Halloween and Other Fun Things

There was so much going on throughout the school this week. Every division had an assembly. Ours was Wednesday afternoon. It was really nice to see the presentations and performances by some of the other primary classes. Our class had a bit of an advantage when Mme Judd introduced the new school song about caring since they had already gone over it with her in music before the assembly. I'm looking forward to a later Primary Assembly when our class can take a turn to present something that we have worked on together. Perhaps a dramatic reading of some sort since we're spending a lot of time on poetry. On Thursday, it was "Orange and Black and Crazy Hat Day". Each division also got to have a short dance. This was a nice body break for the students as we missed our gym time due to the assembly. 

In Language, the focus this week was on a reading assessment. The grade twos and threes each had different assessments. Since we continued with our other regular morning activities, the assessments took several days to complete. The students read the text over several times before beginning the comprehension section. The assessments are pretty much complete except for the few students who still need to take a turn reading the text to me so I can assess their decoding. The assessment should be going home later next week once I've had a chance to correct them all and finish reading with everyone. The grade twos did two comptines this week, "Le lutin" with the various spellings for "in" (in, im, ain, aim, ein, eim), and "Un ours" with the "ou" sound. The grade threes did the story "Tout brun" which focused on the "un" sound. They completed the comprehension questions. One area they require continued practice with is identifying which subject a pronoun replaces. Next week the students will complete a writing piece where they will show me everything they have learned so far this year. 

Two fall "L'écureuil" poems that we read this week

In math, we continued to complete graphing activities. The students are getting much better at coming up with appropriate titles for graphs. We also did several surveys this week. An area we need to continue to work on is in describing the information presented in a graph and in making comparisons between the information presented (how many more, how many less, the total of two of the items presented, etc.). And as I typically see, being able to show their work, whether it's addition or subtraction, is a challenge. We will continue to work on these over the next week or so. 

Graphing activities: surveys and describing graphs

I'm much closer to getting math and literacy centres up and going. I have a reward system ready to put in place where they can earn in-class rewards for working well in groups. The only thing left to do is get the games ready next week. Hopefully a couple of hours after school should be enough to get everything ready to laminate and organize. 

I've got lots of new posters up to help the students with expectations in the classroom and a few more to hang up next week (hopefully with a little assistance from M. Jacques since I have vertigo and really dislike getting up on ladders). I'm trying to get the students more involved in the running of the class by giving them more responsibility. In addition to our regular jobs, which are now all in place and running fairly smoothly, I've added to the responsibility of the student who does the calendar. He/she isnow in charge of assessing whether the students are keeping the class tidy and letting them know what area they need to tidy up after themselves. 

I have a new poster up by the class library to help the students pick a "just right" book. Also, there is now a "class fairy" who will randomly be checking to see if desks are tidy and leaving some sort of reward if they are. I also have a new system where the students need to ask three friends for help before myself. This will be very important once all the centres are in place and I will be working with one small group at a time. Thank you so much to all those teacher bloggers who posted all these wonderful ideas. There are too many to list with all of the wonderful things I have been finding out in the "blogosphere". 

It's been a great week and I'm looking forward to what the class will accomplish next week!