This week's dictée

Bonjour!

For this week's dictée, the students wrote their own sentences showing the difference between the words est (is) and et (and). Ask them about how English can help them to remember which one is 'is'!

I am currently correcting their sentences and they will copy them to bring home tomorrow. We will also have a chance to practice in class this week, since there is one day less as I have their books for tonight.

Also, here are a few pictures from the theater we did in class for the last part of the day!

On compassion

I always believe that teaching compassion and understanding is one of the most important things we can do for children, and being in a classroom full of individual and unique learners provides us a great opportunity.

I took the time today, to tell the students about a very special athlete that I work with. To give you all the shorter version of the story, I volunteer my time to coach a skater named Alex. He is a Special Olympics athlete and has worked incredibly hard to get to where he is. Incase you don't know, the Special Olympics program is for athletes who have intelectual disabilities such as autism, Down's Syndrome, and many others. Alex first started skating 5 years ago, and he was the first SO athlete I had worked with. With an incredible amount of hard work, determination, and dedication, Alex leaves tomorrow as a part of team Canada to the Special Olympics World Games in Korea. You can find out more about Alex and team Canada here

This brought up a wonderful discussion in class about how people are all different, wether they have a disability or not, and that everyone is capable of amazing things. We also spoke at length about how we treat others has a big impact on them, and the importance of being respectful and polite no matter what a person's abilities are!

Classroom needs

I wanted to take this chance to write about a few things our classroom needs. If you have any of these things at home, and are willing to donate them to the class, that would be amazing!

- old tennis balls. I am looking for 4 for every student.

- dust pans and brooms. Our dustpan recently cracked.

- sponges, or clothes, specifically ones that can be washed in the washing machine and reused when we need to clean our desks.

This week's dictée

Here are the sentences for this week's dictée. They are inspired by commons mistakes while writing our letters to our new pen pals.

Est-ce que tu aimes faire de la bicyclette?

J'habite à Vancouver.

Mon animal préféré est un dinosaur.

Ma saveur préférée de crème glacée est le << Rocky Road>>.

What a week!

Whew!! What a week we had in division 11! It felt like every moment was packed full! Here are a few highlights

Math - we learned a new multiplication game that we are calling the spiral game. We will be playing all these games again soon with our newly learned 6-10 multiplication facts.

Science - I decided to extend our science unit into the new year, as there was, as one student so eloquently put it 'so much fantastic-neat-cool-amazing stuff' to learn! We are working on publishing our class boom that we are making in our space mission groups. Students are put in space mission teams and researched a planet on the Internet. With this, we will be putting a class book together, which is why space is now part of our French curriculum.

French - speaking of French curriculum, we have done a ton of writing this week. This is why we had a week off dicteée. Students worked very hard on letters to our new pen pals. We will be corresponding with a grade 3 class at sir James Douglas annex (which just happens to be the school mme jessica went to as a child). The teacher of this class is none other than mme Shannon, whom many know as one of last year's wonderful grade 2 teachers!

Social studies - with the end of our space unit, we started talking about our next topic - Canada! We made a list today of what we know (or think we know) about Canada, as well as what we want to learn about Canada. Here is a picture of our list after everyone wrote one thing they know

Swimming tomorrow

Just a reminder that we will be going swimming tomorrow afternoon. Please send students to school with their swim suits, towels, and whatever other swimming gear they usually bring!

A few reminders

I'm using today's blog post as a chance to remind families of a few important things.

Library books We have library EVERY Wednesday. More and more students are forgetting their library books every week, even though it is written in their agenda. Please help remind students for the next few weeks, that it is extremely important to bring library books to school. They know that they are expected to have a book in their desks to read at all time, and this is much easier to do if they can change their library books every week. If students do forget their library books one day, the library is open before and after school to exchange books. Please make use of these times!

Agenda Same as the library books, it seems that more and more students are forgetting their agendas. This is an important tool, even if we don't write in it every day. Please remind students to bring their agendas to school every day!

Today, we had a great performance by Will, a local musician. The students really enjoyed the performance and were very respectful! We also learned a new math multiplication game. I'm sure the students would be more than happy to teach you this one!

Math Games

What a great first week back! We had lots of fun last week, working on projects and welcoming a new student to our class. I was amazed at how awake and engaged everyone was! I know that the second week can be trickier, and some students were saying they were pretty sleepy today. I know I was feeling the week-2 tired too! Just a gentle reminder to help your children head to bed at a reasonable hour so they're ready for learning!

We have spent a lot of time playing math games as a way to work on multiplication. We have played a few card and dice games that the students have needed to explain to you. We also played a fun card game that you can find here: http://www.kiel.k12.wi.us/faculty/jwills/multiplicationcardgames.cfm It's called Top That! The students have been having a really fun time playing this game!!

Space Project

Today, students came home with a note in their agendas saying 'Check blog for space project information'. To finish up our space unit, we will be doing a research project in groups. To wrap our heads around the planet we will be researching, I am asking students to browse the links for the planet that they will be studying. If you click on the planet, you will find links to a few websites. No need for anything written yet. Please have this done by tomorrow, Thursday January 9th.

MERCURE

Aiden

Hailey

Max

VENUS

Anik

Leo

Emily

 LA TERRE - Unfortunately there are no links for this, but use google search to find some facts about the earth!

Annika

Eric

Ethan

MARS

Callen

Katie

Rowan

JUPITER

Forrest

Cameron

Olivia D

SATURNE

Catherine

Kieran

Olivia R

URANUS

Laura

Georgia

Eddie

NEPTUNE

Julianne

Anna

Miles

First dictée of 2013

Welcome back everyone! We have had a great start to 2013 in our class!

Here are this week's dictée words