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