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!