October 17-21, 2016

We continued to talk about our families this week, and families in general. We read a book about a family in which the mom and dad live separately, and we read about staying with grandparents.

The kids presented their drawings of their families to the class. We used a document projector to make the drawings nice and big so everyone could see them well. Each student explained their drawing in French: "Here is my mom.", "Here is my dad.", etc. 

We learned 3 more phonics gestures (f, s and ch) and our words of the week were with the sound "è". We looked at the various letters and letter combinations that produce this sound: è, ê, ai and et. In our Daily 5 reading time, we added "word work" and "listening to recorded reading" as activities. We talked through expectations for both and practiced doing them independently. I began reading with the kids in leveled groups, while the rest of the class does their Daily 5 activities. 

We kept on telling the story of Grandmother's Old Fashioned Bed. We told it together in a circle, using gestures throughout the story to cue the words for ourselves. Then the kids wrote about their favourite part of the story using the scaffolded writing process we have been learning to use. 

We sang a new song, about Terry Fox. Thanks for sending in those donations! The kids ran valiantly through the mist and rain on Friday. Find the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwpzXxU7VWk

We continued to learn about number lines. Students learned different ways to show an addition sentence (equation) on a number line. Many students still use fingers or counters to find the sum, and then draw it on the number line. They are still in the process of learning that the number line itself can be used as a tool to find sums. We did a contest, using a stopwatch, to see which took less time to add, counting on fingers or drawing on a number line. The number line won, but not by much. But I showed the students how a number line could easily answer 27 + 36 - try doing that one on your fingers!

We counted the 30 objects in our collections on the 30th day of school. We counted them in groups of 2, 5 and 10. 

We also used the 30 objects to make addition sentences with a sum of 30.

We worked on solutions to another math story problem. This question involved addition, and I encouraged to kids to show their addition sentence on a number line as well.

We had our first Roots of Empathy session. Ruth Van der Weerd is our instructor and she told the kids about our planned visit from baby Tagore and his mother next week. We talked about what baby Tagore and his mother might feel and experience as they visit our classroom, and about how to keep the visit safe and positive. She asked the kids to predict what baby Tagore might be able to do at his age of about 3 months. We learned a welcoming song that we will sing every time baby Tagore and his mother come to visit. We await their first visit with eager anticipation!

October 11-14, 2016

We talked a lot this week about families. We read a number of picture books with family themes: a grandmother who sends gifts from faraway places; a father/daughter family that makes inventions together; and a boy's complicated reaction to becoming an older brother.

The kids drew their families, and labelled their drawings with the French words for mother, father, brother, sister, etc. Next week they will present these to the class and tell about their families.

Our alphabet review covered s and t and we learned gestures for 3 new sounds: v, j and z. We practised reading single syllables that pair these consonants with the vowel sounds, doing our gestures and using funny voices (it makes it more fun!). Our words of the week used "é" and we looked at other letter combinations that make the same sound ("es" in les, des, mes..."er" at the end of action words). I retold the story of Grandmother's Old-fashioned Bed, and the students began supplying parts of the story. We continued to do scaffolded writing on topics chosen by the students.

In math, we began to study number lines. The kids worked in partners and again made a bar of snap cubes with 2 sections in 2 colours. They have already done this a lot, and written the corresponding addition and subtraction sentence with it. This time they traced a line down the side of the bar, added hash marks at each interval between the cubes, and added numbers to the hash marks. Thus, they produced a number line from their bar of snap cubes. I asked them to draw an arc over each section of colour and write the number of coloured cubes on that arc. They also needed to write the addition and subtraction sentence they had illustrated. Each pair of students produced 4 examples. It was hard work, demanding a lot of dexterity in tracing the bar of cubes and lining up the hash marks correctly. By going from the concrete representation (the snap cubes) to the abstract representation (a number line) several times, the students were anchoring their concept of a number line in concrete experience.

We also made a big number line together on the carpet. I gave each student a card with a number from 1 to 20, and called them up out of order to place their number somewhere between 1 and 20. Many kids counted up from 1 to figure out where their number should go, rather than relating it to the other numbers there (like putting a card with 15 to the left of 17 and leaving a space). Activities like this one help them develop awareness of the relationships between the numbers. Once we had our number line built, we did addition with it using a dragon character in puppet form. This grumpy dragon loves adding by jumping, so he would ask the kids for 2 numbers and then he would jump along the line to the count of both numbers and see where he ended up (the sum). The dragon jumps over each card and rests between cards, where the hash marks are on a number line. A common misunderstanding with number lines is failing to realize that each hash mark is counting the space to it's left, that the spaces themselves are what the numbers are counting.

Then we used number lines as a tool to find answers to simple addition questions, and the kids were very impressed with how the number line "gave" them the answer each time!

October 3-7, 2016

We celebrated the first student birthday of the year this week. For every student's birthday, we make cards for them and sing them "Bon anniversaire." Students with summer birthdays will get celebrated in June.

I introduced to the kids our "je veux parler de..." (I want to talk about...) jar. Students are welcome to write down topics that they want the class to discuss, around how we do things, our agreements, or any classroom issues.

We learned a new song for Thanksgiving, Merci maman la terre (Thank You Mother Earth) by Arthur l'Aventurier. This song is on his album, Les saisons en ballon, and is available on iTunes. Find the album and link to iTunes here: http://www.arthurlaventurier.com/univers-arthur/aventures.php. You will need to scroll down, the album is from 2004.

Our alphabet review progressed to the letter "r". Our words of the week were with the sound "e" and we learned the gestures for l, m and r.

We began oral storytelling, with the story of Grandmother's Old-Fashioned Bed. I told the story to the kids, with lots of hand gestures. I will keep telling this story many times, and gradually the kids, with the help of the hand gestures, will be able to tell it themselves.

We continued to write simple sentences generated by the students. They are becoming more confident with invented spelling. I broke down the scaffolded writing process into 6 steps for them, which they follow each time we write.

We fine-tuned the habits for Partner Reading, including how to choose a partner so that we avoid hurt feelings. We welcomed our volunteer Louise who will join us each Wednesday for Reading. She is a retired teacher and is francophone, and she enjoys reading with the kids. 

We marked the 20th day of school with lots of counting of our collections. We counted 20 objects in groups of 2, 5 and 10. Then we made equations that added up to 20 by splitting the group of objects and counting the 2 groups.

We sang along with a fun counting rap, which is available on Youtube. It is a good one because you see the digits and the number word as you hear the number name. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIUr8omTpCs. 

We worked more with 10 frames. The kids did an activity in partners where they took turns showing a 10 frame number and asking in French "How much?", "How much more to make 10?", "How much more/less to make 5?" We are working to establish 5 and 10 as benchmark numbers, so that the students' sense of all the other single digit numbers includes that number's relationship to 5 and 10. 

We finished the week with another story problem, this time involving subtraction. After acting it out with the whole class, students found solutions to the problem using counters. Once they were done, some students shared their responses on the carpet and we discussed their work - what seemed to work and where they needed to fix something or improve something.

September 26-30, 2016

We began the week talking a lot about respect, which is the TDSB character trait for the month of September. I read a story about respect to the class by a First Nations author, which is part of a series of stories on the seven grandfather teachings.

We looked at the travel blog, written in French, of our classmate who is currently travelling with her parents, to return in January. The kids were very interested by the pictures of monkeys and elephants, and we all read the blog text aloud together.

We had new words of the week, still using the "a" sound. Besides reading them in our morning messages, we played games with them in the form of word necklaces. The kids each chose a word which was theirs to wear for these activities. I would start off by laying the word necklaces out, scattered around the classroom. The kids needed to find "their" word, put it on and come make a circle on the carpet. Then we played circle games which required each student to point at a word on someone's necklace and read it. Different variations had them moving to stand beside that person or just sitting down once the word was read. 

We learned two new comptines this week, bringing our total to five. We continued with free writing, with many of the kids writing phrases from the comptines they know. I finished assessing the reading levels of the students, and now each child has a "sac bleu" (blue bag) which holds two levelled readers. Now when the kids "read to self" for 10 minutes, they start by reading those two readers and then move on to other classroom books. They can trade in their readers when they want something new to read. We began partner reading this week. I ask the kids to sit so that they both have their eyes on the book, and the person reading must use their finger to read so the listener can follow along. Each student reads one of their levelled books to their partner before moving on to enjoying classroom books together. 

We continued to sing our vowel song, and we do our hand gestures along with the song.

Our alphabet review is humming along. The kids came up with an outrageous number of "p" words! We even had to put some on the other whiteboard - the kids couldn't get over it!

In math, we continued to do carpet activities like ten frame flash and finger flash to develop subitizing skills and solidify the French number names. We started singing a new song that counts to 20 in a rap. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIUr8omTpCs. We practiced together saying the French phrases involved in playing our two math games, Serpent Superbe and La Guerre. Then the kids practiced playing the games using French, and I gave popsicle sticks to the kids I heard speaking French to recognize their effort. 

We continued our work with addition and subtraction equations, one being the inverse of the other. In partners the kids made a line of interlocking cubes in two colours. Then they wrote the addition and subtraction equations that their cubes expressed. They brought their work to the carpet to present and discuss.

Later in the week, they did the same activity individually. Once everyone was finished, the kids walked around the tables looking at each others' work. I provided sticky notes with question marks on them so that kids could identify anything that they had questions about or disagreed with. Then we discussed some of those equations as a class.

We finished gluing tissue paper onto the cardstock frames that we started last week. Inside their frame, each child wrote the feeling word that their weaving had been about. These are now displayed together in the hall.