Bonjour les familles de la Division 9!
Welcome back to school and the start of Grade 3. I had a wonderful week getting to know your learners, and am hopeful we will have a fun, healthy, and happy year together.
This week, we started each day with a short Zoom assembly led by Ms. Aujla. As a school we focused on our SOAR motto: Self, Others, All, Respect! We focused on valuing self on Wednesday, and after reading a book called Il n’y a pas deux comme toi, students wrote journal reflections responding to the prompt “I am unique because..” We also read one of my favourite books, The Day You Begin.
On Thursday, we read Olivier cherche sa place, then worked together to assemble our own puzzle of a class to find our place like the character in the book. We then added drawings, colours and words that represent us before reassembling the puzzle. Like Olivier, each student has an important place in the picture of our class. We would not be complete without each one. We also primed and painted small rocks, which will be placed in our garden bin. The whole school has painted rocks with inspiring messages or joyful images. These were inspired by the art of Wednesday’s book.
On Friday, we read Bienvenue: un livre sur l’inclusion and talked about how our class should be a welcome place for all. We then looked at all the books in our classroom library and decided on ways that they could be organized in groups. Students used terms they learned last year in Grade 2 like “fiction” or “informative text” to help distinguish the differences in the books. Afterwards, students worked in partners or individually to help create signage for our classroom – posters such as reminders to push in chairs, change shoes, hang up backpacks or wash hands. We also added vocabulary around the room by writing labels for the furniture and objects in our class. This will help when we just can’t quite remember the French word, or we can’t quite remember how to spell it!
Friday afternoon, we went outside for a short Outdoor Learning block. We played a game called camouflage, similar to hide and go seek. We are so fortunate to have plenty of outdoor spaces on École Brantford grounds! We will be aiming to have at least one block of Outdoor Learning per week, to be connected to place, learn about the plants and animals around us and develop physical literacy!
Next week we will delve into number sense for Math, ways to read a book and reading strategies, building our class community, and goal setting.
Thank you to all those who have returned student forms and the Family Introduction Survey! Thanks also for those who have already prepared school supplies and indoor shoes. I will be sending home the learning plan for Term 1 next week. Please let me know if you have any questions as we start up this academic year!