Concert details

Hi parents,

I now have all the details of next Thursday's concert. Students are asked to wear dark on the bottom and white on the top. They should arrive at 6:00 pm and meet me in our classroom. They can leave their coats and belongings here. At this point you are free to go find your seat in the gym (trust me, you'll want to get right on that). At 6:15 I will walk the students over the music room. If you arrive later than 6:15, please have your singer go directly there. The grade 1 choir is up first and the concert begins right at 6:30. After our group is finished performing, I will bring our class back to Room 211 and babysit until you are able to come collect (no charge!). Please do not leave the gym early, it will not be a long concert - I believe there are only 3 groups performing - and everyone deserves to have a great audience. We anticipate that you'll be out of here by 7:15 at the latest.

I'd also like to make you aware of another special event, even though it's not for over a month. Our first field trip (to the High Park Nature Centre) will take place on Wednesday January 6th. Information and a permission form will be coming home soon. I know that many families plan trips over the holidays and sometimes miss a few days of school before or after. If you have not yet made plans, please take this into consideration so that your child can come with us on this fun excursion.

Tonight your child has a note from the Me to We club - I believe they are selling bracelets as a fundraiser. Those forms, if you wish to order, are due December 11th.

Today was a very full day in Salle 211. In the morning Mlle L prepared a science experiment for us to do involving whether various materials would sink or travel across water. This links up with our next science unit on Structures and Materials, which we will begin shortly, but the real goal for this experiment was to practice making predictions and then doing a test to find the result (but not changing our original prediction!). Students managed themselves very well at the 5 different centres. Ask your scientist which materials survived the float test.

In the afternoon, we did another set of centres, this time around patterning. The centres included making colour patterns and naming them, continuing a growing pattern, answering a question that involves a shrinking pattern (we worked on these kinds of patterns last week), and finally, using a scale to show how an equals sign means that both sides of an equation are the same, or equal to each other. Ask your student to tell you about their favourite centre! 

Here are tomorrow's Words of the Week 

(I switched week 13 and 14, in case you're keeping track)

This is one of my personal favourites. I think ‘oi’ is a fun sound to say. In English, it sounds just like ‘wa’, as in “water”. At first, children sometimes use the letter a, or wa when trying to write this sound. That’s just fine, they are similar. From now on, we’ll help them listen a little closer and remind them that there’s an even better way to write that sound. Our sound poster in class has a picture of a bird and the word oiseau. If you’re doing rule posters at your house, looking at this one is an immediate reminder of what the sound looks like.

oiseau, froid, moi, toi, voiture

Bonus words: roi, loi

Upcoming Concert

Hi parents,

I have just learned that there will be a grade 1 & 2 concert on Thursday December 10th beginning at 6:30 in the gym. Our students will be performing in grade 1 choir under the direction of Mr. Matheson. I expect that students will be asked to arrive at school by 6:00. I'll share more details as I get them. Can't wait to hear what they have prepared!

Tonight you are receiving the rubric for our November dictée, which we did earlier this week. I'm definitely seeing improvement as the weeks go by. Bon travail tout le monde!

Yesterday morning, we were very lucky that Mme Ally came back to do a clay project with us. Every student got to make an animal sculpture. They are being fired in a real kiln and will be back in a few weeks for the next step.

Finally, I can't believe there are only 3 weeks left until the winter break. Time flies! I know that many students like to get their teacher a present for Christmas, so before you do any shopping, I would just like to say that, firstly, it is completely unnecessary - please don't feel that you need to get me a gift.
Secondly, if you do wish to get me something, please consider getting something for our classroom rather than just for me. I often spend my own money on art supplies, dollar store prizes, paper towels and French books. These are items that our whole class can benefit from, and you'll still be doing me a favour. Thanks a lot!

Have a great weekend,
Tamara

Words of the Week

Hi parents,

We had a great day today!

Students extended on a rhyme that we learned by writing in their journals about an animal or person that goes up the hill (like in the poem). Some of the children who celebrate Hanukkah told us about the menorah, and we started making our own stained-glass menorahs. We also learned about a new kind of pattern: a growing pattern (suite croissante), where the rule is not what part repeats, but what is added each time to make the pattern grow. Ask your mathematician to show you a growing pattern!

At the end of the day we finished learning the moves to our new dance - a rap. I got half of it on video before I ran out of memory...

Today, most children are bringing home an envelope with a receipt for your snack & trip payment made to the school in September. If you have not yet submitted this payment, please consider whether you are able to do so in the near future. We do have a field trip coming up in January. Thanks!

Words of the Week

This week we are reviewing the sound, ‘é’. E-accent aigu is like an entirely separate, extra, vowel in the French alphabet. You can think of the sound ‘ay’ in English, as in “May”. In addition to é words, I would like everyone to memorize the words “j’ai” (= I have, or sometimes, I am) and “et” (= and). They sound like é even though they don’t look like it, and we use these words all the time.

éléphant, bébé, école, *j’ai*, *et*

Bonus words: année, idée