Bonjour! Events upcoming in Div. 11:
Mon. Oct. 23: PJ day, bring a book for Drop Everything and Read - a school-wide reading event, also, as mentioned last week, our class will work with a Francophone Theatre group from Vancouver, Cross-country jamboree for some students in the afternoon.
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.
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, ...)
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):
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.
