Saturday 29 March 2014

The Big Shuffle

It felt more like I was back in September this week: lots of wandering, procrastinating, and not much work accomplished. So I decided to try a new seating plan. I sat everyone with the person that they were most likely to wander over to in the hopes that the privilege of getting to sit with a friend is enough of an incentive to stay on task. With Friday's indoor recess, I'm not sure how well this experiment is working out yet. 


The big shuffle!

I had some great news this week! One of my students, Kailey, had her artwork featured in the newspaper. I love hearing about all of the great accomplishments of my students outside of school. 


This week, the grade twos reviewed the "ere" sound in "Le ver de terre" and the "ir" sound in "Vladimir". The grade threes began the story "Au camp d'été". We finished up our cycle of ateliers and then worked on a lot of science this week. 

Drawing soles of shoes after reading about friction (Grade 3)

Does it float or sink? (Grade 2)

Is it attracted to a magnet? (Grade 3)

As Respect is our school-wide focus at the moment, we watched a movie about respect. Unfortunately the language choices were only English or Spanish, not French, so we watched it in English. It also contained some great reminders of how friends treat one another. 


Getting active with Just Dance during our indoor recess on Friday...

Have a great weekend!

Saturday 22 March 2014

Refreshed and Back at It!

It's been a great week back! Everyone seemed refreshed and ready to get back to work. I was hoping to post sooner but was busy making my oldest son's birthday cake last night and taking care of my youngest son this morning whose sick. Finally a quiet moment as Sammy is at a birthday party and Max is asleep in my arms! So blogging on.... The grade threes worked on the ic, ac, oc, uc, and ec sounds in "Un drôle de docteur". The grade twos did the ul sound in " La libellule" and the ar sound in "Gaspar". Our newest poems were "Il était une feuille" and "Le bouleau". 

In guided reading, we worked on comprehension strategies and had some great scientific discussions about the properties of liquids. A new reading game to improve sight word recognition and fluency was introduced. The students had to practise reading word lists as fast as they could several times with no errors. If they made a mistake, they would have to start over. 



We continued with some grammar activities. While the grade threes worked on reading comprehension  with a parent volunteer, the grade twos practised breaking up groups of words into sentences and ensuring each sentence had capitals/periods. We did one on the SMARTBOARD and then they did one in their notebooks. 



Many of the students began a new writing piece, an explanation about what their favourite subject in school was and why. Although some wanted to put recess or playing, we had a discussion about what a school subject was. In another centre, the grade threes practised cursive writing while the grade twos created stories to share orally, using flash cards to help them. 




There were some new games for the math centres too! The students had to find hidden addition, like hidden words but with addition hidden instead of words. There was also a game to figure out missing terms, as some students continue to struggle with this algebraic concept. The word problems were a bit challenging for the grade twos as they struggled with the difference between "has this many more than" and "how many more than". In French, the wording is very similar and they are used to doing subtraction whenever they see "more than". But on rare occasions, the question requires addition. 



I hope everyone is having a great first spring weekend, despite the snow!  😎

Friday 7 March 2014

And March Break is Here!

It was such a productive week, even though it was short. I gave the class a break from homework as I had several students leaving early for trips. We finished up our cycle of ateliers and had some time for catching up on some unfinished stuff too!

In language, the grade threes finished up the story "La capture de l'adversaire". They struggled a bit with the comprehension questions as the story is about playing a video game and was in a first person voice. They weren't used to answering questions as if they were in the story. The grade twos did the "elle" sound in "La ritournelle" and the "ile" sound in "Le bibliophile". We read a digital story, "Bienvenue en Arctique", each day this week as a shared reading. After much discussion with their table groups, the students did an independent reading response about what adaptations the animals had to enable them to survive in the Arctic. When they were done, we took up the question as a class and completed a very detailed answer. The students then discussed how their responses compared go the one we did as a class and what they need to do to improve their answers. We spent some time discussing the need to go back into the text, page by page, to extract the pertinent information. 






In math, we continued with 2- and 3-digit addition and subtraction but mostly focused on subtraction. While the students were doing catch-up work and math work, I had the chance to get through lots of GB+ assessments. There were lots of great jumps in reading levels for many of the students I read with. I still have 5 grade three students left to read with but will hopefully get those assessments done the week we get back. Look for new reading levels in the Book-in-a-bag coming home. 

On Thursday afternoon, we moved all of the desks to the side and Mme Judd's class joined us to begin practising for "Celebration of Dance". There are lots of songs/dances to practise over the next little while before many of the classes at Amherstview join over 3000 other students in the region in May for this wonderful activity. We will continue to practise one dance a week until we go, more if we get an indoor recess. 

Have a great March Break!