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!

Week 8 Update

Bonjour!

Please see email for field trip information.


Of note this week (as well as the field trip):

Monday Oct. 24th - Library book exchange, Scholastic due, Cross-Country Meet after lunch

Tuesday Oct. 25th - Last week's Dictée cahier sent home

Wednesday Oct. 26th - Pyjama day

Thursday Oct. 27th - Photo retakes, Dictée


This week's audio dictée:

Week 7

Bonjour!

On Friday you should have received a letter re:  an upcoming field trip.  See email for more information.  Please let me know (by email or paper) if you are able to join us.

This week's happenings:

Monday - Library book exchange, assembly, Little buddies

Tuesday - Choir

Wednesday - Music

Thursday - Dictée, BC Shakedown practice, gym

Friday - BC-wide Professional Day for teachers.  No school in session.

Français - This week's words are French weather pattern words.  We have also been working on writing sentences in class, more specifically, remembering to capitalize the first letter in a sentence, and to include a period at the end.  Some students are also working writing their P and p.  (The latter one dips below the line).

We also started reading a short French story together about bats.  We will use this story as a launching point to learn more about Character, Setting, Problem, and Solution in a story.  We will also pick out factual information and take notes about bats.

Math -  We have been working on step counting, adding and subtracting since September, and are now working on continuing a pattern using shapes, numbers, and letters.  To help your child develop quicker computation skills, I encourage families to play board games with 2 dice, or card games with an element of counting involved such as War or Crib.

P.E. - We have been practicing how to throw a ball with one hand and passing, in preparation with learning how to play European Handball.

Art - For the past few weeks, students have practiced how to draw faces.  This week they created an auto-portrait, which will become the cover page for their scrapbook this year.

This week's audio dictée:

Week 6 - Field Trips, Agendas, Dictée, Fire Drill

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Field Trips
Please see email for upcoming field trip dates.  Watch for a paper newsletter with more specific information to come home this week.

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, ...)

Dictée

We are working with Thanksgiving terms in French as the students will be writing in the journals about this holiday.  Here is this week's audio dictée:

This week:
Fire Drill:  Willows has been practicing what to do in the event of a fire.  We expect to have a surprise Fire Drill this week, at which time the Oak Bay Fire Department will be in attendance to time our exit.

Assembly:  On Thursday morning we are expecting to meet Gareth Rees (Willows grad and Canadian rugby legend) as well as  Natasha Watcham-Roy and Bianca Farella, members of the bronze medal winning Canadian Women's Rugby Team. 

Bonne semaine!

Week 4 Update

Thank you to all of you who were able to drop-in to the "Meet the Teacher" event on Thursday evening.  It was very nice to meet everyone.

This week at Willows:

• Thursday Sept. 28 - Dictée
• Friday Sept. 29 - Library book exchange, Terry Fox run after lunch (weather permitting)

Terry Fox - mid August 1980, somewhere in Quebec/Ontario.  Taken on my small Kodak camera when I was moving with my family to Victoria.

We will spend a bit of time early this week getting notebooks and duotangs organized for the year.  I expect to officially start a Home-reading program this week.  Watch for a plastic bag with a small red notebook and a French book.  Further info about the program will be inside the notebook.

This week's audio dictée - Continents and Oceans:

Finally, these past few weeks I have had a bit of time on my hands as my sprained ankle was healing.  I am a big fan of podcasts and various education (and knitting) blogs and came across the following, which you may also find following interesting:

• This first one is about encouraging children to develop self-efficacy.  It gets interesting around the 7:13 mark.  Here's the transcript.  YouTube video also on this page.
• On raising children to include others.  While a little girl-centric, these principles could apply to both girls and boys.
• Being a big fan of nature walks, this article was also interesting.