Friday, September 14

It was an unbelievably wonderful day at Fred John's! The moms that were there saved this lackey dad by getting water, ensuring hands were cleaned before lunch, making sure no one climbed too high in the trees. Haha! Kidding! But sincerely, thank you for your help Mrs. Koizumi, Mrs. Prockiw and Mrs. Layte. Thanks again for all the veggies, fruit and chips. Before the kids were allowed to play in the park they had to ingest some red pepper! If my teacher had tried that when I was in grade 2... I'll leave it to your imagination.
We did have a great day and the kids walked around 5km so they should've been ready for bed earlier than usual. I will let some pics do the telling of our trip:

Wednesday, September 12

Well, I apologize for not blogging last night. For the second time, the internet at school or my computer have been non responsive.
Yesterday was a nice day. We did some work on number recognition. I called out numbers in French and the kid had to find it on their 1-100 sheet. We worked on the lower ones and the multiples of 10 (20, 30, 40, etc.). Most has good success with this.
After math, we did some social studies. We discussed the planet earth, the continents found on it, the countries found on them, the provinces therein, and the cities and communities that make them up. The kids got it...I think:) We did a visual representation of the one big Earth down to the smallest section, Leduc. I will send it home after having displayed it for our school.
If you'd like to converse with your child about their learning, ask them how a province is different than a country or what the is the largest concept, a country or a continent. You could also ask them what a country is in French (Pays, pronounced payee).

7:39AM and I am done the entry and ready for our field trip. Again, I apologize for not being able to blog after school yesterday.

Mardi 11 Septembre

Hello again. It was a nice day. The kids were well behaved and, on the whole, fairly attentive. We do have a few lallygaggers/slowpokes when it comes to snack time and lunch. I have been reminding them to focus on eating and less on chatting or daydreaming and they are coming along. If you notice a lot of food left in the lunch bag, they might have been too focused on the movie that played through the eating period. We'll get better!
Today, after our routine, we did a little review of numbers in French. We will have to work on the higher ones, above 50, as they seem to have forgotten over the summer. We also did some mental math counting/adding. I am a big fan of a strong number sense and so we will work it all year long! After recess, we discussed small animals that crawl and fly, our first science unit. We discussed which ones live in our province and their names in French. We also spoke about our field trip on Thursday and what we'd be doing. The forecast looks nice! After lunch the students had music and we ended the day with French. We finished off the sentence from my Tony story and they drew/coloured pictures of things they remembered/understood from it.
Remember that tomorrow is library day and to place any books in the backpack. Also, if you haven't filled in the permission form for the trip, please do so.
Finally, below I have cut and pasted the spelling words for the weekly dictées. We will do a lot of work with these throughout the week so don't fret and try and drill them all week:) If you need/want a hard copy, just email me.

GRADE 2 FRENCH DICTÉE WORDS

September/October

Sept. 3rd week Dictée 1 (on) mon non ton son sont long	Sept. Last week Dictée 2  (oi) moi soi toi trois froid un roi	October 1st week Dictée 3 (ou) ou où nous sous tous vous
October 2nd week IN-CLASS REVIEW	Oct. 3rd week Dictée 4  (in) cinq un jardin un lapin un patin un sapin quinze	October Last week L’Halloween un bonbon un chat un chapeau un costume la lune noir

1. On the first day of each week, the students will write their “Mots de la semaine/Words of the week” in their  

    Agenda.

2.  We will also use the “Mots de la semaine/Words of the week” in class during our reading and writing lessons. 

      a) They will be written in our “Dictionnaire/Dictionary”.

      b) We will use them to create word lists/families and to write sentences/stories.

      c) We will use sentence closure activities to aid in learning to read and write the words.

      d) They will be placed in a “Mur de Mots/Word Wall”, on a class bulletin board, so 

           that they are visible and accessible at all times.

3.  The words will be dictated randomly on the last day of the school week.

4.  The next week, the “Dictée/Dictation” sheet will be sent home and a new list of

      words will be written into the Agenda.

The following are some of the ways that you can help your child study the word family/sight words:

• review daily by reading the words aloud
• break a word up (mix up the letters) and ask your child to put it back together
• *Activity may be done by writing the word onto an index card, and then cutting the index card apart between each letter of the word.
• have your child look at the word, try to keep its image in mind, and then spell the word orally.

Note:  underlined letters are silent (ex. joue), bold letters are focus sounds

Monday, September 10

Hello all! I have survived five full days of school with your children and I am delighted to say that they are all pretty special.
We have been getting used to the new environment, rules, expectations, and silliness that comes from the teacher. The morning routine is:
come in and say hello, hang up backpack and coat, take out agenda, copy the sentence(s) of the day in the day's date, do the math questions if finished early, occasionally do a 1 minute jog repeating the French words M. Pask yells out, do 1 minute of exercise (squats, j-jacks, mtn climbers, pushups, situps, burpees), add the class' exercise minutes to the running total, update the calendar, at to the running total of school days, practice/learn some new vocabulary or math, read, share.
This routine takes place at the back of the class on the green carpet. Once done, we move to our desks and begin math and then social. After recess, the students have their snack before either, health, math, science or social begins.
After the lunch recess, the kids come in and eat while a French movie is playing. 15 minutes of reading and then either music or gym. We always end the day off with French language arts and a little writing in our agenda.
This is all to give you an idea of what we do in a day. I will add specifics as the year progresses. This will also give you the chance to pose specific questions to your child when engaging them about their day. I will always try to add photos of learning or any activities we might do.
It is possible for you to join so please do. This allows you to post comments directly to me.
After the morning routine we spent some time in the computer lab and typed a little bit. Next, we finished off our art projects from Friday afternoon.

 After lunch we had gym and then we learned about the different body parts in French. After the afternoon recess, I told a story in French about Tony and his bike ride to the store. He was starving and decided to bike to get something from the store. He left his bike outside, went in and decided on a grape slurpee and a bag of jelly beans. He paid 1.25$ with quarters that he counted out by 25s as he laid them on the counter. He left the store, said goodbye to the cashier through the window and noticed his bike had been taken. He got very upset as he realized his father would be angry that he hadn't locked it. As he wept, he heard sirens and then he heard Constable Jean calling him over. He ran so fast he dropped his slurpee and when he arrived at the police officer's car he saw his bike and the thief in handcuffs. He returned home where his father noticed he had been crying. Tony said he was sad that he'd dropped his slurpee. The end. Next, the kids had to write a sentence and draw a picture from the story. Many had difficulty with the sentence so we will continue on this morning.
Ask you child about my  story to see how much he/she understood.
This is the kind of blog entry I will write. It allows you to be in the know and to communicate about specific learning with your child.
Here are some pics from library period last week: