We've been working well during our writing and math time recently and I'm very proud of what we are accomplishing.
Every morning, we spend a few minutes reciting some rhymes or poems from the 3 to 3 program. Almost all of our student began this program last year in kindergarten or grade 1, so the material is a review, but still a lot of fun, and still valuable to their oral French development.
One of the hardest things to start doing in language is writing independently. Normally it involves brainstorming what you want to say, figuring out how to say it in French, and sounding it all out without forgetting everything. Our poems are incredibly useful for practicing writing because the huge challenge of coming up with an idea and learning the French words is removed. This week, all students chose their favourite poem from our list and began writing it out from memory. We talked about the steps to sounding out and practiced as a class first. Students are learning that they can be independent writers by repeating the words aloud or in their heads over and over again, slowly, until they've written down all the sounds they hear.
Once students have gotten all the words down for their chosen poem, we can start to make some simple revisions and hopefully make some really nice good copies!
Here are some beginnings - check out this amazing sounding out!
In math, we have continued with growing and shrinking patterns this week, but using money! I think the mathematicians have enjoyed using the coins to build their patterns. Most of us are successfully building growing or shrinking patterns that increase or decrease by 1. We have even learned how to describe the pattern rule using mathematical language. Some students have challenged themselves to add or subtract more than 1, for example, beginning with a nickel and adding 5 cents each time. Very cool. Sometimes, these kiddos like to scare their teacher and pretend to be a few grades ahead of where we are... for example, by starting with 16 and subtracting half of the number each time... Yikes!
