This week in Writer's Workshop we brainstormed action words and then added drawings to illustrate our list of actions. We did the same with place words. These illustrated lists are up for the kids to refer to as they write their stories in French, to spark ideas and help them include actions and places in their stories. 

We have also been focusing on vocabulary for asking questions, so that during Author's Chair (when the kids read their writing to the class) the audience can ask their questions in French. We are also talking about the reading strategy of "asking questions" as we read, which is modelled by the puppet "Rolande qui se demande" (Roland who wonders). Rolande joins us for read alouds and asks questions periodically, and gets very excited when the kids ask questions too! 

We have been learning about hard and soft "c" and "g" in the past few weeks. The sight words we're learning have these two changeable letters in them. We sorted words beginning with "c" into 2 groups ("c" as "s" and "c" as "k") and eventually came up with the rules for when "c" is hard or soft. I asked the kids to help me make up a story for why "c" changes its sound. This led to a puppet show with letters as characters, in which "c" doesn't know its sound and his/her friends (letters e, i, y and a, o, u, l, r) help "c" decide which sound to make. The kids helped perform the puppet show with the same story line this week for the letter "g". 

In math we have been focusing on subtraction and how it relates to addition. We have been tackling story problems like: Daniel has 6 Pokemon cards. He buys some more and now he has 13. How many cards did he buy? This problem suggests the "think addition" strategy of subtraction, in which we ask: "6 plus what equals 13?" Our previous work with math fact families is helping kids translate this question into 13 - 6 = ? . We have also been using number lines to represent these questions. 

We have started having weekly addition/counting centre time, in which 5 groups rotate through 5 centres. I plan to continue this weekly centre time focused on number sense throughout the year, while we explore other areas of the math curriculum like measurement, patterning, probability, geometry...

WRITE THE FACT FAMILY

PUT A NUMBER OF 2-SIDED COUNTERS IN A BOX AND SHAKE IT TO FIND DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS THAT MAKE THAT NUMBER

MATCH THE NUMBERS ONTO THE 100 FRAME

A word about birthday party invitations: if you plan to invite all the kids in our class to your child's birthday party, feel free to send those invitations to school to be handed out. If you're planning a birthday party with some but not all of the students invited, please do not send invitations to school - it will lead to hurt feelings. I can assist by forwarding an email invitation to some parents if contacting other parents presents a difficulty. Thanks!

We had a lovely visit to Kensington Gardens on Thursday. Mélaine, the staff person who runs the French Club (and hails from France) greeted us as we arrived and then we joined the French Club members in a large activity room. The students and residents all introduced themselves, and then the kids sang the 3 songs we have been practicing. We conversed together some more and then we watched a couple of short videos about the lives of francophone kids in different parts of the world (Mélaine had these ready to share with us). Then we said our goodbyes and walked back to Lord Lansdowne.

We are now finishing up our 11th week at school. I will briefly outline our activities over the 9 week hiatus in blog entries.

In writer's workshop, the kids have been learning to tell and write simple stories in French. We had a visiting storyteller, Agnes Salmon, come and teach us rhymes and a story, Loupscaroux. The kids and I practiced telling the story with gestures and on a subsequent visit we told the story back to Agnes. We have also been telling made-up stories around the circle, passing a talking piece and having each child add the next sentence of the story. When the kids put their stories into writing, they use invented spelling and known sight words. We have looked at the importance of leaving spaces between words and the need for punctuation. The students are still very keen to read their stories to the class each day. After each reading, the other students are invited to ask questions or make comments. Currently, I am highlighting the vocabulary for asking questions in French. We are shifting over now to the expectation that any comment or question on the carpet happens in French.

Our alphabet review is up to the letter "t". We have learned the gestures for most of the phonemes (sounds in words) and we practice reading with those gestures in a group. We continue to have weekly sight words which we read often, make sentences with, and copy down at the end of the week. So far these have highlighted a vowel sound each week, including é and è. This week the weekly sight words highlight the letter "c" and we are learning about hard and soft "c". Together we made up a story about how the letter "c" is confused and needs help from his friends (a, e, i, o, u, y, l, r) to know whether he makes the sound "s" or the sound "k." We are learning to tell the story aloud together using puppet-like props for each letter.

We also have been singing regularly: "Merci maman la terre" by Arthur L'aventurier (available on itunes, on his Les saisons en ballon album); "Tout ce dont j'ai besoin"(a translation I did of Raffi's "All I Really Need", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eerjiaH8dRE); and Les squelettes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CKMaRwicSg). These are the songs we will be singing at Kensington Gardens for the French Club there.

I read storybooks aloud to the kids almost every day, and we have been focusing on making connections as readers. I use a puppet, "Fleur Connecteur," to model the way we make connections between texts and other texts, between texts and our lives, and between texts and the wider world. In Daily 5 time the kids have been doing "read to self" with success. Each student has a blue bag with 2 levelled readers, which they read during that time. They are free to choose new readers when they get proficient at the ones they have, at the level where they have some fluency. The home reading program is off to a good start, thanks to the parents helping me photocopy all those books!

In math we have done a lot of counting, by 2s, 5s and 10s to 100. We did another unit that used a storybook as the jumping off point, this one was called "Grandma's necklaces." Through it we explored skip-counting and patterning. We delved into doubling, and odd and even numbers. We have been fortunate to have a math coach, Julia Atkins, visiting us regularly to support our investigations. The kids are now gaining confidence with the French vocabulary surrounding addition and subtraction, as we work orally to make math sentences. We have used ten frame images to establish the benchmarks of 5 and 10, meaning that the kids are learning to relate the single digit numbers to 5 and 10. Developing this number sense is a key goal in grade 1, so that students have a richer knowledge of 7, for example, as 2 more than 5 and 3 less than 10.

We have also had our Collections days, celebrating the 20th, 30th and 40th days of school so far. The kids work with counting mats that have them group their items and then count the groups. So for 40, for example, they made groups of 5 and counted to determine that there are 8 groups of 5 in 40. This activity helps them get comfortable with unitizing (counting groups as units) which is the basis for place value understanding (knowing that the 1 in 12 represents 1 group of 10).

In social studies, we have been learning about feelings, needs, community, responsibility and respect. We spent time learning the vocabulary around these issues, and sometimes in the morning circle we pass a talking piece and each child lets the class know how they are feeling today. The kids made little books with feeling words and drawings of faces to illustrate these. We established that good feelings are connected to our needs being met, and stressful or uncomfortable feelings are a sign that our needs are not being met. We talked about the meaning of community, and the kids drew and talked about the communities they are a part of (family, classroom, etc.). Then in groups of 3 I asked the kids to create skits, one for each student in the group, that show a situation illustrating a feeling and connecting it to a need. The skits were planned through drawing and by writing a sentence, and then each child was the director of their own skit and wore a special scarf to signify their leadership. The skits were performed for the class, with each director speaking the sentence and then acting it out with their group.

Our big art project in October was making apple doll witches and wizards, which are now proudly displayed in the school foyer.

We also made rubbings of leaves which were added to garlands exploring different kinds of lines.

And this past week, we made poppies from tissue paper to put together a wreath for the Remembrance Day assembly.