We had a great outing Wednesday morning. Mme Gaudreault pointed out lots of important places in our community on our way to the post office. We actually got to go inside the Shoppers Drug Mart to see the postal office before mailing our letters in the box outside.
With Mme Bradfield, we have added cinquain and acrostiche poems to our repertoire. We learned the rules for writing these types of poems and wrote some together before trying our own hand. Here are a couple great examples:
In science we experimented with mechanical energy by folding our own spring and building a Jack-in-the-box! Students got to bring them home to show off and make adjustments to their new toy.
We also had a special visit from Nora's dad, who brought in the turtle their family found. We had an interesting discussion about hibernation, reviewing what we had learned earlier in the year about how animals adapt to deal with cold weather.
Wednesday was also Pink Day and we certainly had a lot of it going on in our classroom, though I forgot to take a group photo. Please ask your student to tell you the story of how Pink Day came to be. It's easy to lose sight of this in the excitement of getting dressed up. Mlle Bradfield also read us a story that highlighted the importance of helping friends who may be being bullied or having a problem with a friend. We had a great conversation about why people sometimes do mean things, for example, maybe they are bored, maybe they think it's OK because they saw someone else do it, or maybe they actually like you and want to get your attention! In all cases, we agree that saying something is always better than not saying something, and that maybe if we are a nice friend to the person making a bad decision, we could convince him/her to stop and help him/her to play a nice game!
It has been my joy this year to work with a group of students who are generally very good at working out little problems without hurting each others' feelings or bodies. In fact we have only had to have one or two class discussions about this. Continue le bon travail mes amis!
I must also give a GIANT Bravo to the class for Wednesday. I absolutely could not decide who was most deserving of a Bravo since everyone was on their best behaviour and working hard all day. Honestly, we had such a quiet classroom, with everyone doing the right thing at the right time... I was walking around wondering if I was in the wrong room! Fingers crossed that we keep having days like this even when we're not all so sick!I'd like to mention also that the new-ish movie The Little Prince is playing at The Royal on College Street on weekend afternoons this month. The trailer looks really cute and I plan on reading the class the original book, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry later this year. The movie does not tell the story directly, it is focused on a little girl who hears bits and pieces of the story from her neighbour, the author. Still, we will be able to make connections to the film when we read the book. Maybe I'll see you there!