Another fun-filled week in Room 7 has come to an
end and while we were all very excited it was Friday (a few inclement weather
and indoor recess days this week made us all a little stir crazy), many of us
were sad for the weekend to come because we had so much fun this week!
For starters, we started our Home Reading Program on Wednesday
and we are very excited to have LES
DEVOIRS (Homework)!! It’s one of the great things about this age
group-they are thrilled to have work to do at home and there were no groans or
complaints about receiving homework. For more information on our home reading
program please click on the link or go to the tab above that says “HomeConnections”. Remember to send those books back by Monday or Tuesday at the
latest. As with library books, your child will not be able to bring another
book home on Wednesday if they haven’t yet returned the previous book.
A note went home this week about our upcoming
show and tell presentations. Presentations begin this Monday September 24th and
I am very excited to hear about each child's special interest or talent. For
more information about the Show and Tell presentations, please click here.
We also continued with our Daily 5 centers and
focused on letter recognition in French, capitalization and punctuation,
sentence writing, spacing between our words, strategies for reading difficult
words, and much more. As part of the Daily 5, we write in writing journals to
practice the skills we are learning. Every Friday, the students have one-on-one
time with me to show me the entries they have worked on and we discuss various
things such as their spelling strategies, capitalization, punctuation, sentence
structure, topics, etc. The students get to show me what they are proud of and
what they have been writing about. This Friday, I was blown away by their
creativity and accuracy in the writing journal entries they showed me.
One of the most exciting things we started this
week was a program we call
“Les
structures”
Our structures program will be a weekly thing and will take place every Friday afternoon (obviously there will be some weeks when we will not do it due to PD days or holidays, etc). Structures will take up most of the afternoon and is a wonderful, interactive, cross-curricular activity. In a nut shell, the students will pair up or work individually and will be given a large sheet of drawing paper. They will then be given an assignment. This week’s assignment was to design and build a structure of their choice. We discussed what a structure was and wrote out many examples. The students then draw out a detailed plan on which they include labels of what they have drawn, a list of building materials, sometimes a small legend to understand their drawing, etc. They must then have the plans approved by Madame before collecting their building materials (these will always change and could be lego, wood blocks, Play Doh, recycled containers, etc) and starting to build. The students then work as a team and speak in French. They use critical thinking and problem solving skills to build a structure that will be structurally sound and visually appealing. When they have finished their building, they prepare a small presentation. When we have all completed our structures, we take turns listening to the presentations given in French by our peers. This Friday was our first ever “Structures de vendredi” and I think that the students LOVED it. For more info about this program, curriculum ties, and info about photos of your child’s weekly creations, please click here.
Our structures program will be a weekly thing and will take place every Friday afternoon (obviously there will be some weeks when we will not do it due to PD days or holidays, etc). Structures will take up most of the afternoon and is a wonderful, interactive, cross-curricular activity. In a nut shell, the students will pair up or work individually and will be given a large sheet of drawing paper. They will then be given an assignment. This week’s assignment was to design and build a structure of their choice. We discussed what a structure was and wrote out many examples. The students then draw out a detailed plan on which they include labels of what they have drawn, a list of building materials, sometimes a small legend to understand their drawing, etc. They must then have the plans approved by Madame before collecting their building materials (these will always change and could be lego, wood blocks, Play Doh, recycled containers, etc) and starting to build. The students then work as a team and speak in French. They use critical thinking and problem solving skills to build a structure that will be structurally sound and visually appealing. When they have finished their building, they prepare a small presentation. When we have all completed our structures, we take turns listening to the presentations given in French by our peers. This Friday was our first ever “Structures de vendredi” and I think that the students LOVED it. For more info about this program, curriculum ties, and info about photos of your child’s weekly creations, please click here.
Another great week with my firsties has me
feeling very grateful for such a wonderful class of excited and engaged little
learners. Can’t wait for another week of fun!
XoMme Byrd
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