To begin, your children gave me the best surprise at the end of the day today. We got an early start learning the song we're planning to perform for the spring concert, because it's kind of a big deal (I studied music, so you know I go all out for these things). It's not a nursery song, it's the real deal with 3 verses and a chorus to memorize. Last week we started learning the first verse, and today I was thinking we would need to re-learn it since it is very wordy. Not so! I started singing and the entire class took over, they sang the whole thing with confidence! We were able to work on verse 2 and it's not even February! So excited! Hopefully we can impress you at the concert (April 30th, save the date).
Today we also began practicing for our survey day next week. I'm not sure if I told you, but each mathematician has planned a survey question with 3 choices and once they have the data, they're going to graph the results. We have permission to visit grade 2 and 3 classes to ask our questions, but of course we need to be very professional about this. The children will be going in pairs, without me, to the other classrooms. They will need to politely ask the teacher if it is a good time, and then ask their question and count up the results, completely in French. We are very excited about this responsibility, and we will all be rehearsing in front of our class before we are allowed to go off into the school. Some students, when they heard what they had to say, decided they wanted to practice at home this weekend. Everyone has a different question, but here is the first thing everyone needs to say after they knock on the door:
"Est-ce que nous pouvons demander deux questions à la classe?"
After they've read out their question, they will go through each choice one at a time to count votes, saying, "Lève la main si tu préfères ...".
No pressure, but if your student wants to practice, you can help them out with that!
This morning we got started on a neat art project involving texture. We talked about rough and smooth, and how we can create visual texture by doing rubbings over materials with different interesting textures. We used stencils, sand paper, tangerine nets, wire, keys, flooring samples and many other items. Students also found interesting textures around the classroom, from the brick walls, to the drying rack to lego, and the soles of their shoes. They really got into filling their pages with many interesting textures, which we will use to build cityscapes and other fun collages. Check it out!
