Last Friday we did two cool things. We made a first attempt at rehearsing and performing all our plays for each other, and we started our piano lessons!
As I've mentioned, each student is helping to act-out one or two of the oral stories I've shared so far this year. Hopefully your actor has already told you what their role is. Friday morning, each group practiced independently to create the beginnings of their play. They did an amazing job coming up with what they had to say and deciding how it should be staged. We'll continue to work on adding more dialogue and other elements, but I'm so pleased with how the groups did with very little input from me!
A scene from Cacahuète when papa looks inside le renard's mouth.
Hopefully you've also heard that we are beginning to learn how to play the piano. Thanks to Mme Robinson, our class is very lucky to be the only class that has a piano (well, keyboard), in the whole school. I plan to teach all students how to play some simple 5-note songs. For those students that already take lessons, this will not be a challenge, and they are prepared for that. We know they can help the rest of us and occasionally inspire us with their own pieces.
In our first lesson, we learned the names for the fingers on our right hands (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - I know, so revolutionary) and where they will be positioned on the keyboard (thumb goes on middle C). We also learned about proper posture, back straight, feet on the floor, arm relaxed. We are starting with a 5-note scale 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1. The pianists all had a chance to practice on the real keyboard, and 19 other chances to practice on the "air piano". They assured me they would practice their scale 5 more times over the weekend, even if only on their air piano. Can't wait to keep going!
Today was also a special day at Dewson and in our class because we celebrated Black History Month. We had an assembly featuring many special performances and videos in the morning, and this afternoon we began working on an African dance called "Gahu". The Gahu dance originated in Nigeria. It is a celebratory social dance that uses instruments and a song in addition to the dance. Today we learned the basic song and dance movement, and we will work a bit more on adding other special elements to it in the next 2 weeks. I had intended to work on Gahu throughout the month of February, but Café de la Paix needed our attention.
Our story today was about an African-Canadian named Viola Desmond who spent a night in jail for refusing to sit in the balcony at a movie theatre. She had paid for her ticket like everyone else and wanted to sit in the front, but in 1946, segregation was still a problem. Our class was very sensitive to this issue today and kept commenting as I read the story, "But she did pay!", "That's not very nice!". We reflected a bit on what Canada might be like today if people like Viola had not fought back against what they knew to be unfair. Please ask your student to tell you the whole story.
Words of the Week
Last week we learned of 4 more ways to make the French ‘es’ sound. This week we have another 2
ways. ‘ai’ and ‘ais’ make the very same sound. Included in this list are some I
(Je) statements. Encourage your child to write 5 sentences beginning with each
one. E.g., 1. J’aime le lait. 2. J’aime
les chiens.
j’aime, lait, l’air, je vais, je fais,
je sais,
maison, mais
Bonus words: il fait, partenaire
If I don't mention it, this Thursday is our last skating outing so we will once again need all the helmets and skates.
Have a good week,
Tamara