Cosmo's Senior Centre

Bonjour les parents,

I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow we will be going to visit the senior's across the street at Cosmo's Senior Centre from 1-1:30.  The plan is to come in after lunch, take attendance, and then walk over with Mme Hada's Grade 1 class.  We will be singing an alphabet song that we have been singing since the beginning of the year and then the students will be paired up with a senior to read their class story Le Repas Spécial de la famille Chinoise.  If this booklet is at home, please make sure it is returned to school tomorrow.  As was the case before, parents are free to join us, although we do not require any volunteers for this activity.

Bonne fin de semaine!
Have a wonderful weekend!

100th Day of School Project

The 100^th day of school is almost upon us!  The 100^th day of school is an important and very special day for us because this marks the day the students are able to count well to 100 in French! We count by 1, 2, 5 and 10, forwards and backwards. On Monday February 11^th, we will celebrate this special day at school but we need your help.  We are asking each student to collect 100 small items (these should all be the same type of item).  With those 100 items, and with the help of family members, each student is asked to create a type of collage, design or sculpture at home using all 100 items.  On Monday February 11^th, the students will then bring their 100^th day project to school and show it to the other students in the class.  This will be shared as a “Temps de Partage - Show & Tell” activity.  Each student will be given the opportunity at school to show their project to the class and explain in French what they made as well as how and with what they made it.  The projects will then be displayed in the class or perhaps in another location of the school for others to see and enjoy.  Here are some ideas of items the students may use:

·        Cheerios

·        Pennies

·        Balloons

·        Jellybeans

·        Toothpicks

·        Buttons

·        Autographs

·        Puzzle pieces

·        Pretzels

·        Stickers

·        Golf tees

·        Beans

·        Elastic bands

·        Mini Erasers

·        Beads

·        Noodles

·        Pictures (magazine cut-outs)

·        Etc. (Let your imaginations run wild!)

We encourage you to be as creative as you like and would like to thank you in advance for your help with this assignment.  If you have any questions, please call either one of us at the school and we’ll be happy to help you. (683-7470)

Sincerely,

Mme Tessmann & Mme Hegarty

GORP Snack –  On Monday February 11^th, we will also be asking each student to bring a zip-lock bag containing 100 pieces of a Nut-Free snack item that we can mix together in a large bowl to make a GORP mix as our 100^th Day of School snack.  Snack items could be cheerios, fish crackers, animal crackers, pretzels, jelly beans, chocolate chips, etc.  Merci!

New Classroom Management System starting on Monday

Thursday January 24, 2013

Starting on Monday, we are going to begin using a new classroom management system starting to try and encourage students to use more French while speaking in class as well as focusing on positive individual behavior.

For this system, we will hand out Monopoly play money for the students to collect in their “porte-monnaie” (wallet) when they are speaking in French and demonstrating positive behavior.  Students will collect one dollar for a variety of positive behaviors demonstrated.  Such behavior includes, being seated in desk before morning messages and the playing of O Canada at 9:00, parent signature/initials every day in agenda, good listening skills, raising hand and waiting turn before speaking, actively participating during class discussions & activities, following instructions, working quietly during independent seat work activities, complimenting and helping others, using French to speak in class, completing home-reading assignment as expected, etc.  

Once a week, the students will have a chance to exchange their money for alternate bills.  For example, once a student has collected 10 one dollar bills they can exchange it for a $10 dollar bill, etc.  Once students have earned a pre-determined amount of money, they will have the opportunity to spend their hard earned money on prizes at our class store.  They may also choose to save up their money to buy a larger prize later on if they wish. 

This system will be great for encouraging positive behavior while teaching the students’ to take more responsibility for their own learning.  Students will learn about and practice essential math and practical life skills by learning how to earn and use their own money in a real life type situation.  If you are ever cleaning out toy boxes, book shelves, jewelry boxes, arts & crafts drawers at home and come across gently used items that you would be willing to donate to our class store, we would greatly appreciate these items to include in our class store.   

Merci!

À la prochaine,

Mme Tessmann & Mme Hegarty

Me to We Campaign

Today, members of our school's SLC came by our classroom to let us know about a new initiative at our school, which is to sell beaded necklaces in order to raise money to help those without access to clean drinking water.
These necklaces are called Water Rafiki Friend Chains and they are $10.00 each.  A blue order form was sent home today and are due back to the school by Thursday, January 31st.  Below is a Youtube video on the subject:

For more information about this initiative, visit http://www.weday.com/.  If you are interested and able to, please consider helping the SLC with this worthy cause by purchasing Water Rafiki Necklaces for friends, family, and yourself.

Cosmo Senior's Centre Visits

Our class and Mme Hada’s grade one French immersion class have been approved for a grant, our project being : organized visits across 11th St. to the Cosmo Seniors Centre to sing songs for the seniors in attendance, to read both English and French books with the seniors, to do arts and crafts activities with the seniors, and to occasionally prepare, serve and share nutritious snacks with the seniors. This fits in nicely with our school's theme this month, which is Kindness, and we are hoping to foster a friendship with and kindness towards Seniors in the community throughout the year through these visits.

Our first visit will be this Friday afternoon from 1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Our class will present a short song, and we will bring some French and English books to share with the seniors in attendance. Cosmo Senior's Centre is not a residence but a recreation centre for seniors with planned activities. Parents are welcome to join us, but parent volunteers are not required.

Bonne Année!

Happy New Year!

Well as you see, I'm finally updating the blog, so that means that we are finally getting back into the swing of things in 2013!

First of all, I wanted to let you know that I had quite a bit of trouble uploading all the audio files to the Glogster poster (as you probably noticed), so I apologize for that. It wasn't for a lack of trying, I promise you! Unfortunately there seem to be some glitches with that site and I just wasn't able to make it fully functional.  I hope it was still a useful tool for at home learning. 

Over the past week, we have been creating and learning to read sentences for our word study poster and are now moving to the next phase of the process:  paragraph writing.  Tomorrow I will be modeling a paragraph I wrote using some of the sentences that the students created and they will continue to work on paragraph with Madame Tessmann as well next week.  I have created an online book on Flipsnack that contains the paragraph we will be learning tomorrow as well as all of our sentences and words from this cycle.  They are three different books all on the same link (you just have to click "Next" on the bottom of the page to see each book).  These can all be downloaded (in pdf format) if you would like a copy for your home use.  Here is the link for the Flipsnack online books.  We will not be sending home the sentences in card format this cycle (in an effort to save paper), but if you would like a hard copy sent home, please let us know. 

A few other things to mention:
- Mme Tessmann sent home information today about this month's Temps de Partage.
- We will be starting our Home Reading Program next week.
 
Have a wonderful weekend!