First Week Fun!

Wow!!

It is so hard to believe that it is the third week of school already!! Didn't we JUST start?!

To sum it all up ... so far, so good! It's going to be a GREAT year!

The past few weeks have been spent learning all about one another, getting settled into routines and schedules, speaking FRENCH and taking tons of pictures along the way.

Here's a glimpse of what we've been up to:

In Grade 3/4 French, we talked lots about school rules and expectations. What better way to do this then to read "David va a l'ecole". That David is always up to no good!

Check out the following link to a cute (and free) David Craftivity from Fall into First ... I used it as a springboard, but decided that at a Grade 3/4 level, they would be able to make their own David's. You be the judge, but I think they're cute!

 

 

We brainstormed all the naughty things David did and then decided to turn it around to write about the things that he could do - to teach him right from wrong. The writing activity attached to it was "Oui, David! Tu peux ..." We had sentences starters (a discussion about verbs - yay!) on the board and students chose which one they would act out and write about. Too cute. They also completed a 'sort' "oui tu peux" or "non tu ne peux pas" activity from the following website: http://clin.ac-mayotte.fr/spip.php?article56 This website had TONS of resources - including a modified/shorter scanned version of the story in French.

The 1/2 Core French group also did the David activity - but in a shorter, more age appropriate kind of way. For instance, we read the story, talked about what not to do, made the David crafts (from Fall into First) and then wrote "Non David" on a sentence strip. It was so cute to see their ideas of David - some made David exactly the way he looks, striped blue shirt and all, and others went wayyyy outside the box and made him all different colours, holding one hand in the air and the other on his pants to duplicate the page where David keeps asking to go to the bathroom!!

This week, we've been integrating technology (whooohooo - 10 new Ipad Minis for the school). Stay tuned to what we've been learning!

TTFN,

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Reading and Writing with Pumpkins

Some of our little kinders LOVE to write. When asked, "Où est-ce que tu veux jouer aujourd'hui?" (using the AIM gestures) many of our students will respond with "the writing centre" ...

To push them to their limits and get them out of their comfort zone of writing letters to Mommy and Daddy, I provided them with a writing challenge...

We've been reading a cute little shared reading titled "Cinq Citrouilles" (adopted from Mme. Rego's French Class) where students sit in a circle and I choose 5 pumpkins to come up to the front of the circle to represent a pumpkin. They even get to hold a pumpkin on a popsicle stick. Students read the chart paper and as we say, "a fait une rouler" (while rolling our hands in a circle), the last pumpkin in the line goes and sits down. While this activity DOES contradict the new FDK play-based learning, ALL students love it. There is not one single kindergarten student who doesn't raise their hand to be a pumpkin ... and they ALL help read it. It's pretty cute.

Now back to my writing challenge ... I provided clipboards for students and piece of paper with a blank fence printed on it. I told them that I needed their help and that they had a 'job' to do. I asked them to find the word that meant pumpkin on the chart paper of our shared reading and draw the pumpkins.

A few minutes later, this is what I found:

Two girls hard at "work"

Close up of their writing

 





So yes, while play-based learning is important ... I DO have students who want to do WORK! This is where our struggle comes into play ... no pun intended. Our balance, we have found, is to provide the tools necessary, the space and the time to allow for both. They were not told that they HAD to work, but rather that the clipboards were there ready for them if they chose to do it. Not everyone did. And that's just fine.

This week, we are visiting the local mall and we will be trick-or-treating! There is a lot of learning and inquiry that can be done outside of the classroom ... and I've been inspired by another 'virtual teacher colleague' who posted this on facebook (Thank you, Karen Groenewagen) ... to do something similar on our 'trick-or-treating walk' ...

Wish me luck!

Haha.

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How 'bout them apples?!

Apples, apples and more apples.

I think this is a 'blogger-no-no' but my post is going to be mostly pictures. It's hard to explain INQUIRY without pictures!!

Here are some of the fun things we did during centre/community time this week:

1. We read stories about 'apples':

Click Here for Link to Scholastic

 

  

Click Here for Link to Renaud-Bray 

Click Here for Link to Amazon

2. We took a survey:

I explained the chart, reading the French words and making reference to the coloured magnets and pulled students names out of a baggie. As their name was called, they came up to the white board to choose which kind of apple they like best. In addition, they had to tell me the colour that they chose. We also counted the results in French and realized that green apples are the most popular kind of apple in our class!

3. We wrote apple sentences:

I prepared the following document (Click here for download) which includes our shared reading (which was later put on chart paper), sentence strips used to label pictures, and two writing activities. It's not very fancy, but it's the 'gist' of our 'teacher directed' centres this week.

**The obsessive-compulsive part of me just wasn't satisfied with this 'simple' version of our unit, so I created a fancy one and uploaded it to Teachers Pay Teachers. **

Students were not given examples of what the final products should have looked like and this allowed for some creativity in the activities. For example, there were apple die-cuts already made, but crayons were also made available along with pencils and markers. The result - no two pages looked alike! :)

4. Painting with apples:

I LOVVVVE this example. Inquiry at it's finest ... Green apple, orange apple, green apple, green apple, orange HANDPRINT?! Hmm ... In my 'instructions' for this centre, all I said was that there was paint in a shallow dish and there would be apples to use to put the paint on the paper. Stereotypically, you see this project look like beautifully placed apples stamped in perfect patterns. Well, when you don't tell students HOW to do it, they form their own interpretations of what to do. And by all means, it's not wrong ... the point of the painting apples activity was simply to explore the medium of paint with something other than a paintbrush. Obviously, this student in particular realized that her hands could also be used as a tool. A simple, yet astonishing discovery when you're 3 and a half years old.

When I put all of the students' work together on an inquiry board, this is what we get:

 

 

I still have to add 'words' and 'commentary' to the inquiry board, but for the most part ... this sums up our week in kinderland!

 

Happy Turkey Weekend everyone!!

 

TTFN,

 



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