Hello all!
I hope you had a lovely week. I am so glad for a few more days of sunshine before our winter rains begin.
This week in Division 9, we began the week with a visit to the library, where Ms. Dias taught us how to properly use a French-English dictionary for translations and spelling. Ms. Dias and I will be working together on several more lessons throughout the month to help our class gain research skills!
Our newfound research skills will be put to use for a science project on animals. This week, we learned about the six groups of animals. Students worked in pairs to make posters on invertebrates, mammals, fish, birds, reptiles or amphibians. I was incredibly impressed with how well they searched out key information from rather dense text! The pairs then presented their work to the class.
We also learned biology vocabulary for a game called “Predator and Prey.” We learned the basics about producers (ie: plants), herbivores (ex: deer), carnivores (ex: wolves), and decomposers (ex: mushrooms, bacteria). Each student received a card to identify their role and then were sent out to “survive” their predators or “consume” their prey.
In Math, we began our unit on addition and subtraction. We practiced the addition strategies of “doubles” and “plus 1.”
Our sounds of the week were “an” and “in”. Our dictée will be on Monday, on the words:
- elles dansent
- demander
- les gants
- le ruban-collant
- une branche
- avant
- la langue
- une plante
- le matin
- le jardin
- un singe
- un dindon
- le chemin
- vignt-et-un
- un oursin
- un lapin
Next week, our sounds of the week will be “en”, “on” and “un.”
For Art, we went outside to determine a class tree that we will revisit throughout the seasons to observe the changes. We ended up choosing two! One is deciduous, and so will loose its leaves, and the other is coniferous, so will keeps its green! We looked at the paintings of Emily Carr, and then created our own works based on the trees we saw outside our classroom. 
We began learning about the Zones of Regulation on Thursday, which are a self-regulation tool designed to encourage emotional awareness and control. The Zones are: Blue Zone – low alertness (feeling sad, tired, sick, or bored); Green Zone – regulated alertness (feeling calm, happy, focused or content); Yellow Zone – heightened alertness (feeling stress, frustration, anxiety, excitement, sillyness or nervousness); Red Zone – extremely heightened alertness (feeling anger, rage, explosive behaviour, panic, terror, or elation). It is important to note that everyone experiences each of the zones at different times (no zone is the “bad” zone), and each can be expected at one time or another. Awareness of the Zones will help students to build self-regulation skills. As we learn more, we will discuss strategies we can use to aim for the Green Zone.
I sent home a letter and permission form for use of photos on Fresh Grade. I will begin posting to Fresh Grade once all are returned. Thank you to those who have returned them so quickly!
On Monday, students will record their song for the Remembrance Day assembly. They have been asked to wear clean and appropriate clothing. They do not need to wear their fanciest clothes, but we talked about wearing clothes that might show respect (ie: no joke shirts or clothes with holes in them).
The assembly recording will be shared in classes and with parents at home on Tuesday morning. Please note that there will be no school next Wednesday in honour of Remembrance Day.