Bonjour à tous!
I hope you had a wonderful week! I think we all had a fun time in Division 9, and we were busy working on many projects…
For our words of the week, we reviewed all our previous sounds: é, ou, oi, au, eu. We used animal body part vocabulary to review these sounds, as we will begin studying animals as part of our biodiversity unit next week. Our words were:
- le nez
- les écailles
- l’épaule
- le cou
- la joue
- la bouche
- la fourrure
- les moustaches
- les genoux
- les doigts
- la nageoire
- les bois
- le museau
- la peau
- les yeux
- la queue
Ready with this vocabulary, and with a whole bunch more, we used our imaginations to create funky monsters with mismatching body parts! (For example, see one student’s monster with spotted antlers, three round eyes, antennas, and clawed feet!) We experimented with visual texture with the paint, by using a variety of markmaking tools (such as brushes, coffee stirrers, sticks, pinecones, and Q-tips). Visual texture means that although the art is two dimensional, it appears to have scales (les écailles), or fur (la fourrure) because of the shading. 
After creating our monsters, we wrote descriptive sentences to explain each body part. We learned about adjectives, and how they change (in French) depending on the number and gender of the noun they describe. For example, “une tête bleue et poilue” as opposed to “deux pieds bleus et poilus“. Students did a fabulous job of this project!
Returning to our words of the week, we practiced familiarity with the gender of words in French as part of our Word Work. Although nouns in French are all gendered as “male” or “female” words, we briefly discussed how this division is not always helpful outside of grammar rules. On Thursday, we had a short Social Studies lesson on Halloween costumes and stereotypes. We looked at costume advertisements, and noted the general trends amongst them. We discussed that while we often see advertisements with only boys as superheroes or warriors, and girls as princesses, anybody can wear the costume they feel most comfortable in. We watched this video sent from the district SOGI support teacher: My Heroes.
For Math, we continued practice with estimation. With a series of different-sized jars, we estimated the number of blocks that could fit inside, and then used our skills of counting tens and ones to calculate the true totals.
We also did candy-inspired math! I gave each student “two dollars” to spend on paper candies; then they selected which candies they could purchase with their 200 cents, represented the amounts with Base 10 Blocks and coins.
Many students requested time to work on plays they had practiced at recess, so on Friday we had a performance of this creative play. I love how confident, creative, and ambitious this group is, and I will be looking for more opportunities for them to develop their theatrical skills!
Friday afternoon, we met with our buddy class for a Halloween themed BINGO, and drawing our costumes.
Thank you to everyone who shared candy for Halloween. I sent home the candy in paper bags for students to eat at parent discretion… I am so sorry for the great pile of sugar! I hope you have a sugar-filled but not-too-hyper weekend of fun!