Mme Jacques's Class: Surprises

It has been a very strange week! It started Monday morning when I found out that one of my students had transferred to another school/board. I was very sad to find this out as I get very attached to all of the students in my classes while I have them. Both Monday and Tuesday, my youngest was sick at day care so on Monday, my husband had to leave his school early and I had to do the same on Tuesday. After a very rough night on Tuesday, I ended up staying at home with Max on Wednesday, which left me scrambling at 4:00 am to come up with some last minute plans. As you might imagine, things were a little disorganized and we just didn't get through all of the usual work we do in language and math. Since we had a practice yesterday for the two class representatives for Monday's Remembrance Day Service as well as a school assembly this morning, it was a great opportunity to get through the "Ketchup" of our unfinished work.

The grade twos did the comptine "Le soir" with the "oi" sound. The grade threes began the story "Bernard le canard" but still have some more work to complete next week. We did two new fall poems for shared reading (in next week's homework). We did have time to complete a writing assessment. The students were given a topic and we brainstormed ideas together that we recorded on chart paper. Every student shared one idea. We also had a long discussion about how important it is to stop and think about all of the sounds in an unfamiliar word and that by doing so, they would be able to spell the word almost as well as if they had known the word. We tried it with the word "interrogation" where the students managed to spell it very closely using this strategy, "intérogasion". I told them any words that they didn't know in French but they had to use the word wall and the sound it out method for all of the writing. They needed to use three of the modelled ideas and then come up with at least three more of their own ideas as well as ensure that they had capitals and periods. This assessment was done over 4 days so that they could really take their time and think about their writing. I'm looking forward to reading what they have written.

This week's poems

We continued to work on graphing this week in math but with quite a few interruptions, the focus was mostly on completing the daily math problems and finishing up any incomplete math work. We also spent some time reviewing some manipulatives to use and how to use them for adding and subtracting. The anchor charts showing the types of words that the students will find in addition and subtraction problems are now up for them to use. The grade threes began small math guided groups this week with Mme Jarvis. They will continue to work with her on problem solving over the next little while.

Addition and Subtraction Words anchor charts

I'm about halfway through preparing the centres. There were just too many interruptions to my planning times this week but at least some progress has been made. I stayed for quite awhile after school today to get all the posters and anchor charts hung up which I have made over the past few weeks. Definitely not my favourite thing to do as I have vertigo and ladders, especially tall ones, are not my friend! :)

More math anchor charts/posters

Types if sentences/punctuation

Question words and some helpful writing tips for tricky accents and b/d letter reversals

Our clock flower to help read analog time

Weekly personal leaning goals for the class which we will be starting soon

Some anchor charts for reading responses

Yesterday and today, the students who did not have any art work to finish up made poppies for our class wreath. We spent some of today's literacy block discussing the meaning of Remembrance Day, some of the language associated with it, and doing shared writing for our Thank You card that will be presented on Monday.