Week 7

Bonjour!

 Looking at the weather for this week, Fall is definitively upon us.

 Here's a look ahead at the next 2 weeks in our class:

- Tues. Oct. 17 - P.E.
- Wed. Oct. 18 - Choir
- Thurs. Oct. 19 - Dictée, the Great BC Shake-up (Earthquake practice)
- Fri. Oct. 20 - BC-wide Professional Development Day for teachers.  I will be attending workshops in Vancouver on Friday and Saturday.

Week of Oct. 23-27
- This week, Willows French Immersion classes will be taking part in some "Art Dramatique" sessions with Theatre de la Seizieme, a professional Francophone Theatre company from Vancouver. 

- Tues. Oct. 24 - P.E.
- Wed. Oct. 25 - Photo retakes, choir
- Thurs. Oct. 26 - Dictée
- Fri. Oct. 27 - Pizza/Sushi, Buddies

This week's audio dictée:

Week 6 in Div. 11

Bonjour!

This week on my radar:

It's the official yearly Fire Drill week at Willows, where we practice getting out of the building quickly and quietly.

Monday:  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Tuesday:  Fire drill, P.E.

Wednesday:  Official Fire Drill with Oak Bay Fire Dept. attending

French Home reading:

How is the home reading coming along?  Is your child able to get his/her 10 minutes a day of French reading?  Are you seeing books coming home?  Please jot me a note in your child's agenda if he/she needs a reminder to switch-out French books.

Inside shoes:

With the wet weather now here again, please make sure your child has a clean pair of inside shoes for the classroom.  

Agendas

I use agendas in my class as an important communication tool between school & home.  Please make sure to sign it every night.  I tell students that it is their responsibility to ask you to read and sign it, but in reality these young people usually need a hand in remembering.  Since we look at our agendas at least once a day, it is also a good place for parents to write reminders (exchange books, bring home water bottle, ...)

This week's dictée:

Week 5 update

Bonjour!

Please see field trip information in the email.

This week in Div. 11:
Thurs. Oct. 5th - Dictée

Next week:
Mon. Oct. 9th - Thanksgiving
Wed. Oct. 11 - Fire Drill
Thurs. Oct. 12 - Dictée

Here's this week's audio dictée:

Bonjour - Welcome to a new year!

Bonjour!

Thanks to everyone for visiting the classroom last Thursday night.  It was very nice to meet everyone!

This week in Div. 11:

Library book return - Our book exchange system is changing this year.  Students in our class will now be able to exchange their books Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, as needed.  

Monday - Scholastic due (or Tuesday.  Honestly, I don't usually get to it right away!)

Tuesday - P.E.

Wednesday - Choir

Thursday - Music, Dictée

Friday - Orange Shirt Day, buddies with Mme Hallam's class, new dictée words

Topics of note:

French - Writing sentences starting with a capital and ending with a period.  Leveled reading in groups.  We will also be starting a novel which we will read together, written from the perspective of a First Nations man in Alberta and his experiences growing up on the land.

Math - Pictograms, adding and subtracting (using a number line or a 100s chart if needed), patterns.

Social Studies - Continents and oceans.  Willows will be observing "Orange Shirt Day" (http://www.orangeshirtday.org/) on Friday.

Please check the email sent for upcoming field trip information.

This week's audio dictée (you may hear Sammy-the-cat in the background near the end):

Week 28 update

Bonjour!

This week's happenings: 
Monday - Library book exchange
Tuesday - Fire House visit, choir rehearsal
Wednesday - Swimming
Thursday - Lt. Governor Judith Guichon visits Willows, dictée
 Friday - Good Friday (no school)

Next week: 
Monday - Easter Monday (no school)
Tuesday - choir rehearsal
Wednesday - Swimming
Thursday - Spelling quiz
Friday - Pizza/sushi, Musical rehearsal

Please make sure your child brings a choir uniform ASAP as we are headed for "Musical season" starting soon.

Science
This week we started a study of Thermal Energy in Science.  This is a new unit introduced to Grade 3s this year as part of the new BC curriculum.

We started by exploring new technical French words associated with this theme.  Some of these multi-syllable words will likely be difficult for our young second-language learners.  But I'm hoping that by defining them, illustrating them, and using them as part of experiments, we will all become more familiar with them and use them more fluently.

Our main goals are to find sources of thermal energy, as well as to know basic workings of conduction (heat transfer from a stove element to a pot), convection (heat transfer from rising hot air from a campfire to a pot above it ), and radiation (energy moving in the form of rays through space).

Math
We are beginning to work with multiplication, working with arrays and repeated addition (2+2+2, or 3x2=6).

Français
Over the next few weeks we will be practicing verbs in the present tense and playing games to help us remember them. We will be looking at avoir, être, faire, aller, pouvoir, and ER verbs.

Français/Sciences Humaines
To get into the mood for the upcoming May 9th election, we will quickly be looking at the steps a candidate must go through from a nomination meeting to a provincial vote.

Joyeuse Pâques!

This week's dictée:

Week 24 Update

Bonjour!

Upcoming dates to remember:

Monday Feb. 27 - Library-please return books, buddies, ***return swim lesson intent letter

Thursday Mar. 2 - Dictée (see written words in email, also see below for audio dictée)

Friday Mar. 3 - Field trip (please see email)

Mon. Mar. 6 - Author Sigmund Brouwer visits Willows at 9am

Thurs. Mar. 9 - Spelling quiz, Square Dance in the Gym at 9:50, Family Dance in the evening

Fri. Mar. 10 - Theatre presentation in the morning, Pizza/sushi lunch, Report cards sent home

Mon. Mar. 13 - Return Student-led appointment forms (given in the report card)

Wed. Mar. 15 - Student-led conferences (1pm to 5pm)

Tburs. Mar. 16 - Dictée, Student-led conferences (1pm to 5pm)

Fri. Mar. 17 - last day of school prior to Spring Break

Field Trip

Please see email.

There is room on the bus for 4 adults from my class to accompany us.  If you would like to join us please let me know ASAP (preferably by email).

Swim lessons

Late last week you will have received a letter regarding upcoming swimming lessons for Grade 3s.  Every year at Willows, the school organizes swim lessons for students during the school day.  Many years ago when my own kids were students at Willows, municipalities used to pay for Grade 3 students to learn how to swim.  Somewhere along the way the municipalities stopped to fund this initiative, but the school continued to facilitate the lessons.  Please see the letter sent home for an approximate cost of the lessons.  Participating students will not be missing any classwork as typically most, if not all, students participate.  Non-participating students will remain at Willows with another teacher and will be given activities.  Please return the bottom portion of the letter by tomorrow.

Academics

Français - recognizing and writing nouns/adjectives in the singular and plural forms, writing stories or journal entries with interesting beginnings.  Planning/writing an oral presentation.

English - reading "The Stone Fox".  Discussing similarities and differences between European and First Nations cultures.  Looking at the role of government and taxes in society, working with words with a "u" sound.

P.E. - hockey and various playground games.

Social studies - learning about Inuit culture, and starting projects.  These projects will be on display during the student-led conferences March 15/16th.

Math - addition and subtraction with regrouping.  Problem solving with addition and subtraction.

Social responsibility - For the anti-bullying day on Feb. 22, students from my class each made a poster with at least 8 tear-away tabs, each containing a compliment, in French or in English.  We placed the posters in the hallways throughout the school so other students could take a compliment with them if they needed a one.  These were a big hit with Willows students and all the tabs had disappeared by the end of the day.  

Audio dictée

Week 18 Update

Bonjour!

It's hard to believe that we only returned from the winter break two weeks ago, because we have done so much in class since then!

Firstly, let me wish everyone a Happy & Healthy New Year!

I am always excited to teach from January to March because it seems to be the most productive part of our year.  The students have matured since their grade 2 selves in the fall, have settled into routines, and are not yet distracted by warm, sunny days.

Before I forget, please check details of an upcoming field trip in the 2 most recent emails.

This is what we are working on in class:

We started the year by learning how to wish each other "Bonne Année" and how to give a good handshake, not too hard and not too soft.

French - We have just completed a unit on "les noms" (common and proper nouns), and have started to work on the concept of singular and plural.  I expect to be working on this for the next few weeks.

Last week we also started working with transition words in French such as:  d'abord, ensuite, puis, après, enfin, ...  Students practiced using transition words by writing and illustrating what they did over their winter break.

Dictée - The theme of this week's words is "skating" so the students learn French words related to our upcoming field trip.

Cursive writing - While this is no longer in our Grade 3 curriculum, I have decided to continue introducing students to cursive writing.  We will not spend much time on this but I believe that it is empowering for children to learn new skills.  I plan to chip away at the alphabet when we have 10 minutes here & there.

English - Our spelling list last week included words with the sounds "ea, e, ...".  We have also started to read a novel together called "The Stone Fox".  I have taught this story many times and it is always a favourite with students.  Not to give too much away, the story takes place in winter and involves a dog-sled race.

Social Studies - We are starting to learn about the Inuit.

Science - We held a few experiments in class this past week looking at which objects would float or sink, making predictions beforehand.  We also tested what would happen to a sugar cube when dropped into water.

Math - Counting by 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 25.  We will soon be starting to add larger numbers such as:

  235
+749
____

P.E. - hockey

Upcoming:
Monday - library checkout
Thursday - dictée, P.E.

Here's this week's audio dictée: