Our first-ever Francofête week was a great success! The kids had a great time and expanded their perspectives on the Francophone world. We played a version of Bananagrams almost every day, finding French words to spell. The kids kept a record in their Francofête "passport" each day of how many words they made in 10 minutes.

Thanks to the Spelling Bee preparations, all the kids got a lot better at spelling common French sight words - thanks for all the support, studying that word list at home! We studied the word list at school as well, with kids in partners quizzing each other and copying the words. We had 2 dictées (their first ever I think), each time asking them to write 10 words from the list. On the basis of the dictée results, 3 finalists were chosen and we had a Spelling Bee in our class to get down to 2 finalists. Those 2 students participated in the school-wide Spelling Bee held on Thursday, with all the students watching. All the grade 1 and 2 contestants competed together for the title, and our 2 contestants ended up in the final 3 with one grade 2 student! But in the end the grade 2 student won, though our 2 contestants performed admirably. Their classmates really cheered them on. 

Each day had a theme, so we did a "mille mercis" (a thousand thank-yous) activitiy on Wednesday, which was the day of politeness. After talking together about all the things we appreciate about our classmates at school, the kids wrote thank-you messages in each other's Francofête passports. We also looked at the presentation on flags and celebrities from Francophone countries, the same one I prepared and sent out to you earlier this week. In addition to that, we visited a great interactive website that has Francophone children from all over the world talking about their lives in short videos. The kids explored this site in partners on the iPads and we looked at it together as a class. Here is the link; we only scratched the surface and there is a lot more there to explore: http://laoujedors.com/carte-du-monde.

In math, we started the week with our geometry centers and then returned to doing some story problems. I am focusing on the skills to tackle story problems because many students have trouble knowing where to start when presented with a story problem. They tend to be very focused on finding the right answer, and once someone gets the answer the news spreads, and then kids will write down that answer without having really thought through or discussed the problem themselves. So I showed them the following 2 examples of work I might see:

I asked them which example looked like better work, and most thought example A looked better. We probed this and I suggested that maybe student A had gotten that answer from someone else, and some students saw that the thinking of student B was visible and that they had made mistakes and started over. We talked about making mistakes and how mistakes show that you are taking a risk and learning. 

We returned to our Structures inquiry. Before the March break, the students were all asked to take 3 photos of their structure as they built it to document the beginning, the middle and the end. I showed them how to use the Skitch app on the iPads, which allows you to put text and arrows onto a photo. They returned to their photos and began writing about each one to describe that stage of construction. 

And lastly, we had a new "héro de français" (French hero), someone who went without speaking English in our classroom for a day. And the class together climbed up "l'echelle" (the ladder) to receive the prize (for speaking French) of painting during heure de jeux. 

The big excitement last week was the construction of our structures! I explained to the students that after the March break they would be using an app called Skitch on the iPads to write about the beginning, middle and end of their construction, so the kids had to be sure to take 3 photos of these stages while they were building. I also showed them a Skitch presentation from a student in my class last year so they could understand what lay ahead. With lots of reminders, most kids managed to photo-document the progress of their structures so that they will be ready to write about the building process after the break. After looking back at their planning work from last week, they got started taping, gluing and otherwise attaching materials together to create their structures.

In between building sessions, I asked everyone to make sure that their plan on paper reflected the actual structure they were building, and to make sure the plan included the materials they used, their properties, and the attachments they used. The vocabulary was all available on our Structures board, with illustrations.

In math, Julie told the legend of Mr. Tang as the mythical origin story of Tangrams, a set of 7 puzzle pieces that originates in China. Then she challenged the class to try to make a square with the 7 pieces - a very difficult task! The students tried for awhile and then some started to give up in frustration. This was an opportunity to talk about growth mindset and the positive or negative messages we tell ourselves. Eventually, with a lot of guidance and cooperation with other students, the students managed to solve the puzzle and create a square.

Julie also led a spatial problem-solving lesson: the Magic Keys. She again began with storytelling, explaining that there was a treasure hidden behind 12 doors, but that we had to find all 12 keys to open the doors. The keys had to be made of 5 flat squares arranged edge to edge (12 different arrangements are possible). When a table group had all created a particular solution shape, we gave that table the corresponding pentomino (math puzzle pieces made of 5 squares each). Most students cooperated together really well to find the solutions, and the kids were very engaged with the task. We talked about turning and flipping the shapes to figure out whether or not they were the same or different.

We also had our first session with the new geometry centres. In addition to the activities the students tried last week (shape-copying with geoboards and turn-taking symmetry with pattern blocks) we added building with 3D solids according to images provided, a form of Tetris played with pentominoes, and tangram puzzles.

In writing, we talked more about peer editing, the process of students giving feedback to each other on their writing. Using the editing checklist developed last week, students worked in pairs first reading their stories and then editing them together.

We also composed a song for Julie to say thanks and "à bientot".  The students learned the song over a couple of days and sang it for Julie on her last day.

The words of the week contained the sound "ill" as in the words "fille" and "famille". We also talked about "les lettres fantomes" (ghost letters or silent letters). Most final consonants in French words are silent. The kids did an exercise of trying to find all the words they could find with such silent letters. 

We also had another series of activities around growth mindset. The kids brainstormed a list of all the activities they do regularly where they "hear" positive or negative messages in the form of self-talk.

Later, I gave them those activities to cut out and place on a continuum, from "those tasks I find easy and do with confidence" to "those tasks I find hard and do with difficulty". 

Then I asked for a student volunteer to act out a sketch of themselves doing one of those harder tasks. I animated their 2 puppets (friendly and unfriendly) as the student spoke aloud the negative messages they started out telling themselves. Then they began telling themselves positive messages, and the spotlight shifted from the unfriendly puppet to the friendly puppet. We talked again about how we can choose which messages to focus on.

Two weeks of activities to report on! What a pleasure it is to have 2 adults in the classroom. Julie will be with us for one more week - her placement ends at the start of March break.

We finished up our sundials by decorating them with pastels, making sure to leave the lines and numbers visible. To use these at home, just set the position of the sundial by lining up the shadow with one of the hour lines, at that time. If at 9am you set the sundial in a sunny place and line up the shadow to fall on the 9 o'clock line, it can be used as a clock to read the other times of the day.

We also began having conversations about "growth mindset" to support the kids to try their best and persist when faced with very challenging tasks. For a good overview (for adults) of the ideas behind "growth mindset", check out this 10 minute talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc. In class, we talked about positive and negative self-talk after reading the book Courage, Antonin. We characterized this self-talk as friendly and mean voices we hear in our heads (our thoughts) and many of the kids could immediately relate to this idea. Students shared situations in which they have positive and negative messages in their minds, and we made 2 lists together of these messages. Then Julie and I did a skit for the class in which a friendly puppet (made from a tongue depressor) and an unfriendly puppet gave Julie different messages. In the skit, she eventually stopped listening to the negative puppet and kept on trying with the encouragement of the friendly puppet. Then the kids all made 2 puppets for themselves, one friendly and one unfriendly. We worked with the puppets in the circle, giving students the chance to voice positive and negative messages from their 2 puppets. Later, we discussed whether or not one puppet was right, and talked about our power to make a choice about which puppet to listen to. We'll continue to build on these ideas in the coming weeks.

In writer's workshop we are focused on editing skills to prepare our best stories for publication in a class-made book. We have been editing texts together to make spaces between words, add punctuation, fix upper/lower case errors, and fix the spelling of high-frequency words from our word wall (the accumulated words of the week). We now have an editing checklist to support students to check these things after writing a story. We also looked at examples of stories written through dialogue. I have been assessing the handwriting of each student (while I have Julie!) to determine which letters they need to re-learn in order to form them correctly. The weekly words were with the sounds "-ien" and "-tion".

I introduced a new comprehension strategy puppet, le Comte qui Raconte. This character listens carefully through the entire story, and then retells the events. He retold the story La Determination de Viola Desmond, a book about civil rights history in Canada. We had a good discussion afterwards about injustice and racism, and the courage it takes to stand up for what is right. In Daily 5 we began having reading groups, with kids taking turns reading through a book and then discussing the book.

We are continuing to explore geometry. Julie reviewed the attributes of 2-dimensional shapes and then had the kids do a "shape hunt". In pairs, they used an iPad to photograph all the things they found with those shapes. Then 2 pairs got together to show the shapes they had found. Similarly, with 3-dimensional shapes (cube, cone, cylinder, rectangular prism, sphere, pyramid) the kids learned about their attributes and did a shape hunt to get more familiar with the shapes and their names. Then they played a game in small groups where a student selected a 3D shape and hid it behind their back, and the others asked questions (How many edges? How many vertices? Does it roll?) to figure out which shape they had.

We also introduced a couple of spatial activities that will be part of the new roster of centres when we do our weekly math centres. One is a partner activity with geoboards where the kids take turns adding a shape with an elastic, and the partner must copy that shape onto their own boards.

The other activity develops a better understanding of symmetry. Again in partners, the kids take turns adding a pattern block to one side of a pattern, and their partner must add the corresponding piece on the other side to keep the design symmetrical. The kids really enjoyed both of these activities.

In our Structures unit, we worked on learning the new vocabulary and concepts in order to have a base (tee hee) to build on next week. In a circle, we passed around a bag filled with various objects and the kids each took out one object and said what material it was made of (wood, plastic, metal, plastic...). We did the same game again talking about the properties of materials, which we learned as pairs of opposites (smooth/rough, strong/weak, soft/hard, light/heavy, elastic/stiff, porous/non-porous). The kids added a new dimension to the game, by placing the objects in the centre of the circle in interesting configurations.

Then they had a practice round of free building time, to get ideas for their structure and become familiar with our building materials. Afterwards, the kids made a plan on paper of their structure, with a drawing and some writing about its function, the materials chosen, and their properties. 

Next week the kids will build their structures using glue and tape to attach the elements together.