Heres to making new friends!

Thank you to all of you who came in to meet me. It was great getting to meet you all. I know we will have a great year working along side each other.

This week we will continue to work on routine and structure in class. We will continue to build our vocabulary by learning about school supplies, colors, days of the week and the alphabet. The student will continue to practice learning the names and sounds that each letter makes in the alphabet. They are also learning how to print and distinguishing both lower and upper case letters. Please practice the alphabet at home as well as printing both upper and lower case letters. In french upper case is called majuscule and lower case is miniscule. I will send home a sheet with how the letters should sound in French. We have started to write in our French journals. The students are copying simply sentences about school supplies and colors. We are focusing on using proper spacing, starting the sentence with a capital and finishing with a period. We are having some fun learning French songs, so you might hear them singing at home.

In math we have started our patterns unit, which they seem to really enjoy. We are also learning to count and represent numbers up to 10. It would be great practice if you counted at home with your child as high as they can as well as printing their numbers in the correct direction.

In science the students are learning about colors and how to make new colors by mixing others. We did start our health unit about good hygiene and the importance taking care of your body. We covered hand washing techniques last week and had some good discussion on why its important to wash our hands. In English we are learning about consonants and the sounds that they make. This week sight words in English are I, am, like, can, my and go. To practice their sight words in either French or English you could play a game of memory, tic-tac-word or hangman. In religion the students are learning about the importance of friendship and what makes a good friend.

Information that you might want know:
Gym class is on days 1,2,3 and 4
Library is on day 2 ( I will try and remember to put a note in the agenda reminding you)
Activite en communaute is on day 5
Period X is on day 6

Our school runs on a 6 day cycle, you can find the days on the calendar provided in the monthly news letter.

This weeks reminders:
Sept 17- picture day- our class is at 9h30
Sept 18- Mass at Holy Name church- We will be walking there, if you want to join feel free.
Sept 20- Sandwich Day- All Sandwiches will be donated to those in need

Enjoy your week
Laurie Anne :)

PS

I also forgot to ask for a parent volunteer to be our classroom rep. This person would be responsible for helping find volunteers for field trips, in class activities among other important things. I do have one already however would like two seeing that my one volunteer travels quite a bit for work. If you are interested please let me know as soon as possible.

On another note we will keep the same sight words this week as well as sounds for some extra practice. Our English sight words are I, am, like, can, my,go.
Have a great week.
LA

Welcome to Grade one!

Bonjour everyone! Welcome back to a new school year and a new adventure for you and your child in grade one! We survived the first week and had the week end to rest up and start over again. I hope that your child is adjusting well to the new routine. I know some of them must have seemed a little tired when they got home, seeing that they are not use to a full day of school. You will notice them adjusting a little better in the coming months. It is important that they get their rest, because it can be tiring learning a new language.

I am excited to meet you all at the parent teacher meetings coming up this week. You probably have a lot of questions to ask about this year but also of who I am. I'll give you a little run down now. I am new to Calgary. I have been here on and off for the past 4 years. I am from Prince Edward Island which is the east coast of Canada. The island is small and everyone that passes you greets you with a friendly smile and a hello. (Calgary is still getting use to me doing this here!) Last year I took a leave of absence from my full time teaching position at Greenfield Elementary where I taught grade one French Immersion, to give the west a try. I was lucky to come across the catholic school board at an education fair. It was meant to be I think. The recruiter was shaking a tin of mints when I was about to leave. I heard the mints and thought hmmm I could use some free mints and went over. That action brought me to Holy Name where I had the chance of teaching a fabulous grade two class for the rest of the year and has brought me back to Calgary for another year. Grade one is my thing, I love it. Everyday is different, the kids make me laugh,smile,cry and everything in between. I am really big on literacy and teaching the students not only the curriculum but about the importance of respect, friendships, life and compassion. I see my classroom as a small community where everyone works together, we are a team and our actions being in this small community effect everyone in some way. My classroom has an open door policy, I love parents to come in and help out and do activities with the students. So feel free to volunteer anytime! I also believe that your child's success in French Immersion not only happens at school but at home as well,regardless if you can speak French or not. By simply listening to your child read each night in French or doing extra work with them, all plays an important role in their success. I am here to work with you as well. I am the product of attending a French Immersion school and had parents who didn't speak French. They did listen to me every night reading and watched me do my home work and by simply being there, just in case helped me succeed.
If you have any question ever please feel free to email or call me at school. I am always happy to help!

**Your child will take home their agenda every night. In there will be notes about whats going on at school or what was sent home. I use it mainly as a communication tool between school and home. Also it will have your child's sight words for the week. I ask that you review these with your child daily, practice sounding them out, writing them. You can always play fun games with them like memory, hang man or war. You will also always find on the blog their sight words, sounds of the week and French sentence structures or expressions for the week. Practice these as well. The sight words are especially important because they are the frequent French words that your child will see once they start to read. I know your nights can be busy and packed full of extra activities, but even practicing them on the drive to and from will help your child!

I hope to see most of you this week, if not have a great one and we will catch up soon.
Enjoy the week!
Laurie Anne :)

How great was Anne!

Well our little adventure today was very successful! A huge thank you to all the parent volunteers who came out and made this possible! I hope that you all enjoyed yourselves and that the rain didnt get you all too wet! Have a super weekend everyone! :)
Laurie Anne....with an e

Very short post today! Many of you have been asking when we have gym so you can send your child prepared for gymnastics. We have gym days 1,3,5 and 6 always at 9h45. So this week we have gym tuesday and thursday. We have no school on friday nor monday. I hope that you all have a super may long weekend! If you have any super ideas for us I am all ears!
Have a great week

Hello Sunshine!

Three cheers for the sun making a warm appearance this week end and today! I so hope its here to stay and will follow me to PEI this week. I am heading home on Wednesday and will be back Sunday afternoon sometime. I am just heading home for a visit and this was the cheapest time to go. Mme Claudette will be in for me for all three days.
We are finishing up learning about farm animals, their proper names, their homes and will be exploring the plant cycle and the many different insects that are out and about this time of year. The students will get a chance to see how plants grow and watch the germination process. They will note any changes as they see them on a graphing scale and compare their seed to their classmates.
We will be working on les verbes "etre" and "avoir" this week and the proper use of them. We will continue to look at les pronoms and les phrases masculin et feminine. The class finally received their letters from their pen pals, which they were super excited about getting. We are now working on writing them back and will type our good copies on the computers. I hope to send them right away so that we get in at least one more letter before schools out for summer!
Math, math, math we are still working on subtraction of double digit problems and will be learning how to solve word problems. I found a great subtraction poem today (in English) that I showed the class. I think its great and catchy!

I found this on pinterest!

In English we are still learning to write different types of poems. So far in class we have looked at Haiku's, Cinquain and acrostics. We are collectively writing acrostic poems for each student in the class. The end result is a book of acrostic poems that your child can take home. Its great to see the respect and compassion that the students have for each other.

Ok that's about all I have right now. Just keep up the reading at home in French and practice some addition and subtraction problems at home. Get out there and enjoy the sunshine!
Mme LA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kids request

Hi everyone,
Some of the students have requested that I post some links to sites we have watched in class. We have been following Chris Hatfield this past week. He has some pretty interesting post on life in space and the students are loving it. We have also been practicing the song that he and lead singer from Barenaked ladies have written together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvAnfi8WpVE&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chris+hadfield+brushing+teeth&oq=chris+hadfield+&gs_l=youtube.1.4.35i39j0l9.71088.73156.0.77852.8.8.0.0.0.0.800.1456.3j4j6-1.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.1MXrnIe6_Ng&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

We have also had the chance to explore Roald Dahls writting hut. The students loved exploring it and reading about the weird things he kept.

http://www.roalddahl.com/

http://www.roalddahlmuseum.org/discoverdahl/exploring/default.aspx

We are also learning about poetry and I found a poem by a 7 year old from Britain. The students loved the fact that she recited the poem with a snake around her shoulders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e86hSRwkVoA&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

We also checked out 2 canadian girls who are very talented.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_aJHJdCHAo&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

I think this is all they have asked me to add. I hope that you have fun exploring!