can't wait to hear what they have prepared!

Tonight you are receiving the rubric for our November dictée, which we did earlier this week. I'm definitely seeing improvement as the weeks go by. Bon travail tout le monde!

Yesterday morning, we were very lucky that Mme Ally came back to do a clay project with us. Every student got to make an animal sculpture. They are being fired in a real kiln and will be back in a few weeks for the next step.

Finally, I can't believe there are only 3 weeks left until the winter break. Time flies! I know that many students like to get their teacher a present for Christmas, so before you do any shopping, I would just like to say that, firstly, it is completely unnecessary - please don't feel that you need to get me a gift.
Secondly, if you do wish to get me something, please consider getting something for our classroom rather than just for me. I often spend my own money on art supplies, dollar store prizes, paper towels and French books. These are items that our whole class can benefit from, and you'll still be doing me a favour. Thanks a lot!

Have a great weekend,
Tamara

Words of the Week

Hi parents,

We had a great day today!

Students extended on a rhyme that we learned by writing in their journals about an animal or person that goes up the hill (like in the poem). Some of the children who celebrate Hanukkah told us about the menorah, and we started making our own stained-glass menorahs. We also learned about a new kind of pattern: a growing pattern (suite croissante), where the rule is not what part repeats, but what is added each time to make the pattern grow. Ask your mathematician to show you a growing pattern!

At the end of the day we finished learning the moves to our new dance - a rap. I got half of it on video before I ran out of memory...

Today, most children are bringing home an envelope with a receipt for your snack & trip payment made to the school in September. If you have not yet submitted this payment, please consider whether you are able to do so in the near future. We do have a field trip coming up in January. Thanks!

Words of the Week

This week we are reviewing the sound, ‘é’. E-accent aigu is like an entirely separate, extra, vowel in the French alphabet. You can think of the sound ‘ay’ in English, as in “May”. In addition to é words, I would like everyone to memorize the words “j’ai” (= I have, or sometimes, I am) and “et” (= and). They sound like é even though they don’t look like it, and we use these words all the time.

éléphant, bébé, école, *j’ai*, *et*

Bonus words: année, idée

Vision & Hearing Clinic Upcoming

Dear parents,

Today you are receiving information about an upcoming Vision and Hearing Clinic taking place at Dewson. If you find that your child doesn't answer you right away, has frequent headaches, or seems reluctant to practice reading, it could be that they are having trouble with their hearing or vision. If that's the case, a fairly simple fix could make a big difference.
If you are interested in having your child's vision and/or hearing tested, please return the registration form with payment ASAP. The clinic will take place on December 16th. You will receive a form shortly thereafter with the results.

Today I am also sending home the rubrics from Mlle Martinson's story project, with your child's future writing goal copied on the back. Please do not panic if you see a few level 1s and 2s circled. We were fairly tough markers on this one, and we really want to emphasize with the writers that there is always room for improvement. Everyone had a very cool story to share with the class and I'm super excited for the next big project which we will start soon. Please congratulate them on their hard work and presentation in front of the class and then ask them what they are going to work on in the next project! Apologies that the stories are not coming home at the same time (I realize it would be helpful to look at it and the rubric together)... currently they are hanging on the wall and students are enjoying reading them during silent reading time. Thanks also to Mlle Martinson for her hard work planning, teaching and assessing this entire project!

This morning we reviewed an oral story that I told the class yesterday and made our own illustrations for it using pastel and watercolour. Each student was responsible for illustrating a different part of the story the way they imagined it. They also wrote down what happens in their part of the story. Thanks so much to Mme Erika for helping us so much with this project! Please ask your storyteller what happens in the Cacahuète story!

In math, we have moved on from measurement for the time being and will now focus on patterning. Already I've been impressed about how much the kids know about colour, shape and size patterns. I had to put away some of the simpler activities I'd been planning and jump right into patterns with more than 1 attribute! Here we are creating our own patterns using colour, shape, size, sometimes even thickness! Ask your child to make a pattern at home. You can use anything to make a pattern, as long as you have lots of it. You can even make sound patterns just using your body!

Finally, I've heard from a couple parents that my blog is no longer sending out the automatic emails when I update. I'm very sorry about this. I've checked my settings, and from my end, everything looks as it should. I have an email into the blogspot helpdesk, so hopefully I can find the solution soon. In the meantime, know that I am still updating every couple days or so, so please check back regularly! Sorry for the inconvenience.

Have a great weekend,
Tamara

Gift book!

So cool! Every year, Le Centre du livre jeunesse canadien gets together with TD Canada Trust to provide a book to all grade 1 students! This year's book is Le Chapeau de M. Zinger. I read it to the class today - it's very cute. Each student has received their very own copy to keep. Hope you love it!

We read another special book today as well. In English it's called "Have you filled a bucket today?". This book explains how every person carries with them an invisible bucket which is full when we feel happy and appreciated, and empty when we feel sad or lonely. We can fill each others' buckets with kind words or actions - it can be as simple as saying "Hi!" or "Will you play with me?". The cool thing is that being nice to others always makes us feel good too, so when we fill someone else's bucket, ours fills up as well. All the classes at Dewson are being encouraged to fill up our friends' invisible buckets. When a teacher catches someone doing something nice and filling someone's bucket, they will give the student a raindrop to add to their class' poster. When we get to 100 raindrops, we can show Mme Robinson and there will be a special surprise! Our class figured out that if everybody only does 1 kind thing every day, it will take only 5 days to put 100 raindrops in our class' bucket. Already (in the last 30 minutes of the day), there were so many acts of kindness, that I truly couldn't keep up! Ask your child if they've filled up anyone's bucket recently!

Almost all students have now had a chance to read their story (that they have been working on with Mlle Martinson) to the class. They've done a good job and will be receiving a rubric for this project soon. When you receive it, please celebrate your child's accomplishment and ask them what their goal is for their next writing project. Everyone will be working with us (me, Mlle Martinson and Mlle L) to choose one area from their rubric that they would like to work on improving. Maybe you'd like to support your child with their goal at home. Here are some storytellers...

I know it's not the holidays - yet - but I just love this time of year and have been thinking ahead to some festive art projects. There is a Hanukkah craft that always turns out beautifully but requires some pretty skillful cutting. If you are good with a pair of scissors and don't mind either coming in to snip away, or taking some templates home to chip away at, I'd be very grateful. We would need them for the first week of December. Please let me know!

Words of the Week

Here’s where you get to use your true English  ‘u’ sound. It’s much rounder than plain ‘u’ in French. When you see ‘ou’ in French, think “dude” or “food” in English.

Some ideas for mixing it up this week:

1.   “ou” means “or”. Ask your child lots of questions involving a choice using “ou” this week. E.g., “Est-ce que tu veux du lait ou du jus?” (Would you like milk or juice?)

2.   It is very common to have silent letters on the ends of French words, and this is something your child has already started to notice at school. Ask your expert to hunt for the silent letters in this, and previous, word lists. (It’s the p on “loup” and the s on “sous”.)

3.   Last week we had the word “sur” (=on top of) and this week we have “sous” (=under).  There’s a cute little song to the tune of London Bridge that begins with these two words. Ask your singer if he/she can sing it for you.

ou, sous, loup, rouge, bonjour
Bonus words: jour, pour

Borrow-a-book begins!

Dear parents,

It was an exciting day in Salle 211! We are beginning our Borrow-a-book (J'emprunte un livre) routine. I posted some information about this before the blog went out-of-service, and students have brought an explanation home today along with their tracking log and first book. We went over the procedure for exchanging books today at length. Students know that they are responsible for exchanging and caring for their books (I do not check that students are exchanging regularly because everyone will advance at a different rate), but by all means, if you notice that your student is forgetting to exchange books, let me know and I will remind them at school.

This is a routine that I would have explained in person at a curriculum night, had we had one. I would have emphasized that this initiative depends completely on your participation and that it really does make a significant difference in our students' reading journey. It doesn't have to take a lot of your time each day and should be fun for both you and your child. Don't forget - you are the teacher at home and get to decide when to sign-off on each book. Your child should really master each one before exchanging. It is important for beginning readers to spend time reading texts that they find easy, rather than challenging themselves to read texts that are too difficult. It is not a race.

Please let me know if you have questions about borrow-a-book and thanks in advance for being the at-home teacher!

Enjoy!
Tamara

Schéhérazade

Hello families,

Today I got to tell my second musical story of the year. The story of the beautiful, brave and clever Schéhérazade. The story goes like this...
After his first wife runs away, the mean Sultan decides that he can't trust women at all. He orders his Vizir to bring him a new bride every day and then have her killed the very next morning so that she doesn't have time to trick him. This goes on for a long time and all the girls in the realm are scared that they will be forced to marry the evil Sultan. The Vizir's own daughter, Schéhérazade, is well-read and has memorized the works of many authors and poets. She asks her father if she may marry the Sultan in order to hopefully save the lives of many other women. Of course, her father protests, but eventually agrees, knowing the consequence if she is not successful.
Before marrying the Sultan, Schéhérazade asks her sister, Dinarzade, to do her one favour. In the morning, she plans to ask the Sultan if she can visit her sister to say goodbye, and she wants Dinarzade to ask her to tell her one last story, as it will be her last opportunity. So, she marries the Sultan, and in the morning, he agrees to let her say goodbye to her sister and accompanies her. Dinarzade does as she was told and Schéhérazade begins telling one of her amazing stories. Just when she gets to the very best part, she stops and says she is tired and will have to tell the rest the next day. The Sultan is outraged! He was so engrossed in the story and absolutely wants to hear the end. So, he lets Schéhérazade live. The next day, she finishes telling that story and starts a new one, even more interesting than the first, but again, stops just at the best part. And so it goes night after night.
Schéhérazade tells stories of sea monsters, princes and princesses, the story of Sinbad the Sailor, the Festival at Baghdad, even the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp. After 1001 nights, Schéhérazade finally runs out of stories to tell and asks the Sultan why he has let her live so long. He is embarrassed and admits that he was a monster before and that at first he only let her live because he wanted to hear her stories. But, after all this time, he has grown to love her. He makes her his Queen and they live very happily, and Schéhérazade is finally able to get a peaceful night's sleep.

The music is composed by Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. As in Symphonie Fantastique, the Sultan and Schéhérazade are represented by musical themes. The first movement opens with the Sultan's theme, followed shortly by Schéhérazade's (always played by the violin). The children were able to infer a lot about both characters by listening to their themes, before hearing any details of the story. In the music (we listened to the 1st and 4th movements only) we also hear elements of Schéhérazade's stories, such as the waves from Sinbad the Sailor, dance music for the prince and princess and the festival music from Festival at Baghdad.
At the end of the 4th movement, when the Sultan admits that he has been a monster and now loves Schéhérazade, you hear his theme die away underneath Schéhérazade's, and a rising motive, signalling a happy ending.

As always, I hope you will listen to this music again with your child, letting them explain what they remember. I also want to remind you that the TSO is performing Schéhérazade next week (that's why I told the story now), and it would be absolutely thrilling for your children to have the experience of hearing it performed live now that they understand what the music is telling. (Sidenote: I got to play the violin solo representing Scheherazade in the 3rd movement when I was in orchestra way back!)

Have a great long weekend!
Tamara

In Remembrance

Hi parents,

Yesterday we celebrated Remembrance Day with a solemn assembly in the morning (wearing our hand-made poppies) and some activities and a story in the afternoon. The children brought home a special Remembrance Day newspaper (in both French and English) that you can look at and read together. My own grandfather was in the Navy during WWII, and though he was not feeling well enough to come visit our class this year, I did share a couple of his stories (ask about the fish), and the kids told me about people they know of who were involved in war.

Last week, we worked on a watercolour and pastel rendering of a field of poppies. We talked about the closest poppies looking biggest, and the poppies that were in the distance being so small that you can't tell their petals apart. They look gorgeous, don't you think?

Here is one final video of our waltz (I got the music this time). So happy with how we did on this!

Don't forget tomorrow is a PA day. See you Monday!