Week 12 Update

Bonjour!

What's going on this week:

Tuesday: choir practice

Thurday: Field trip, please see email sent for more details about Thursday's field trip and next week's field trip.  Make sure your child is wearing boots and a rain jacket.  Send along a snack which can be tucked into a pocket.

Also Thursday - dictée & gym

Agendas:
I really appreciate it when you are able to sign your child's agenda.  Thank you to those of you who can do this consistently.  Just sign in the actual school day somewhere.  So a typical week would have 5 teacher signatures, and 5 parent signatures, one for each school day.

Here's the dictée:



Bonne semaine!

Week 11 Update

Bonjour!

A fairly quiet week it seems this week.  Here's what's planned:

Monday - Library book exchange, Grade 1 buddies
Tuesday - Choir
Thursday - Dictée, Gym.  New dictée words to go home in the agenda this day also.
Friday - Pro-D, no school for students.  I will be at another school, looking forward to learn about Brain-Gym and student peer-helping activities.

- This week, we will be doing an activity where students reflect on their attributes (good qualities), skills, interests, and accomplishments (something they are proud of).

- Math - We will work more with Place Value, and learning number names in French.  If you want to help at home, practice counting by 10s in French, forwards & backwards.  Something to work on together on the drive home perhaps?

- Science - Matter:  solids, liquids, & gases

Here is this week's audio dictée:

Week 10 Update

Bonjour!

Upcoming this week:

• We will be on grounds clean-up this week, rain or shine!  Please make sure your child is dressed for cold & rainy days.
• Please send your child's labeled choir uniform to school, in a labeled bag.  (white top, black bottom)
• There will be no dictée this week.  Next dictée - week of Nov. 14th, the theme is words with an "é" sound.  You can find these in your child's agenda, in the week of Nov. 14th.  

Monday - Library book exchange.

Tuesday & Wednesday - Afternoon choir rehearsals in the gym.

Thursday - Morning Choir performance, only open to parents of children performing as part of the honour guard.  The choirs will perform the same songs (and more!) in the Christmas concerts.

Friday - Remembrance Day, school not in session.

As noted above, please make sure your child's choir uniform is labeled.  Students change in & out of their uniform in the washrooms and I'm sure you can imagine what a sea of white and black becomes of items dispersed on the floor.  Labeling your child's clothes will help us organize them quickly.

Swim Club:

The Willows after school Swim Club is in the process of accepting applications.  Permissions have been sent home with interested students.  If you would like more information, please email me and I will send a form home in your child's agenda.

Remembrance Day Posters:

On Friday we had a class discussion about what Remembrance Day means to our class community.  Students shared many stories of relatives having served abroad, or stories of war in other parts of the world.  This serves as an introductory discussion to Remembrance Day and other themes such as sacrifice, caring, and working together as a team.  Students have started to work on a Remembrance Day poster reflecting our discussions.  Interested students may wish to take part in the Royal Canadian Legion's Primary Poster Contest.  Local Legions award prizes, and local winners have a chance to win a trip to Ottawa.  If your child is interested in participating, I will send a registration form home for you to complete.

For inspiration, we also watched a short video here to see other students' Remembrance Day posters.

Other concepts we are currently studying:

Math:

We just finished a unit on Patterns, using numbers, letters, and shapes.  Some of this included skip counting, mostly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 20, either adding or subtracting.

Next week we will be starting what I feel is the most important elementary age unit, that of placement value.  Kids who understand placement value know that in a number such as 498, the 4 represents 400 and is a larger than the 9 which represents 90.  We will be using blocks and many out of textbooks activities to reinforce these concepts.

Social Studies:

We are finishing a unit on Mapping concepts, and the students are creating their own map of the Musgrave field making sure they include a title, a legend, and cardinal directions.  Last week, we snuck outside when it stopped raining for 10 minutes in the early week, and used compasses to find out where North, South, East, and West fell on the playground.  

P.E.

Students have been playing Handball, focusing on fair (and safe) play, and short passes.  

Bonne semaine à tous!