Thursday 26 September 2013

Open House

It's been a busy week. The students have been working hard to complete their draft and good copies of the posters we put up for Open House. They were very excited to have their work on display for parents! It was great meeting all of the parents tonight. I am sorry there were a few that were unable to attend. Hopefully I can meet everyone else soon. It was a long day for me but very enjoyable. Also, I volunteered at the Book Fair which was a great opportunity to reconnect with former students and their families. Some of the children seemed to enjoy their Open House tasks that I had for them, while others were a bit shy, especially when it came to introducing their parents to me. 


Open House

We are continuing to work through the sounds in our daily comptines. This week we have done the sounds "j", "k", "l", and "m". We will do "n" tomorrow. The grade threes have been working on the story "Peureux, peureux!" which covers the "eu" sound. This week we also have also been looking at a compte-rendu (recount) as a shared reading. Next week the students will begin to work on rough drafts of their own recounts of what they did over the summer. I began doing reading assessments with the children. I've gotten through about a third of the class so far and hope to read with the rest over the next couple of weeks. Once I've read with everyone, I will get our guided reading groups going and I'll be doing more small group instruction. 

Reading assessment 

In math, we began looking at ways to represent numbers. The students have been doing hands on activities, where they are using hundreds, tens, and ones to represent numbers. Written work has focused on estimating, grouping objects in order to count them, and making pictures of hundreds, tens, and ones to represent numbers. We've also talked about being careful as ten ones need to be converted to a ten and ten tens into a hundred. 

The students continued to work on their name pattern art. Most got to the point today where they began to add colour. We haven't done any social studies this week as this week's focus was science. We took some time to discuss scientific thinking and using all of senses to help us understand what we are learning about. The grade threes are doing stable structures and the grade twos are doing movement. Luckily these units have some overlap so we'll be able to do a lot of activities together. 






Thursday 19 September 2013

Getting to Know One Another Again

It's been a busy week so far. We haven't got as much work done as I had planned, but the dynamic of our class has changed with reorganizing and it's important to get to know one another again within our new class makeup. Also, class rules and expectations need to be gone over again, so for most of the class, it's been like starting over again from a new first day. For those who have been in the class for the past few weeks, it's been a great opportunity to show some leadership skills as they are the "experts" on the routines. They have all been spread out in each table group so that they get the chance to use those skills in a small group setting. Everyone seems to be adjusting well to the changes and it shouldn't take long for everyone to comfortably settle into our class. 

In our language block, the grade twos have been working on the two spellings for the "f" sound, "f" and "ph", hard and soft "g", and will continue with "i" tomorrow. The grade threes have been working on the story "Rintintin le lapin" which focuses on the "in" sound with the following three spellings, "in", "im" and "ain". The students are also working on posters about themselves, which is why they were asked to bring a photo of themselves to class. 

We have continued to look at non-numerical patterning, focusing mostly on explaining our patterns. We will have a small assessment on this on Friday, however, patterning is something that we will visit regularly throughout the year. We began doing "Les mathématiques pour tous les jours" this week. It it a set of daily math questions from each of the five math strands. On Monday, it's patterning and algebra. On Tuesday, it's number sense and numeration. On Wednesday, it's geometry. On Thursday, it's measurement. On Friday, it's data management. Also, we have started "Nombre du jour" which is representational activities for a daily number. We are at 13, as we are going with the number of school days that have been attended (the photo is of yesterday's number). Check it out at our Open House next week!

In visual arts, the students are using their names to create patterns. Our self-portraits are done along with the poems. They are up on the wall to be seen at Open House. We began social studies this week. The grade twos will be looking at their communities within Canada. They will be doing activities that will allow them to compare how they live in Canada with those who live in other countries. The grade threes will be completing activities about the communities in which they live. Given that we have students from both Kingston and Amherstview, we will be able to see the differences between an urban community and a rural community through our follow-up discussions to the activities. Also, learning goals for each subject are now posted on a bulletin board for students to review regularly. These will change as we change units/topics. The background colour matches the colour of the duo tang for that subject, red - le français, yellow - la phonétique, green - les études sociales, black - les maths, blue - les mathématiques pour tous les jours, and orange - les sciences. This will help students match the expectation to what they are working on. I'm really enjoying trying to implement new ideas such as this in the classroom this year. 






Les mathématiques pour tous les jours

Nombre du jour

Our self-portraits and poems

Learning goals

Matching duo tangs





Thursday 12 September 2013

Changes!

I am feeling very sad at the moment. Our school has had to reorganize due to the extremely high numbers in all of our French Immersion kindergarten classes. As a result, I am losing eight of the lovely grade threes that I have been enjoying getting to know. And while I know I will be getting nine more wonderful grade twos, and that those leaving will enjoy the rest of their school year in either Mlle Bennett's or M. Virtue's classes, I will still miss them. Tomorrow we will be finishing up any work, so that it can be taken with them to their new classes. 

This week, we have continued to look at patterning and have spent more time writing/explaining about patterns. While I had originally planned to move onto a new unit next week, we will have to spend a bit more time on this to ensure that the incoming grade two students get a chance to become proficient in this. Then we will be moving on to representing numbers. 


Some examples of our math work

In Language, the grade twos have been working on the following sounds in our daily comptines: hard c, d, e, é, and will finish the week with è/ê tomorrow. The grade threes worked on the sound "en" with its different spellings (en, an, em, am) in the story "Le champignon ensorcelé". The students completed their poems about themselves which will go with their now complete self-portraits. For those staying, look for the self-portraits as they will be posted in the classroom. I will send the self-portraits home with those leaving. 

I would like to extend a welcome to all of the students who will be moving into my class at the end of the day tomorrow. I look forward to getting to know everyone and hope the adjustment will be smooth and quick. 


Working on our self-portraits



Independent Reading










Thursday 5 September 2013

Enjoying the First Week Back!

It's been really fun getting to know the students this week. Today we started presenting our "All About Me" bags. We're learning lots of interesting information about each other in a fun way. The presentations are not done yet but we will continue tomorrow and Monday until everyone has taken a turn. It's also been a great way to get the students back into the habit of communicating in French in front of a group after being away from it over the summer. 

The students have also started drawing their self-portraits in visual arts. The drawing is pretty much complete and they will be completing the colour next week with pastels. They will begin completing poems about themselves tomorrow to go with their portrait. We plan to have them on display for the Open House. 

We've been working on patterning. The students have been making patterns with a variety of manipulatives and describing the changing attributes orally. Today they began drawing, labelling, and explaining their patterns in written format. The math homework for the next couple of weeks for both grade 2 and grade 3 will review this. 

Our shared reading and guided reading is focusing on phonics. The grade twos have had short poems with the "a" and "b" sounds and will do hard and soft "c" sounds and spellings over the next couple of days. I focus on building decoding skills, increasing vocabulary, and improving fluency with these poems. The grade threes have been working on the booklet "Lou et Trouloulou" which covers the"ou" sound. The booklets also contain short comprehension questions to go with the story. 

Each grade has been taking turns reading with me. The grade twos will do a new sound each day until we get to the harder blends. Then we will spend several days before moving onto a new sound. Since the grade three reading booklets also contain a comprehension componant, they will just have one sound a week. We have started with some words for our word wall and have been learning new ways to chant the, each day. This is a fun way to practice the words regularly. 

I have been unable to successfully post my newsletter with the variety of graphics and fonts in it. This is disappointing but I will continue to try to find a way. In the meantime, I will post important information from the newsletters, such as upcoming dates. 


Our All About Me Bags


Drawing self-portraits