Tomorrow's vote

We had lots of little excited voters in class today! Lots said they had already decided who to vote for, but we spent the afternoon looking at the platforms of the three major parties. There were some wonderful chants of 'kid power' as we talked about the issues discussed in this election. Be sure to ask them about it tonight!! 

If you volunteered to come help with the election, please come around 845 tomorrow am!

Home reading, elections, and dictée

Bear with me as there is a lot of information in this post. 

I have attached the notice about LAQ (lecture au quotidien, translated to reading every day). I have tried to simplify it so it isn't a burden. I believe strongly in reading for pleasure, and making sure reading at home is as easy (on both parents and students) as possible!! Let me know if you have any questions about LAQ. 

This week's dictée is only two sentences since we have only 3 days of school this week! This morning we did a if lesson on 'anglicismes' which are sentences in English, that students translate directly into french, but that don't quite work in French. We will be making a 'cemetery' for these expressions soon so keep an eye open for it!

Next, elections! As you hopefully know, BC has municipal elections this Saturday, November 15. I was lucky enough to be able to register in a Student Vote program. We will be having our own elections on Friday November 15th. I have copies of the official Vancouver ballots for mayor and city councillor (I will make some so we can vote for parks board and (most importantly) school board trustees. We will hold elections in our class on Friday morning. I would love the help of two or three parents, so if you have 30 min on Friday morning please let me know via a note in the agenda or a comment on here. Parent volunteers will be 'election officials' giving out ballots and scrutinizing the voting. We are doing all our elections in English so no worries if you don't speak French. 

What I am asking for homework, is for you talk to your child about the different candidates and political parties in Vancouver. I have told them it is ok to ask trusted adults for whom and why they are voting, but that they are not obligated to divulge this information. 

Sometimes, election topics can be quite 'over the heads' of children. My suggestion, and what I will be doing in class tomorrow, is reading the profiles together, and explaining it a second time in a way that would be easy for young brains to understand. For example, if a candidate is talking about the issue of affordable housing, you might want to explain that affordable housing is making sure that the cost of a house or apartment in the city is something that most people would be able to afford, not only rich people. You can also talk about how rent prices are included in affordable housing, and making sure there are enough homes with low enough rent for people who are considered low income. 

You can find candidate profiles here: http://vancouver.ca/your-government/candidate-profiles.aspx

Thank you for taking the time to do this! With so many young people not voting, it is important that we educate our young ones now about how to. Inform yourself, and why it is so important to vote!!

I apologize that the home reading post did not show up last Friday. We had some technical problems. While I have a blog...I'm not a tech savvy person! I will be sure to post that later today!

Also, I will have all the materials for goals ready to go home tomorrow. Look for them in the agenda!

Wednesday update

I have to start by saying, the stidents had an amazing day today! Every single student worked so hard today and did an amazing art and writing project. There are some pictures attached. If you are in the school, be sure to check them out. 

Just a reminder that TOMORROW will be our class' pajama day. Students can bring a stuffy and we will watch a movie in the afternoon. The students earned a reward for great work (the earned all the pieces of a puzzle) and they voted on the prize they wanted. 

Just FYI we will be starting our home reading program this weekend. I will send detailed instructions home and post them on the blog. Also FYI, I will be posting some videos and app ideas for space! Keep an eye out for it in the next few days!

Dictée

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and safe halloween weekend! How lucky that the rain held off for the trick or treaters! 

Attached, you will find this week's dictée. For those who forgot their dictée books today, please remember to bring them on Friday so I can staple their dictée 'celebrations' (tests) in their books. If the red book didn't come to school today, the dictée words are in the agenda. I also realized I forgot to post our Halloween pumpkins that we made! 

Today we started talking about rememberabce day. We will be talking a lot about peace this week. 

Les citrouilles!!

We had such a fun day yesterday with our pumpkins. We spent all day with them! We did our mindful drawing, measuring, and helped the kindergartens with their pumpkins. Here are a bunch of photos from the day:

Dictée

Here is this week's new dictée. We didn't make it to do last week's sentences but it's not the end of the world!

Also, today was our pumpkin patch! How fun! We will be doing activities with our pumpkins this week then I will send them home! 

Thank you everyone for coming to our goal setting conferences last week. I loved getting to sit down with you all to hear about the students' goals and make a plan for how we all can help them. I will be able to start implementing the plans this week coming up.

I have a bunch of tidbits of information for you, so please make sure to read everything.

- Next Friday, on Halloween, we will be visiting Holy Family Hospital to sing and do some other Halloween activities. We will be visiting with our buddy class (Mme Nadja's K/1 class). I would love to have a few parents that can walk with us to the hospital. We would be leaving school at 11:05am and returning before 12 noon. If you can walk with us, please write a note in your child's agenda.

- This weekend's homework for students is to familiarize themselves with some songs we may sing on Friday. We spoke about how we will sing songs that are an appropriate level for our buddy class, so they may seem a little "bébé". The songs are: C'est l'Halloween and La Chanson des Squelettes. There is also a song package that you can find here. This is a package of songs and poems that I have put together. Please take the time to read them through to familiarize your child with them.

*In the package, when it says 'air de', that means 'to the tune of' and 'bis' means 'repeat'.

- We will be starting our listening centre soon. I ask that you please send a set of headphones in a labeled, ziplock bag to school with your child, so that each has their own headphones to use (I do this to eliminate any sharing of bugs that might be in hair). If you don't have a pair at home, headphones can be bought at the dollar store for quite cheap!

Have a wonderful long weekend!

This week's dictée plus library information.

Bonjour! I hope everyone enjoyed the warm weekend we had. 

I am looking forward to seeing you all at the goal setting conférences this week. Remember to bring your child with you as this is a conference with them. We will be discussing their goals for this term and how we can support them in that. 

This week's dictée is 3 sentences. I will switch between sentences and words some weeks. In case you need it, here are this week's sentences 

Also, FYI book exchanges will always be on Mondays, even though we have library on both Monday and Friday. Please remember, Fridays are the days that dictée books need to come back to school too! 

Shake Out BC

Today was Shake Out BC where, theoretically, everyone in BC practiced what to do in an earthquake. We spoke quite a bit about earthquakes and the science behind it. There was a question about what causes earthquakes, and I did my degree in geography, so I couldn't help but go on a bit of a tangent. If you have questions about earthquakes, tectonic plates, Pangea, etc...that's where they came from. 

This can also be a great time to make sure you know your family earthquake preparedness plan at home. If you are looking for more information, check out this site: http://embc.gov.bc.ca/em/hazard_preparedness/earthquake_preparedness.html