Hello families of Division 9,
I hope you all had a lovely, if rainy, week settling into the school routine.
This week, the students and I worked on establishing classroom routines and building stamina for concentration in literacy and math work. Students practiced reading to self and then with partners. We are working on selecting best-fit books.
For word work, we focused on letter combinations that make the sound “é”. We practiced reading and spelling the sound with different word play activities. Next week, we will practice a different sound.
In Math, we worked on the Daily 3 rotation of Math Writing, and familiarized ourselves with math journals. We had a taste of the three rotations on Thursday, with Math Writing, Independent Math, and Math with a Friend, along with a few fun group games. We are currently working on place value, developing our number sense by using Base 10 Blocks. We are also expanding our math vocabulary with words like “chiffre” (digit), “pair ou impair” (odd or even), and “unités, dizaines, centaines et milliers” (ones, tens, hundreds, thousands).
As a follow-up to the Multiple Intelligences work we did last week, this week we set both strength and challenge goals for Term 1. We discussed that our strengths can lead us, but we can still improve our skills. Our challenge goals are not “improving what we’re bad at” but rather strengthening our skills in areas we find more difficult. We wrote our goals on paper autumn leaves to be visual reminders throughout the term.
We learned about emotions with a tool called the “feel wheel” in English, or “La roue des émotions” in French. With this tool, we distinguished between different emotions, and the ranges of feeling within those emotions. This work is to help give students the vocabulary to recognize and communicate their feelings, and will be foundational for future lessons on conflict resolution and other social-emotional work. We wrote journal entries based on the emotions we discussed.
I am very excited about the amazing self-portraits in the making that we started today! Everyone was very focused and attentive to the details in their faces as we sketched and traced. Next week, we will be learning about colour theory and mixing up the perfect colours to paint our portraits.
Next Wednesday, September 30th, is Orange Shirt Day. This date is held to recognize the harm done to children through the residential school system. This is a heavy and important matter, and one that you may wish to discuss further at home. If you are looking for more information about Orange Shirt Day, or on residential schools, please see some of the following websites:
Monday will be a professional development day for teachers, so there will be no school for students.
I hope you have a fun weekend! See you on Tuesday.