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. 

January 9-13, 2017

This first week back, we reviewed our class agreements and routines. Time for a fresh start! We talked about our goal during our reading period (to get better at reading!), and scaled back to just doing Read to Self and Partner Reading. I'll re-introduce Listening to Reading (on the iPads) and Word Work once good habits in the first two activities are re-established. I began reading one on one with the kids (rather than reading with them in small groups) to assess each student's progress in reading.

In Writer's Workshop the class saw me write about my holidays as a model for their writing. Some students followed that example, while others went back to writing their fictional stories. Their writing "muscles" were a bit out of shape from the time off, but there was still lots of enthusiasm for reading their writing to the class during Author's Chair.

I decided to wait a few weeks before starting up the dictée. It was causing more stress than I wanted, so I want to talk it over with the class and figure out how to lighten it up for them. We did go back to talking about the letters "c" and "g" and how they change depending on the letters that follow them. Then we practiced reading the following letter combinations together:

In math, we spent one more week wrapping up our learning about money. We started off by practicing skip-counting by 10 and 5. The kids played a game in pairs where they advanced or went back by 10, counting up to 100. They took turns picking up cards that said either +10 or -10, and moved their token accordingly. A green marker moved up whenever a new decade number was reached, and they were supposed to say the French number name together in French each time it went up.

After more practice counting by 5, they coloured in a hundreds chart with the numbers that are multiples of 5. 

Then we put our skip-counting to use to count up coins. As a class, we counted a handful of pennies (less than 20) and found that counting them one by one was slow and inaccurate. So we put the pennies into groups of 5 and counted them by 5, and then switched to counting by 1 for the leftover pennies. Then the students did the same activity in pairs. They began with an unknown number of pennies. They grouped them by 5's and used a number line to count by jumps of 5 and then jumps of 1 for the leftovers.

We began our next inquiry unit, learning about the daily and seasonal cycles. As a fun starting point, we learned a song with the names of the days of the week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpwf5N0rfVE. 

We also had our visiting artists, Leslie and Jade, come for their second-last half day workshop on self-portraits. The kids began a new set of self-portraits that deal with themselves in their communities. The concept is that they are making decorative "plates" with an image of themselves (a photo transfer) in the middle and words and images about their community around the rim. Leslie showed them an example of the idea.

Then the kids painted their "plates" with acrylic paint in a colour that they mixed, with lots of white. Light colours are best for a base for the photo transfer.

Then the kids learned in more detail how to make a photo transfer. They saw Leslie apply acrylic medium over a photocopy of a picture. She showed on a dry example how to soak it in water and remove the paper, to reveal a transparent black and white image. 

Then the kids applied acrylic medium in a thick layer over a photocopy of a photo of themselves. I had taken pictures of all the kids before the holidays in preparation.

They also began sketching ideas about their community, to come up with words and images for the rim of their "plate".

In a couple of weeks Leslie and Jade will return for our last session together, when we'll assemble all the self-portraits. 

An exciting moment this week happened at the end of the day on Friday, when we welcomed Raya to join our classroom. We are so happy to finally have her with us!

December 19-23, 2016

Concert preparations took up the beginning of our week, culminating in a fun and lively performance with Mme Dungo on Tuesday night. We finished the large and small maps in time to display them for the parents on that night.

Our dictée words last week contained hard and soft "c," and this week they contained hard and soft "g." We talked more about the rule for these changeling consonants, using the analogy of clouds for soft letters and bricks for hard letters.

We continued to work with coins, and applied our understanding of expressions of equality with them. The kids had an open-ended task, to put coins on either side of the equals symbol and then write the corresponding math equation using the coin values. This allowed them to work with different amounts and seek their appropriate challenge level.

We looked at these photos of the kids' work together, and discussed them to better understand coin amounts. This picture was especially helpful for understanding the relationship between a cent and a dollar:

We had another fantastic workshop with the visiting artists. The theme this time was to do with our families. Leslie started off by reading a book about families, in all their various forms. We talked a bit about our feelings in relation to our families. The kids warmed up their drawing skills by drawing lines that spoke of their feelings about their families.

Then we looked at the work of Hans Kline, and talked about the feelings we saw in his abstract work in black and white.

Then Jade demonstrated how to apply black acrylic paint onto canvas using a cardboard applicator. 

Then the kids had a go at it, making abstract images that expressed feelings about their families.

After another demonstration, and once the black paint had mostly dried, the kids went back to their abstract images with white acrylic paint. They used the white paint to mask some areas or to surround certain elements and highlight them.

Our morning with Leslie and Jade finished with an opportunity to learn more about their art work. They showed the class some of their pieces and the kids asked lots of questions.