January 16-19, 2017

In Writer's Workshop, the class invented and wrote a story together by first choosing characters and a setting, drawing a picture, and then coming up with the action. Then they returned to their independent writing projects. At the end of the week, I read them the book Super Ella and asked them each to choose a favourite scene to draw and write about. I gave them all the same writing project for the purposes of assessment.

In math, we began to talk about time. We learned the vocabulary for second, minute and hour by reading the book Dans Une Seconde, which gives fascinating examples of things in the natural world which last these different lengths of time. We talked about what we know about clocks, and compared digital clocks with analog clocks. Then we looked closely at analog clocks, and identified the 2 different number lines around the face for hours (1-12) and for minutes (1-60). The kids made their own clocks from card stock, starting off by writing the hour numbers and the minute numbers on the clock face. They chose a colour for each (hours and minutes), and then coloured the hour and minute hands in the corresponding colours.

Then they used the clocks to practice telling time.

They got more practice telling and writing the time in French through worksheets.

This week we learned telling time to the hour, we'll move on to telling time to the half hour next week. We had a lesson on the carpet in which our taped carpet circle became a giant clock face. Kids added the hour numbers to the clock one at a time, and then we all counted the minute numbers by 5 while one student stepped around the clock face. We added the hour and minute hands, and everyone told the time shown. 

We continued singing our Jours de la Semaine song. We also talked about why we have day and night. We looked at a book that has moving parts illustrating how the sun moves in relation to the earth and how day and night change around the world. Most students were already aware that it is the turning of the earth that makes the sun "rise" and "set." 

We had another Roots of Empathy session. Mme Van der Weerd read a book about bullying, and we talked about the experience of being picked on at school. The kids each thought of a time when someone was mean to them at school, and then drew a picture and added some words.