Week #4

Another wonderful week of learning and exploration has come to an end. It’s hard to believe that we have been in school for almost 1 month! This past week, we had a few exciting things happening at Broadview.

 

On Thursday, we all went out in the school yard to run for our Terry Fox Cancer Awareness campaign. Madame Byrd was very impressed by how many laps we were able to run around the school yard! I was even more impressed to see that the students ran laps again the next morning for Kilometre Club!!

 

This Friday, we welcomed our new LUNCH MONITORS to Room 7. Three lovely Grade 8 students will now be helping supervise during lunch time in our classroom. While we will still have teacher supervision during this period, we are very happy to have these lovely, mature ladies to help with thermos opening, rule enforcement and much more J.

 

Many of you parents may have noticed that there is a new initiative for morning drop off. As many teachers and administrators were finding it very difficult to supervise and manage students in the fenced in area of the primary yard, Broadview has decided to ask parents to drop off students, say their goodbyes and then vacate the yard to allow for better sight lines and consequently better supervision. I know these changes may take some time to get used to but please know that it is in the best interest for all of our students. Students are still asked to line up their back packs at our “Meeting Spot” and I will meet them there each morning.

 

This week we also started our Show and Tell presentations and they were a huge hit. It was so nice to learn more about our fellow students. I realize that the link to the Show and Tell schedule is not working and I am working on fixing it. In the meantime, if you are unsure of your child’s show and tell date, please send me a note in their note tote.

 

Lastly, we continued our “Les structures” program this Friday and made structures that also included patterns (our focus in math this week). Below are a few pictures of the phenomenal structures we built.

A horse barn.

 

 

A wonderful plan of the horse barn.

 

 

A fantastic treehouse.

 

 

 

 

XoMme Byrd

 

Week #3

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.

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

 

Week #2

Hello parents! Well I`m a little late with my weekly blog post but we have been busy, busy, BUSY!! in Room 7 this past week. Our Meet the Teacher Night was a great success (at least I think it was.. I would love for you to leave a comment and let me know what you thought. There is a spot below this post where you can leave a comment!

I was so pleased to see so many of you last Wednesday and I only wish that I could have had more time to chat with each family and let you know what we've been working on these past weeks. Also, I had been hoping to give more info about this blog and what information I will be posting and where on the site you will find it. So... I figured I'd post a little tutorial now.

#1   I aim to post weekly “newsletters” to keep parents informed about what we are working on in the classroom. You can find those weekly newsletters by clicking on the “Newsletters” tab above.

#2 I will be posting information about home connections on this blog as well. At the Meet the Teacher Night, many parents asked me about homework or things their child could work on at home. Please check out the Home Connections page for info about our home reading program that will be starting this Wednesday September 19^th , and future homework possibilities.

#3  I will be posting more information about our literacy and numeracy programs in the Literacy and Numeracy tabs above.

#4 Please remember to become a follower (see “Firstie Followers” in the right side bar, click and become a follower) so that if you leave comments or questions (which I strongly encourage you to do as this site is meant to be an interaction between parents and teacher but also between parents of our class) we will know who has left the message.

That’s all for now! Please check out the other pages for more info!

What a Great First Week!! (and Important Info for Parents)

What a great first week!!

I want to say a quick thank you to all of you parents for all of your support and words of encouragement this week! We had a wonderful first week in Grade 1 and we are looking forward to many more even more exciting and engaging weeks of school.

This week, we introduced our Daily 5 (for more info about what the Daily 5 is, check out this link) method of teaching literacy. We practiced writing in our writing journals, we practiced reading to self and reading with our partners, we introduced our math centers and problem solving journals and even played some great math games!

We also worked very hard to establish our classroom rules and routines. Every morning, we line up in the small primary yard. We put our backpacks in the lineup and play until the school bell rings. We enter the school and head to our classroom (Room 7), where we change into our indoor shoes (**if you have not yet sent in a second pair of shoes for your child, please do so as soon as possible) and put our note totes into the bin where Madame Byrd can check for notes from parents.

**Parent Tip: If you have a note for me, please put it in your child’s agenda and leave the agenda open to that page so that I know that I have mail from you J

Then we meet in our meeting area for calendar time and sharing and start our school day.

For more information about what we do on a daily basis and other good parent tips, please attend our Parent Teacher Info Night on Wednesday September 12^th from 5:00pm – 6:15pm for a fun & information-filled evening!

First Day of School!!

What a GREAT first day of school! Or as the students said "Fantastique!!!" It was so nice to meet the members of our little class and to get to know them a little bit today. It was also really nice to meet so many parents this morning!

After you dropped your son or daughter off, we proceeded to our new classroom, read a funny book by David Shannon about a little boy who didn't always follow school rules,

 

 took a tour of important places in our school, started an art project about "Les super heros de la rentree" (Back to School Super Heroes!) and had our very first big kid recess!! The rest of the day was full of name tag projects, Drama with Madame Leslie Bricker and even more recess! (This was a shocker for most- "Three recesses Madame?!? That's crazy!")

Our day went very smoothly and I hope that tomorrow will be just as exciting and full of learning!
I feel it is imperative to have good communication between school and home and I hope this blog will help you as parents feel connected to your child's education and to what is happening in our classroom. Please remember to "follow" our site (see "Firstie Followers" on right side bar)

 so that if you would like to ask questions or comment on any blog post (you can do this at the bottom of the blog post), I can know who to respond to :) Also, please remember to check your child's note tote and agenda, as this is another big key to communication between home and school.

A demain les amis et les parents!!

Classroom Sneak Peek!

Hi parents and students!

I was so happy to meet some of you on Friday when you came in to see class lists. Our classroom is still a work in progress but it is starting to feel like a really cheery, engaging place to learn! For those of you who haven't made it in to the classroom yet, here is a little sneak peek Room 7, your child's classroom for next year!

Your child's Grade 1 classroom!! Our room is Room 7. It is located on the 3rd floor of the school. When you come in the main entrance, go right and then up the stairs all the way to the top. We are the last classroom on the right.

This is our learning carpet where we will start our mornings.

 

 

This board will be for our classroom "chores". We will work as a team to take care of our classroom and each student will have a different task each week.

 

 

This is our reading center!! A cozy place for students to read quietly by themselves or with a friend during our Literacy Centres. For more information about "Les cinq au quotidien" (Daily 5), our literacy program, please click on the "Literacy" tab above.

 

That's it for my little sneak peek, please check back for more information about classroom rules and routines.