Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Last week of September already!

Hi Everyone,
It was great meeting all of you last week at parent meet and greet. I enjoyed talking to all of you and learning a little bit more about your children. Some of us were rushed and I am sorry for the quick chat, know that am easy and if you have anything questions or need clarification contact me anytime. I will do my best to answer or help out.

I also wanted to thank everyone who came to reading night last night. Your support means a lot to me and your child. We are a team and it was great to see my team show up in great numbers! Thank you. I hope the packages are not to overwhelming. Know you can do as you wish with them. I add more to the reading packages to give you more French resources in your hands seeing that they are hard to come by. I also add the paper French books right away to give you and your child more opportunities to see French text, do not worry if they cannot read them right away. Just have fun looking at pictures, guess words and attempting to sound them out. You can also be detectives and search for sights words in these books.

We are on our last week of September I cannot get over how fast it has gone! We will finish up our theme on back to school, however we will keep practicing our school supply vocabulary. Octobers theme in French is being thankful for our family and exploring the season of autumn. Students will be learning vocabulary related to members of the family. There will be a poster project assigned during this unit, you will receive more information on that when the time comes, hopefully by the end of the week. Students will also be learning about what it is to be thankful and Halloween.
Please continue to review the French alphabet with your child, some students are still having trouble identifying sounds and letter names out of sequence.

With a new month comes also a new seating arrangement. I change the classroom every month to correspond with the theme and also place students in different arrangements. This is to allow them a chance to meet new friends, work with others of different strengths or abilities or simply to give them a break.

In Math, patterns continue along with number sense up to 10. We are almost finished of this unit and will be moving onto numbers 0-20. You can help your child get ahead by practice counting numbers 0-20 forwards and backwards and identifying numbers out of sequence, printing numbers correctly as well as associating objects to the numbers.
In English, we have been looking at 3 letter words and their beginning, middle and end sounds. We continue to review the letter sounds along with hand signals for each letter. They love watching me try to remember certain letters....I keep forgetting g,p,q !!!!

Science we will continue learning about primary colors and will slowly start to learn more about our 5 senses.

In Health, we have been talking about proper hand washing. I am very impressed with their knowledge on when we should wash our hands. We should have a healthy year if everyone washes when they say they should.

Gala will be upon us quicker than we know it. Every year our class is assigned a basket where our team is asked to donate items to help support our school. Our class theme this year is Calgary family adventure. In the past the first class to fill their basket has been rewarded in some way, usually a pizza party. We went over the site as a class today and they are in top secret mode to be the first lol to fill the basket. If you wish to participate you sign up online and send in your items and I will make sure it goes to the right people. Thanks in advance for your support.

Here is the link to the sign up sheet for the basket:
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0845aeaf29a0f85-calgary


https://harvestmoongala.wordpress.com/ Here is the link to the Gala home page to learn more about this awesome fundraiser.

Please note that we only have one volunteer for Terry Fox run on Friday afternoon. If you can make it please join us. We will be heading out walking the sidewalks in our community. I would love another set of eyes to help us out.

If you have not yet sent in your deposit cheque for the reading package please do so by Friday. A huge thanks to those who have already sent it in.

We have library tomorrow, please send your books in. I think that is all for now. Have a great rest of the week.
Laurie Anne :)


Sunday, September 17, 2017

Busy Week.

Wishing you all a happy week ahead. I hope you all had a chance to enjoy the nice weather this week end and are rested for a new week ahead. We have a busy week at Holy Name this week. Opening Mass is on Thursday September 21st. Leaving the school around 9:30 for 10 am Mass. We are still in need of 3 volunteers to walk with us to and from church. Anyone up for the challenge?? The evening of September 21st we will have our first round of Parent meet and greets. This is an opportunity for you to tell me more about your child, whether it be concerns, goals or anything in between. The meetings will continue all day Friday September 22. Please remember to sign up using parent conference manager. This is available on the school website. I also want to remind you that Monday September 25th is Parent Reading information night. It starts at 7pm in the  gym. You are asked to bring a post dated check dated June 18, 2018 as a deposit for all reading materials. Checks are made payable to Holy Name School. I have already had some parents send them in ahead of time. You are welcome to do so. The line to drop them off at the event can sometimes be long.  There is a parent council meeting on Tuesday September 19th starting at 6:30. The first one maybe worth while if you have any questions in regards to staffing, enrollment, see the agenda that was sent out Friday for more details.

This week in class your child will continue to learn a new set of French letter sounds as well as review previous ones. You will find a new set of game cards in their agenda bag. The Jolly phonics duo-tang and game pieces can stay home and do not need to be sent in daily. I do have a favor to ask of all of you....to help me save time on the week ends would it be possible for you to move the binder clip to the new week?! I would be very thankful for the help.

In French, we are having fun using puppets to practice our French sentence structures. The students love to use them. The puppets are only allowed to speak French...I am sure they sneak in some English...but have been pretty good at practicing the sentences. This week we will start our French journals and work on coping simple sentences from the board. We have started using our songs books and are highlighting vowel sounds and circling French phonemes. My plan is to send the song books home so they can share what they have learned with you.

In Math, Students are learning about patterns. Patterns structures we looked at so far are AB, ABC, AAB. We have been trying to create one pattern with many different elements, whether it be size, color, shape. You may hear your child refer to patterns as les regularites. We are also learning about French numbers, how to print these numerals correctly as well as associating objects to these numbers.

In Science, we have started to learn about colors. Our focus this week will be on primary colors. Students must be able to read color names. They usually mix up bleu, blanc, brun. I encourage them to allow their eyes to look at every letter rather than the beginning. You can practice this a home by making flash cards. They also confuse vert and violet.

In Social Studies, we have started to chat about being a member of a group or community. We have talked about rules or expectations that usually follow when we are a member of such group or community.

We will be starting Health this week. Students  will be learning about the importance of proper hand washing and the lovely world of germs.

In English, we continue to learn about letter sounds and the difference between vowels and consonants. Our focus this week will be on beginning sounds of words. I have attached below two links that we use in class that you may find helpful to practice on at home.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0iFs5uF6w  _Jolly Phonics song to build on sounds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMQHd1UBkeI - ASL-Alphabet

Thank you for your scholastic orders. I have placed them and received an email that they are already shipped. Please remember to send in your childs permission form for the Terry Fox run if you have not done so. We will also need volunteers for that afternoon to join us on the community walk. Everyone is welcome to join us as well.

I believe that is all for this week.
Laurie Anne

Monday, September 11, 2017

Welcome to the exciting world of grade 1!!

Welcome to grade one! For those of you who have had me before welcome back. I look forward to getting to know all of you over the next couple of months and watching your child grow both academically and socially. We are off to a good start. Everyone is adjusting well and are getting along super....perhaps a little to well, we got a chatty bunch. We continue to review class rules and expectations. We have 23 students in our class this year, 10 boys and 13 girls. We also have 5 new students to Holy Name school. I like to see our classroom as a little community were we all work together as a team. I have an open door policy, which means you can come into class anytime. We love having parents volunteer and help out whenever you can. Even if you cannot make it into the classroom there is always something you can do to lend a hand and enrich your childs classroom.

For those who are new to the school or have never had me as their child's teacher I will give you the quick run down on who your child will be hanging out with over the next couple of months. I am originally from PEI. I talk a lot about home, my dad and growing up on a hobby farm as a kid. I apologize now for the accept that your child may develop over the weeks to come I still haven't lost it even though I have been in Alberta for about 6 years now. This is my 5th year in grade 1 at Holy Name, I also taught grade two at Holy Name and taught grade 1 in PEI for a couple of years before heading out west. I got married two years ago to Mike, who I am sure you will hear of or even get the chance to meet. He is very helpful around the classroom and is supportive of my projects. As I am sure you all know by now we are expecting our first child in January. We are very excited and nervous all at the same time. Until the little nugget arrives I hope to work closely with all of you and your child. If you ever have any questions, concerns or need clarification on anything feel free to contact me either by email or call the school.

Some of the teachers like to use eboard, I prefer the blog which is somewhat the same but with a little more detail. You can find the link to it on eboard which is on the school website. I usually email you informing you that there is a new post, along with the quick link. I try to post an update ever  Monday to keep you informed on what's going on in class and what is happening at school for the week. I hope you read it every week as there is a lot of information, suggestions and games that you might want to try out at home to help your child progress through out the school year...it also takes me a long time to sit down and write! I am usually really good at keeping it up dated but then will have my moments, stay on me! Feel free to remind me also...I seem to be very forgetful these past couple of months.

At the beginning of each month I also like to give you the run down on what your child will be learning that month in most subjects. This is also a great way to help you support your child by giving them an introduction to what we are going to be covering. On the blog you will find weekly sight words in both English and French, sounds of the week, French sentences and expressions we are working on. Please take the time to review with your child. There is also a list of French websites you can explore with your child and play games. http://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/jeregarde/ is a great website to watch French cartoons, to help your child develop listening skills in French. They also have games to play.
I sent home today green sheets that explain a little more about our classroom. Please read over and if you have any questions let me know.

The month of September is busy here are a few reminders of events and items due coming up....

All forms are due back Monday September 11 (demographic, blue package, pink child info sheet)
Scholastic book orders for Sept due -Wednesday September 13
Conference Manager opens to book Parent Teachers- September 15
Opening Mass at Holy Name Church- Thursday September 21   ( We need 3 volunteers to walk with us)
Parent Teachers- Thursday September 21 evening and Friday September 22 full day.
Parent Reading information night- Monday September 25- 7pm at the gym. Please bring a post dated check of 15$ as deposit. Check to be dated June 18th, 2018

This year I am going to try something new in regards to volunteers in the classroom. Usually I ask a week or two in advance, but thought hey I know what I would like to do why not get ahead. So please find a list for the next two months of volunteers needed in the classroom. I am sure I will need to add possible fieldtrips other things that may come up but I thought I would start with this. Some of them are just ideas I would like to try out in class and see if it will work, I marked those I have never done before with **. If you have any ideas also that will go along with our themes let me know. If you need more clarification on what I am asking of you just ask.

For year:
Reading Package Exchange (2-3 volunteers)-
( I suggest at least two people, that way if one cannot make it one week the other can cover the exchange)
Scholastic packages(put monthly book orders together)-
September-
Making playdoh , focus mixing colors (parent lead)-
**Science- colors experiment parent choice (parent lead)-
Opening Mass( 3 volunteers to walk to Church and back)-


October-

Pumpkin carving (3 parents)-

**Apple crisp (make with class, focus reading recipe)-
Halloween centers/party (parent lead, 5 volunteers)-
**Thanksgiving potluck organizer in class lunch-
Reading French Week 1-
Reading English Week 2-
Reading French Week 3-
Reading English Week 4-


I know this is a long post with ALOT of information. It has actually been a week of information. I hope its not too much and if you have any questions just ask. I also apologize for the late post.
Have a great week!
LA