Short week

HI everyone,
We have another short week this week. No school on Friday due to parent teacher interviews. This term interviews are student lead. Which means your child will take you around to different centers and show you what they have learned or are in the process of learning now. During your time slot you will be with 4 other students and parents. Please be mindful of everyone in the room. Don't forget to sign up for a time slot. Student leads are Thursday and Friday.

The book fair will be taking place during interviews. Students will have a chance to preview it Wednesday during their library time. I believe it will be in the learning commons this time. So before or after be sure to head on up and take a peek.

This week at school, the students will have to opportunities to view two very different plays. Tuesday, unitheatre will present a French play on protecting the environment and on Thursday David Bouchard will be here to speak about his life. Here is the link if you wanted more information on the performance. 

http://davidbouchard.com/welcome

In Math, we continue to learn about measurement, this week we are focusing on distance and volume. We have also started to count to 100 in French and will be working on skip counting by 2, 5 and 10. It would be great if you could help your child with this at home.

Science, we are into building things. We will talk about what makes structures stable, how do they stay together. We will also be presenting our leprechaun traps over the next 2 weeks. They look amazing by the way! Thank you for supporting this fun project.

Social studies, we continue on comparing urban and rural settings. We will finish up soon and start to look at our beautiful country of Canada, the provinces and territories its made up of and cardinal direction (North, South, East, West)

English, students are learning more about word families and blends. We have started to talk more about rhyming words as well as different parts of a story. (beginning, middle and end) To help improve your child's reading comprehension you can beginning to ask who, what, when, where, why and how. 

In French, we have started learning about transportation. We have also started to receive our class post cards which is exciting. Please keep them coming. I have been really focusing on French sounds, syllables and breaking words apart.
I have showed the class how to access the games on my blog, if you wanted to book mark it, it maybe helpful and save you time getting it up for them. I have also attached the links to Je lis and lalilo.

Have a great week.
Laurie Anne 

Carnaval!!!!

HI Everyone,
I hope you all had a restful couple of days off with your family. I had a good convention and attended some great sessions. This year I chose to attend ones that focused on students mental health and the effects of anxiety and learning. It was very informative!

This is another short week packed full of activities. This week at school we will celebrate Carnaval. They are still looking for volunteers on Thursday morning and afternoon. They are in desperate need as last I heard. If you are interested you can let me know or the office and Ill be sure to pass the message onto the committee. Wednesday will be opening ceremonies and the duo French group Folkfolie is here to perform. Thursday we are suppose to have activities all day (depending on volunteers) this is also cabane a sucre.

In class, we are getting in the last couple quizzes before report cards, working on completing reading evaluations and finishing up odds and ends. We will continue to work on or I should say start learning on the different parts of the home. Students are starting to understand what makes up a sentence and are beginning to be able to put a sentences back together after it being mixed up. This is a great activity to practice at home to work on word recognition and comprehension. You can use sentences from their reading packs.

A note about the reading packs....today new books went home. This program oui, oui, oui comes with a CD that you can keep at home until June. All the books are on it. The numbered books correspond with the numbers on the CD. Please be sure to count the puzzle pieces before returning, to make sure you have not lost any at home. If you have any questions about the program feel free to ask me. If you haven't already sent back the pink book level A, please do so. If you haven't gotten a CD and new book, it is because I am still waiting your deposit. When you are able please send it in so that we can give your child their new resource. 

Please be sure to review sight words on a regular basis, some of our students are still having trouble identifying simple words, such as "la", "les", "ma".  I have registered our class on Lalilo website under my name (Mme Laurie Anne) The password is ABZRSC. I know what your thinking lol another website but its optional, take a peek it may help your child with letter recognition, blending letters together and French phonemes. Let me know your thoughts and if its worth it. Below you can find two links I didn't know which one would get you where you needed. 

https://app.lalilo.com/#/portal

https://student.lalilo.com/#/classes

Parents I need your help with a class project that we do for the month of March. The theme for March is traveling with my friends. Each year our class asks our friends, family, friends of friends and family to send the class a post card from wherever they are living, traveling. We also ask those friends to ask their friends or family to do the same. One the post cards they can tell us a little about where they are from, whats the weather like, any famous landmarks, what language they speak, food they eat, traditions, population, animals, music and how they get around. Pretty much include anything a 6 year old would find interesting. Once we receive the post cards we find the place on the map, talk about how we could get there from Calgary and compare the information to our living. If you could please send word now to your friends and family far and wide that would be amazing, they can start to send the post cards in now. In the past we have received maps, tourist guides, stamps and flags from different countries. The students love this project. It also helps them realize that the world is more than just Calgary, Alberta. A huge thank you in advance!!!!
They can send their post cards to:
La classe de Mme Laurie-Anne
Holy Name School
3011 35 street SW
Calgary Alberta

T3E 2Y6

I think Ill leave it at that for this week. Have a beautiful week. If you need anything feel free to contact me anytime.
Laurie Anne :)

Happy Monday

Hi everyone,
I hope you all had a great long week end. Our PD session on Friday was good. I attended two sessions one on the impact of additional language learning by Dr. Mary O'Brian and the other on how to encourage our students to speak French in the classroom. I hope to put some of the strategies to use in the classroom this week.

This is our last week of January which means trying to finish up different units. I feel though that we will be continuing them into the first weeks of February. With a new month usually comes a new theme. The month of February in French we focus on Friendships. Students will learn how to be a good friend, not all friends look and act the same and so on. We will also learn about the different rooms in our home and the items you find in each room. The students will pay closer attention to masculine and feminine words and continue to work on writing a complete sentence. We will also look at what makes a sentence and how to make it interesting. Often times students think that two syllable words are two different words. This is something you can work at home, say aloud a sentence and have your child tell you how many words they heard in the sentence. They can use their fingers or objects to represent the words. You could even have them write it out.

Thank you for sending in the paint chip sight words weekly. I am getting caught up at asking them their sight words. They are very eager to read them and practice! If you haven't sent them in please do so tomorrow so that your child may practice with their reading buddies.

In your reading package you will find a matching game on body parts. This is a bonus, you do not have to do this with your child but it is encouraged. It will also help them with their quiz that they will have in the next week or so. Please be sure to count all the pieces before sending them back to school. They will be exchanged every 2 weeks and correspond to themes and vocabulary covered in class.

Math, students continue to work on addition up to 12. This week we will be learning about doubles and doubles plus 1. We will play some dice games to practice our addition skills and then I will send it home to play. We will also be starting to learn about subtraction (soustraction). Students will need to know the following key words to help them determine if the written problem is addition or subtraction. (moins-minus, enleve-take away, reste-left, maintenant-now)

In Science, we are finishing up our unit on our senses. Students will be taking home a paper bag with instructions stapled to it. This is due on Feb 4th. All items will be returned once we had the chance to use them. Students will also be having a quiz to test what they have learned. They are required to associate the 5 senses to images. (l'odorat-smell, l'ouie- hearing, le gout- taste, la vue- sight, le toucher-touch).

In English, we will be writing in our journals and learning to take more risks when spelling out words. Students are learning how to break words apart by letter sounds, syllables or chunking them by beginning, middle and end sounds. Students are still having trouble with their English vowel sounds. If you could review this at home they would benefit from the extra practice. Especially vowels -u, -i, -e.

Social studies students are going to be working in groups and reconstructing roads that they find in the city and roads that are found in the country.

Our class has three more days on in line skating. Please send in your childs helmet if you have forgotten. They have enjoyed their first lesson and are excited to go back and try it again.

We have two tuques in our class that no one seems to know who they belong to, before I put them in lost and found I thought Id ask the parents....one is a gray knit and the other is a blue merino wool one. It they are yours just let me know.

Scholastic orders are due this Friday. I called and made sure you can pay online under my name now so let me know if its not there.

Heads up to an upcoming event!!!!
Feb 13 is the 100 day of school. Our class will have a day of celebration. Each year students have the option to wear a 100 day t-shirt with 100 items on it or they can dress up as if they were 100 years old. You can get some great ideas on pinterest. I am also looking for volunteers to come and run centers in the classroom. In the past parents have come with their own ideas for centers, such as creating a 100 day monster using 100 different things, building towers with 100 cups (which i have), one parent baked a class size cookie with 100 chocolate chips on it. If you are brave, eager and willing we would love to have you share in this fun with us. Feel free to contact me with your ideas. I also can provide any craft items, just let me know in advance. Ideally 5 volunteers would be great to allow small, manageable groups.

Our class also needs three more volunteers for Feb 8th teachers pet in class field trip. Please let me or Margret know if you are able to come.

I think that's all....my brain has stopped working so its time to head home.

Have a great rest of the week!
Laurie Anne

Cheers to a New Year!

Well we survived the first week together!! The students are adjusting well to the new change and I am getting there lol. For those who know me and have worked alongside me in the past, welcome back. For you all who don't know me, HI! I have been teaching at Holy Name for 6 years....or maybe more?! I have taught in PEI for two years before coming west. I love teaching grade one, I love how everyday is different, I love the challenges, the laughs and everything in between. Literacy is very important to me, so be prepared for some changes in the reading packages. I look forward to meeting you all, working with you and your child. Feel free to contact me anytime.

This is my weekly blog. I hope to have it posted every Monday. You can find your child's sight words, French sounds, English sight words, interactive games and much more. I will also post anything that's coming up like field trips, volunteering opportunities or what's happening at school. Please try to check it.

This month your child will be learning all about winter in French. They will learn new vocabulary in French such as winter sports, clothing, parts of the body. We will also be working on French phonemes, how to break words apart into syllables and how to write a simple sentence with correct punctuation. I will be review the French alphabet sounds also with your child, feel free to practice at home. If they need a challenge at a letter sound to the sound. " B" + "A"= BA

You will notice that students are bring home paint chips with both French and English sight words written on them. Please send them back daily as we use them in class regularly. Once the students have 5 weeks and can read each word without any mistakes they get to pick a prize from my prize box. Please be sure to practice with them.

I will be adding another French book to your weekly reading package. Its the French program used by all grade one classes called Oui, oui, oui. With this program however I do require a deposit of 15$ to cover the cost of any lost books, CD's or puzzle pieces. If you could send in a cheque date June 20, 2019 made out to Holy Name School that would be lovely. Once I get the deposit I will start sending home these new books for your child to read. A big thank you in advance!

I will be sending home the log in information again for the online reading program the school has purchased for the class called Je Lis. Thank you to those who are already using it at home. Bravo to the kids for completing up to niveau rouge. For those who are starting out, not to worry you have lots of time. If you have any questions about the program feel free to drop me a line.

In math, the students are starting addition and subtraction up to 12. We will look also at double math facts as well as doubles plus 1. Students will be starting to read written math problems where they must figure out if the problem will be addition or subtraction. It is important for them to remember the key words they are learning in class to help them figure out the problems. So far we have mainly focused on addition. We will start to skip count in the next couple of week by 2,5,10 up to 100. You can help them get a head start by practicing at home.
Key words for addition- plus, ajoute, en tout,
Key words for subtraction - moins, enleve, maintenant

In Science, students have been working on discovering their 5 senses and the important role they play in our lives. Last week we did some fun experiments with taste, sound and sight. This week we will focus on touch and smell.

Social studies students are starting a new unit on comparing the differences between urbane (ville) and rurale (champagne) living. So far we have looked at my family home on google maps in PEI (country) and where I live in Calgary (urbane). The students were very surprised at the size of my yard in PEI, which is over an acre. They also got a kick out of the traffic cameras there verse here.

English, students are reviewing vowel sounds both long and short sounds. They will also be starting to learn about blends and word families. They continue to work on explode the code and making 3 letter words.

I am looking for some volunteers who would be willing to come into class and read with the students in small groups in either French or English. If you are interested and available please let me know and we can work out a schedule. Our class is in need of 4 volunteers on Feb 8th afternoon (12:30-3:05) for our in class field trip with Teachers pet. I will be also looking for volunteers on Feb 13 to help celebrate our 100 day of school. If you are interested in any of these opportunities please let me know.

I think that's all for this week.
Reminders........
No school Friday Jan 25
Library Thursday Jan 24

The countdown is on....

Hello everyone,
The week is finally upon us. I cant believe we have 4 days left before the holiday season. This will be a busy week filled with lots of excitement and tons of activities. All this week we have parents coming into class to read Christmas stories. We had some great stories this morning and the kids are looking forward to hearing more. As we count down the days before Christmas our class likes to dress up each day, this is totally optional.
We will start to deliver our candy canes to the classes this week. We did a great job and sold out of what we had. I do have to go get a few more to fill the orders. I will be calling Superstore today to order our Turkeys. My husband and his turkey crew plan on stopping by on Wednesday and dropping them off to the Drop In then. He was thinking tomorrow however we are thinking weather will play a messy factor in that.
Our parent volunteers will be exchanging our reading packages, they will be kept here at school until the new year. I will be sending home a winter holiday reading challenge over the break, if you and your child would like to participate. They love filling the hot chocolate mug in with the fun places to read. I will also be sending home tomorrow a note explaining a new on line reading ressourse that you can use at home. It looks awesome! You can read the book, follow along and even highlight the words if you do not know them and it will read it back to you. Each child will get their own log in. You can just save the information to your computer.

Tuesday- We will be decorating Christmas cookies with our grade 4 reading buddies. This will be from 12:45-1:45. We have made sure that the cookies are allergy free for those students with allergies. If you have allergy concerns, just let me know or send in an item your child can decorate.  Tuesday we have the choice to dress up as reindeer, santa or Mrs claus. They students have written in their agenda's what they would prefer.

Wednesday- Students will attend strum and sing, which is the school caroling in the gym first thing in the morning. We have our Advent liturgy as well which will start at 1pm in the gym. All is welcome to attend. We will also dress as Christmas angles this day.
Thursday- Last day together before Christmas Holidays. The whole school will be dressing in their PJ's. We have strum and sing in the morning followed by the Nativity movie in the gym. We will clean up the class get it ready for the new year. We will also have a class celebration and pass out Christmas gifts. If you wish to send in a healthy treat for our class celebration you are more than welcome to do so. Special Lunch is also on this day.
This is all for the week. If anything changes I will send you all an email. If I do not get to see you all before the Holidays, may you have the merriest of Christmas. I hope that your home will be filled with laughter, love and warmth, not to mention great new memories. Be safe and remember to stop and take a moment to take it all in. I will hopefully be seeing you all in the New year! School is back January 8th! Merry Christmas and Happy New  Years!
Laurie Anne

Short week

Hi everyone,
We are in our last week of November! I can't believe December will be upon us in  a couple of days. It's my favorite time of year...I love everything about Christmas, the smells, the music, the colors, gathering with friends and everything in between.
This is a short week, this week seeing that we have parent teacher conference Thursday night and all day Friday, so no school Friday. I look forward to chatting with you. If you have any questions about the report card please bring it along with you to discuss.  Also if you have not yet sent back your child's report card envelop you can bring it with you to interviews. Please sign it. We use the same envelop for all reporting periods. If you have not signed up for parent teachers there is still space available, you can do so online. At the conference you are encouraged to stop by the annual book fair. This will be set up in the library. The students will be able to preview what the book fair has on Thursday. They usually write a wish list that they take home with them. There will also be a class wish list there for you to donate books to your child's classroom. Because of the book fair we do not have library this week. You can also go on the hunt for missing items that your child may have lost at school. This is usually set up in the hall. Keep your eyes open!
With a new month a new theme, students will be learning about vocabulary related to the Holiday season, Christmas traditions of those in their class and around the world. We will also learn to sing some Christmas favorites in French.  We will continue to work on writing a simple sentence with correct punctuation as well as putting letter sounds together to form simple words or nonsense words. You can work on this at home as well with magnetic letters if you have any. Its a great way to build decoding skills. We will also be starting our literacy centers. We have done a couple practice runs and I think they are ready.

Our class will be kicking off our annual Turkey drive this month, a little late than I normally start to be honest. Students will  be collecting spare change in the coming weeks and selling candy canes at our Christmas concert to raise money to purchase turkeys for those in need during this time of year. I will be looking for volunteers to help sell before and after the concert. If you are interested please let me know. Other than candy cane sales students from my class in the past have done choirs at home, collected bottles and brought in spare change. They are encouraged to this again this year. One boy a couple of years ago sold some of his old toys and donated the money to purchase turkeys. If you are wanting to participate with your child you may send in your spare change and start a choir list right away. The students love sharing how they collected the money they are donating and the act of giving becomes contagious! We will be collecting the money up until Dec 14, 2017. With the money collected from the candy cane sales and change collection we will purchase as many Turkeys as possible which will be donated to the Calgary Drop In Centre. This year I am hoping to share the turkey goodness with other organizations in our community not just the Drop In, seeing that we had so many last year. If you have any suggestions please let me know. I have a couple in mind already.  Why have we donated to the Drop in the last couple of years you may ask? I got the idea when our staff volunteered serving breakfast at the beginning of the school year. I had asked what the clients ate at Christmas, they told me that it depended on what was donated but usually it was never turkey seeing the cost of it. At that time the lady said that the last time was probably over 5 years ago, never since she had worked there. I knew I would be doing the Turkey drive seeing that I have done it every year since I began my teaching career. So I ran it by my class and told them about the clients at the drop in and how they have not had the opportunity to have a traditional Christmas meal. They were all over it and we have been providing  the clients a hot turkey meal since then. At Christmas the Drop In will see over a 1000 clients. Last years class purchased 171 turkeys, thanks to our awesome Holy Name community. This will the fourth time our class has done this Pay it forward project and provided the clients at the Drop In a traditional Christmas dinner. Our turkeys will be enjoyed on Christmas day and depending on how many we get probably a couple of more times. If you have any questions about the Turkey Drive feel free to drop me a line.

Scholastic book orders are due tomorrow. This will be the last order until January. I hope to place the order over the week end to make sure that they will arrive well before Christmas. If you are saving any of these for gifts just let me know with a note or by email. Once they arrive I will keep them for you.

Ginger bread forms are due Friday, however I heard through the grape vine that they have no room left. If you need any info on the you can contact Mme Marie- Christine.

We will have some volunteer opportunities coming up in the weeks to come. Our first one is a lot sooner than I thought...sorry for the short notice. Looking for 3 volunteers on Dec 7th morning starting at 8:45 until lunch time to join us at Story book theatre. The students are off to see Charlie Brown's Christmas. You will be getting an email from our parent rep about some other days as well. The last week of school you are invited to come in and read Christmas stories, do a craft, if you play an instrument come in and sing some songs. If you wish to do a craft, let me know if you need any items I can grab from the art room or pick up.

That's all for this week. Looking forward to chatting with you all tomorrow evening and Friday. Have a great rest of the week.
Laurie Anne

Reminder: Scholastic book orders due tomorrow...if you forget you can bring it Monday to your interview, No school Friday, Return reading packs Monday, Sandwich foundation Dec 5th.

Happy Halloween!

Where did the month of October go?? I cannot believe we are in the last week of October and starting November already. I find the time usually zips by from now to Christmas. In the month of November we will start to fund raise for the annual Turkey drive, you will learn more about that later, we will start to practice our Christmas song for the concert which is usually the first week of December, I will have to confirm that date. Evaluations will continue for the first part of the month and then reports cards will be making their way home at the end of the month. ** If you want to better prepare your child for evaluations they will be tested on alphabet letter sounds/names in both French and English, weekly sight words in both French/English up until now, associating numbers 0-20 to objects and written form (1= un, 19 = dix-neuf), identifying numbers 0-20 out of sequence as well as counting forwards/backwards up to 20. In English, three letter words, they are required to write and identify them in a sentence.**
On Tuesday October 31st students are allowed to come to school dressed in their costumes. I encourage you to dress up if you are dropping them off or picking them up. They love showing their friends there cool parents costumes. Please send your child in their costumes ready to go. If their costumes requires face paint that must be applied at home. I am not permitted to touch up their make-up. They are not allowed to wear masks or bring any weapons of any sort. We will have a Halloween celebration in the afternoon. If you wish to send in a health treat to share with the class you are welcome to do so. We will also be having lunch together this day thanks to some great parent volunteers who will be providing soup, rolls and I believe a desert. If your child is a picky eater I suggest that you send something in just in case they are not fans of the soup. It would be great if you could send in a plastic bowl along with a spoon to help reduce waste. I will have extras on hand, just in case you forget.

In the afternoon we are lucky to have parent volunteers coming into class to run Halloween centers from 1-2:30. The students loved carving pumpkins on Friday and I am sure they will love the centers as well.

There is no school on Wednesday November 1st seeing that staff will have their annual Faith day. We do have school Thursday November 2 and Friday November 3. I will not be here from November 2-8th. I will be attending ACPI which is a French Immersion conference. I lucked out because this year the conference is held in Charlottetown, PEI. Yay! I get to go home and learn. I also decided to extend my trip there for a couple of days seeing that I will not be able to fly home for Christmas this year! First one EVER! I have Mme Amy and Mme Johanne in for me to cover those days.

For the month of November we the students will be learning a lot of new things and will continue to build on their knowledge they have learned so far since September. Our theme this coming month will focus on fruits and vegetables, continue to learn about body parts and our 5 senses. These all tie in nicely and work well across the curriculum.
Students will also be starting to put sounds together to form little words in both French and English. We will play with letter tiles in class and work on blending these letters together. This is something you can also start to do at home with the Jolly Phonics cards that have been sent home weekly. This is great practice and will help your child on their reading journey.

To best learn the names of fruits and veggies our class requires a little help from yourselves. This class project is always a huge success for both the parents and the students. It does however involve your corporation and support. I am hoping for another successful year of getting students to try new things with a little positive peer pressure! I have assigned each student a fruit/vegetable to bring into class on a particular day for the month of November and the first couple days of December. The deal is that the students all must try what is brought in, unless an allergy. It has to touch their tongue and get on their taste buds! If they want to spit it out they are free to do so, at least they tried it. They then will write in a book whether they liked what they have tried or not. Once they have finished trying everything on the list, the books are sent home for you to look over. It is an easy way to see what your child likes, so that making snacks/ lunches can be a little easier. It also saves you from trying out pomegranates for example to see if they like them or not and saving you some moola. The list will be sent home this week. Feel free to add anything to the list or if you cannot find what you have been give to replace it with something else that is not on the list. Calgary has a lot more options out there than PEI did so I look forward to seeing what you might suggest or bring in. I will take care of the first couple of days. If you are unable to participate that's ok too, just let me know  in advance so I can make arrangements to get what is needed for that day. To make our life in grade one easier, we would love it if you sent in the items cut up and prepared for 23 students. Don't worry about napkins I got that covered. Thanks in advance for your support. I hope you will hear some positive stories about our tastings! I should also mention during this we use our 5 senses which is apart of our science unit. The students especially love when we bit in the fruits or veggies and the sounds they make.

Math is still identifying numbers 0-20 and we will be starting to look at simple addition and subtraction up 12 to start. If you have time students always struggle with the concept of subtraction. they would benefit by going over this with you at home. Words that you can use to help are moins (less) enleve (take away) soustraire/ soustractions (subtract/ subtraction). I will also be sending home an association game that you can play with your child. They are required to associate the numbers to the written word up to 20. Please practice when you have time.

Science, we are learning about our five senses, (la vue (sight), le toucher (touch), le gout (taste) l'odorat (smell), l'ouie (hearing). Each week we will learn about a sense and build on that as the weeks pace. We will learn about Helen Keller as well as a boy who uses echolocation to get around.

 In Social Studies, students have been learning how to identify different groups, whether by the clothing they were (uniforms), symbols (maple leaf) language they speak, music and so on. They are encouraged to pay attention to different symbols they see, languages they hear when they are out and about. We will also look at National symbols.

 In English, we have started to put sounds together to form new words or nonsense words with a focus on three letter words. We are also paying closer attention to rhyming words we hear in stories. We are also looking at the beginning, middle and ending sounds of words. Students have also been learning about books, the title, title page, publishers, authors, illustrators and why some books have write ups on the back cover.

This week and next info to note:
I will be sending home Scholastics book orders for this month. If there are any Christmas gifts just let me know and I will put them aside.
No school on Wednesday Nov 1st- Faith day for teachers
Choir is Thursday at noon.
Library is Friday Nov 3rd
Pictures orders due and retakes are Nov 3rd
Gala November 4th.  I hope you all have a great time and get some great deals.
Remembrance day assembly is Nov 10th at 10:30am. All are welcomed.

A note from our lovely reading package volunteers: It would be very helpful if you could take out items that could stay at home such as reading CD, Jolly Phonics duo-tang and flashcards...

I think that is all...a lot of info to process. Happy Halloween everyone. be safe on Tuesday night with your little ones.
Laurie Anne