Bonjour les familles de la Division 9!
This is our first weekly blog post, for our first full week of school! What a wonderful class we have. This week has been full of community-building activities, and I have felt incredibly grateful to be getting to know each student.
We will be using the calendar every morning to practice basic French vocabulary and graphing skills. I modeled the routine this week, but next week students will begin doing this work independently. They will draw the weather on the correct date, chart the weather on a bar graph, and chart the daily temperature on a line graph. This will be used throughout the term to reinforce one-to-one correspondence as per the Math curriculum. We also used calendar this week to think of ways to represent a number. I had the students create the date number cards by writing the number on one side and one or more ways of representing it on the other. Each number will be turned to the picture or math problem side until the date has passed.
We began exploring place value by using Base 10 blocks. We played a game called “House for an Ant” in which students used first unit blocks to make an “ant house”, then units and tens to make an “ant mansion” then units, tens and hundreds to make an “ant castle”. After each round, students were asked to find out the number that their buildings represented. This activity was used to build familiarity and enthusiasm for working with the materials, and it was a hit!
After reading two stories, Bienvenue: Un livre sur l’inclusion and David va à l’école, we brainstormed our class agreement (“Notre accord”), which includes students’ ideas on what we need to feel safe, happy, and successful at school. Students came up with ideas such as respecting the needs of others, being nice, being a good friend, and offering help. We made our agreement in the shape of the sun so that each person’s sunbeam makes up part of the whole.
Following the Respecting Diversity program from Jennifer Katz, we have been learning about Howard Gardner’s 9 Multiple Intelligences. We learned about different intelligence strengths, took a survey on our own strengths, and then graphed out the data in a bar graph. The graphs represent each person’s learning profile, or how we each learn best. It is important to note that the intelligence strengths are not a competition, but are meant to be a reflection of how we learn best, and of our interests. This is meant to encourage self-efficacy and self-awareness, but also helps me to better understand each learner. Everyone did a great job of this assignment! 
After learning about the Multiple Intelligences, we learned a tiny little bit about how our brains work, and that each part of the brain does its own special job to make us who we are and help us do everything we do. We then shared what special skills we could each bring to our class community, and wrote these in our Class Brain (“Notre cerveau de classe”).
Students also wrote journal reflections on the Multiple Intelligences lessons, as well as “rainbow poems” (on colourful paper) to introduce themselves and their intelligence strength.
To further build on our awareness and appreciation of self, and to practice one of three ways to read a book from the Daily 5 program, we read The Best Part of Me, first by reading the pictures, then by reading the words (which I translated to French), and then by retelling the story. Students then thought about the best part of themselves, and wrote their own version of the book! I will be putting together a bulletin board to show off their wonderful work.
For Art on Friday, we used oil pastels to draw still lives of fall leaves and sunflowers. Everyone was very focused on the colours, lines and shadows of the still lives set up at their tables. 
Thank you to everyone who has returned the Student Information Verification package and the Family Introduction Survey. I am grateful to read your surveys! I am very excited about the learning we will do together this year. Division 9 is a very cooperative and enthusiastic bunch of learners!
Please let me know if you have any questions about this week. Have a wonderful weekend!