1. Our Classroom Agreement
Here is our classroom agreement. On the first day of school, we created what we agree to do during this school year together and signed it to show our commitment. It roughly translates as follows:
Our Class, Our Agreement
1. Respect yourself, others and their property and personal space, and the environment.
2. Help each other when asked and work as a team.
3. Put forth your best effort to complete all work.
4. Make positive choices when you work and play.
Celebrate successes.
2. Terry Fox Activities
For literacy, we are leaning to write in French in a variety of forms and for a variety of purposes
and audiences, using knowledge of vocabulary and stylistic elements to communicate clearly and
effectively, and to use the stages of the writing process – including pre-writing, producing
drafts, revising, editing, and publishing – to develop and organize content, clarify ideas and
expression, correct errors, and present their written work effectively.
As part of our poetry unit, we have a couple of Terry Fox poems before our annual Terry Fox Run around our school. We also learned a song about him and his perseverance by Gregg LeRock.
We identified adjectives in the poems and came up with our own ideas to describe what Terry Fox did and his character, and then discussed how these adjectives can turn into nouns.
Gentil > Gentillesse
Positif > Positivité
Persévérant > Persévérance
Héroïque > Héroïsme
etc.
And then we used the writing process with drafts and revisions to write our own poem using these words and a template to praise Terry and his achievement on a shoe shaped sheet that decorated our classroom door for the whole month of September, reminding students of the importance of perseverance.
3. Visit from Rick Hansen Foundation
A speaker from Rick Hansen Foundation spoke to us about accessibility and inclusion. Learn more about Rick Hansen, his foundation, and his trip around the world on a wheelchair at http://www.rickhansen.com/ Great chance to talk about and reinforce the importance of perseverance and always doing our best.
4. In Science...
We are learning about structure, solidity and stability. We started this unit by taking a walk around the school field and observe structures around us. Students were particularly intrigued by the exercise machines and playground equipment on the other side of the fence.
After learning some fundamental concepts and definitions, we jumped into our first science experiment where we built a structure with different materials that can support most weight. Students found it very challenging, however, they enjoyed it a lot and showed lots of collaboration.
We followed the scientific method to carry out this experiment which consists of
1. Problem 2. Hypothesis 3. Experiment 4. Conclusion
Students first tried with a weak material - straws
Some creativity here!
Some students remembered that the best base to support a structure usually takes a triangular shape as we saw in some examples including the world's tallest building Burj Khalifa.
4. In Math...
We have been working very hard on our number sense and numeration unit learning to count from 1 to 1000 in a variety of ways, using different tools. We are using 100 chart and number lines to practice skip-counting forward and backward, noticing different number patterns.
Students tried to figure out how many beads and buttons they were given as a group by collaboratively deciding on a strategy to do it in the most efficient way. This group decided on counting by 5 and then grouped them into 10's.
Another group decided to count by 10 and some students explained how they used skip-counting by 2 to make each group of 10.
We made connections to the real word and discussed how useful skip-counting is in many different everyday situations. We also talked about why counting by 7 or 9 is not a good idea.
5. Assessment sent home on the 7th of October
I have sent two assessments. Here is some explanation of what this is about.
A. Compréhension Orale
In this activity, students were to practice their attentive listening skills to listen to the teacher's sentences and draw what they understood on a piece of paper. They were supposed to draw:
A red car on the left side with two people inside.
A blue bicycle in the middle with no person on it.
A black motorcycle with a man wearing a black helmet and a red jacket.
These ideas were presented in a form of a paragraph. We will be doing this type of activity regularly to practice listening. For many students, figuring out left and right was a challenge!
B. Math feedback rubric
Combined with in-class observations, I have put together a feedback rubric to show where students are in their learning. This has no grade because it is to suggest next steps for success in an upcoming quiz that WILL be graded for reporting.
Our focus as a class is to communicate our thinking. When asked to describe the number pattern, students are encouraged to use their math vocabulary and the concepts we learned in class. Click here for the vocabulary list and (rough) English translation. Click on the speaker icon to hear the pronunciation, long click to play it slowly (long click only available on a computer).
Here are some French skip-counting games online that can be used to practice at home.
Please note that this blog is not to be used as a parent-teacher communication tool. Any comment or e-mail sent through this blog will not be read or answered. Please use the Remind App or call extension 127 to communicate with me.
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more updates!
M. Jung
No comments:
Post a Comment