Snow Day and All

Despite being away on Monday at "Le Français en coeur" conference and Wednesday's snow day, it's been pretty busy. We began our second week of "ateliers". The grade twos did the "ou" and "on" sounds in the comptines "Tourlou" and "Gaston". The grade threes are working on the "ou" sound in the story "Le concours des fourrures". In guided reading, we began reading and working on non-fiction science booklets. We are continuing with descriptive writing in guided writing. Those who did not have any "Ketchup" work did a snowman retelling activity with a self-selected book at their level. 

I have been doing some more GB+ reading assessments to see how the students have been progressing since I first assessed them at the end of September/beginning of October. Although I have only gotten through about half the class so far, I'm very excited to see that mostly everyone has increased a couple of levels since then!

This week's shared poems

The students are still finishing up some graphing activities in guided math; however we began a unit on linear measurement this week. The grade twos will use various non-standard units and some standard units to measure, while the grade threes will use the standard units of cm, m, and km in the math activities. 

I'm very excited that our SMARTBOARD has finally arrived. It's halfway set up so we can't quite use it yet. The students were great and showed excellent flexibility when we had to move around from place to place in the school on Tuesday when they were installing it and we had to be out of the classroom. We still managed to complete our problems of the day and our math ateliers while moving from the gym, to Mme Anne's room, to Mme Judd's room. A little more installation was done today but it's still not quite ready. The projector is powerless until an electrician can come run power to it and the speakers are on backorder and will be installed sometime over the next few weeks. I've had to move a few things around, particularly the book case with the class library to make things a little more accessible. I'm really looking forward to learning how to use it and all the great things we'll be able to do with it. 

Have a great weekend!

Great First Week of Centres!

It's been such a great week getting the ball rolling with our "ateliers". The children really seemed to enjoy the new routines. The one thing I did find was that it was very intense in the mornings when we went through the three centre times. By Thursday, I found that I will need to take Fridays as regular days to finish up any language and math activities that we do in between our "ateliers". I really loved how much one on one time I really had to work with them, especially in writing and math as I already did guided reading with the class. Taking Friday for catching up will also give me the chance to complete GB+ assessments with the students from time to time as well as any other assessments we do.

For our "Ateliers de lecture", the students are rotating through centres with alphabetical order games, reading alone, listening to stories at the computer/stereo, reading with a partner, and guided reading with Mme. When reading with me, we worked on reading strategies and next steps in their reading as well as a comprehension activity. 

For our "Ateliers de l'écriture", the students are rotating through matching sentence games, writing alone with a roll a sentence dice game, making word wall words with play-doh, writing a poem as a group, and guided writing with Mme. In the guided groups, I have been doing mini-lessons on taking a simple sentence and continuing to add description to make a very detailed sentence. Then the students began to write a descriptive paragraph about their house. 

For our "Ateliers de maths", the students are rotating through centres on math fact practice, math games on the computer, math games to review base ten concepts, math problems as a group, and guided math with Mme. With me the students are completing activities on graphing and I've had a great opportunity to observe them and complete rubrics on how they problem solve for graphing. 

In between the ateliers, we continued with our regular activities. We did our usual two poems as shared reading, which are in next week's homework to read. The grade twos did the comptines "Le chariot" and "La campagne" with the "ch" and "gn" sounds. The grade threes looked at the "or" sound in the story "La sorcière Mirador". In math, the students also began a written assessment for the data management unit we have been doing. Next week the students will begin a unit on linear measurement. Our "buts d'apprentissage" wall is now pretty bare as I had to move it at the end of the day to make room for our SMARTBOARD which will be going in that location. I'm not sure when the SMARTBOARD will be installed but I am ver excited to get started with it. Our "buts d'apprentissage are now on the other side of the room near the sink. There will be no "ateliers" on Monday as I will be away at a French conference but we'll be back to it on Tuesday. 

Ready for the SMARTBOARD!

About to Embark on a Daily Five Adventure

And my centres are ready, or mostly ready! I don't remember the last time I relaxed during a nutrition break since it's been a mad rush to finish making all my games so I can get started with the Daily Five (Cinq au quotidien). I'm very excited and nervous too as this will be a very big change in my teaching. I've never really done centres except for the odd occasion in science. And I've planned centres for reading workshops, writing workshops, and math workshops. I really like the ideas presented in the Daily Five but will be adapting them to suit my teaching style and class needs. 

For Reading, the students will rotate through the following five centres: Reading with Mme, Reading with a partner, Reading Games and Activities, Listening to Reading (at the computer), and Independent Reading. For Writing, they will rotate through these centres: Writing with Mme, Writing Alone, Group Writing Activities, Writing Games, and Dictionary and Word Wall Activities. For Math, they will rotate through the following centres: Math with Mme, Group Problem Solving, Math Games, Fact Practice, and Math at the Computer. We have discussed how we will be doing "ateliers" for those three subjects. The centres will be about 20-25 minutes only and there will be our regular language and math activities as well. Each group will be made up of 4 students and one group will have just 3 students. The groups for Reading, Writing, and Math will all be different to give the students a chance to work with various classmates. 

All ready for Monday

I will be monitoring how the students work in groups. When they work well and are on-task, they will earn checkmark for the centre. When they have reached 25 checkmarks, they will be able to pick from a variety of individual rewards that I have available, such as bringing a stuffy to school for the day, or getting a no homework pass for the week. They seem very excited too as they have seen me preparing the games over the past few weeks. 

Rewards

Finished game folders (one each for Reading, Writing, and Math)

My almost finished game pile

This week in language, we did the comptines "Les oeufs" and "Les joueurs de soccer" with the "eu/eur" sounds. The grade threes finished up the story "Bernard le canard" with the "ar" sound. I read the story "Le castor qui travaillait trop fort" as a read aloud. This sparked a great discussion about the quality of one's work. The beaver rushed through his work so quickly that he ended up being negligent and careless. The students made some great comparisons to their own work and what they should be doing when they work, taking their time to do something properly and being considerate of others around them. They did a reading response after where they had to draw a picture for the beginning, the middle, and the end, and write a sentence to go with each picture. They then had to do the same reading response activity with a self-selected book at their own reading level. 

We continued to work on surveys and graphing in math. The grade threes have been working on problem-solving with Mme Jarvis. We will be doing a math assessment next week for data management and will then begin our new math unit. 

It's been such a busy week that I'm really looking forward to relaxing with my family this weekend before beginning my "Daily Five" adventure next week. I hope the students enjoy all the centres that I have been working so hard to prepare for them!

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. 

Fall leaf patterning art

A finished name pattern

Making poppies

Making our wreath from a Pampers box

Our finished wreath and post card from our class

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!