Hi parents!
Thanks for making it out to curriculum night yesterday. It was fun watching the kids proudly showing you around our room! I hope you found the information useful. If you have any questions about the routines I spoke about, or anything else, you know you can email me at any time. I am sending home our class timetable to all families that couldn't make it. Together with the Dewson "days" calendar you got on the first day, this will help you keep track of when we have gym, library etc. If anyone else needs a copy of this, just let me know.
I'm excited to have collected all media forms so I can begin to post some pictures here for you so that you can see your students in action. So far, I have been posting all the boring, but necessary beginning of the year info. Let me take a minute to share what we are actually working on at school these days!
Français
In language, we have been working on recognizing the 'a' and 'e' vowels, as you know from words of the week. This should be a good review for grade 2s, and not a big deal for grade 1s. We practice finding these sounds every day in the morning message. We practice combining these vowels together with neighbouring consonants as a first step to decoding longer words. We do other word study activities as well, such as reading poems containing our sounds and adding sound words to our personal dictionaries and word wall.
Each morning we have some dedicated time for silent reading, during which I can work with a small group. I'm working on meeting with each student to check on their letters, and I would also like to meet with small groups in order to teach them how to correctly play some of the games we have in our classroom. Games are great for making new friends and practicing cooperative skills, so I am happy to spend the time teaching students the rules. As you may have noticed last evening, we would love to have your support during our reading and meeting time (between 9:30-10:00 am). If you signed up, you will be hearing from me. If you didn't but would like to help, you know what to do!
Here's what reading looks like in our classroom:
In writing we are focusing on neat printing, using the lines in our workbooks. We have begun writing personal journal entries that answer a question or continue a thought that I provide.
All students have a tin for jetons that they receive for speaking French. Each time I hear them speaking French I give them a petit jeton. When they have 5, they can trade up for one grand jeton. Once they have 5 big ones, they can trade them for a dollar. Once they have two school dollars, they win a prize! This is, obviously, to encourage students to speak in French at school.
We are also continuing the French 3 to 3 program that students began in SK or grade 1. This is basically a collection of poems, rhymes and oral stories that we pull from on a daily basis. We don't always spend a ton of time on it, but it's a great tool for getting kids speaking French right away, and they LOVE the stories. In fact, the two long story murals you saw on our bulletin board are drawn retells of two of our 3 to 3 stories. Ask your student which story he/she helped retell, and which part!
There is a ton more going on in language, but I'll move on!
Math
This month we are working on counting strategies. We've played games to practice counting and skip-counting (up to just over 40 so far) and we've started collecting some helpful strategies for counting, for example, crossing off or moving items we've already counted, or counting larger groups by 10 to make the job faster. We are naming our strategies after the student that comes up with it, and sharing them with each other on our math board. Hopefully we will be inspired to try these ideas out in our own work!
Social Studies & Science
As you know, grade 2s are with Mme Gaudreault for these subjects. Please feel free to contact her with any questions.
Grade 1s will be alternating between social studies and science and we've begun with a social studies unit called Our Changing Roles and Responsibilities. Students are each completing a self-reflective project which gets us thinking about people, places and items that are meaningful to us, and how we contribute to our family and community by showing respect and doing our part.
I have mentioned previously that we will need some pictures. Part of this project is a time line beginning with when our students were born and ending with the beginning of grade 1. In between, there is room for 3 important life events. These could be taking first steps, the birth of a younger sibling, a family vacation, starting preschool, losing a tooth... or whatever else!
The time lines are coming home today. This weekend, please take some time to reflect on important moments with your child and help write down a quick word about each on the time line. Please also find 5 pictures (one for each time line event) and send them to me. Email is best, but if you only have hard copies, I will make copies and send your originals back right away. If you don't have pictures for your chosen events, I will make sure your child has time at school to draw a picture!
Please do your best to send the pictures and time line paper back by our next social studies period, next Wednesday. This should be a fun walk down memory lane with your researcher, and is not meant to take much time. (Again, you do not have to print and glue pictures at home - just send them to me and we will do it at school.) Thanks ever so much!
Here we are creating mini-versions of our special objects that we shared with each other last week!
Art
Hopefully you noticed our beautiful colour-mixing projects as you entered the second floor yesterday. We had fun making these and creating the secondary colours using only the 3 primary colour pastels! I'm excited for tons of great art projects with the class this year!
Other stuff
- Our gym teacher, Mr. Tredille has reminded us that we might want layers for outdoor gym (days 5 and 7). Apparently last time some children were chilly!
- The lunch room supervisors are happy with our class' behaviour in the busy gym. Let's keep reminding our gang to pick up all garbage, speak as quietly as possible and to stay seated until they are officially dismissed.
- We had our Terry Fox run this morning! We've been keeping track of the money we raise, and our class collected over $80!! This is double Dewson's goal of $2 per student! Thanks to Salle 317 (Mme Gouet's class) for running with us and keeping us safe this morning. Check out the action shots below!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Tamara
