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!

Joyeux Noël!

Here are some Christmas songs on Youtube that your child may want to sing during the holidays.

Notre arbre de Noël by Matt Maxwell

Le gentil Père Noël by Matt Maxwell

Quand le Père Noël vient me visiter by Suzanne Pinel

Vive le vent (the French version of Jingle Bells)

I hope you and your family have a safe and happy holiday! 

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année à tous!
(Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!)

Santa's workshop

On Wednesday, December 19th, Santa's Workshop (a ‘mini’ store) will be set up in the library for the day. On this day, students will be given a chance to come by and purchase new items for members of their family. The cost of these items range from 25¢ to $4.00. The school is looking for parent volunteers to take shifts helping students pick out gifts and wrap items. Without volunteers this will not be possible. If you are available and interested in volunteering on this day, please call the office to let them know. Please make sure to send money with your child if you would like him or her to participate in this activity. Also, I am experiencing a few technical difficulties with the interactive poster on Glogster, so please be patient while I work out glitches. Merci!

Our 2nd word study poster on Glogster!

Hello parents,

Here is the latest word study poster that we are working on in class.  We will be sending home the word cards to practice at home very soon - this time without pictures as an added challenge!  I have been working on a new online tool that I hope will be helpful for you to support your child's reading practice at home.  Below you will find an interactive online poster from Glogster.  We have not yet recorded the audio but soon you will be able to click on each word and hear it read aloud to you.  In the meantime I thought I would give you all a sneak peak at what's to come.


Also, just a reminder to return the purple Second Step duotang to school by Monday if you have not already done so.  We will start our next unit on Empathy next week.
Have a wonderful weekend!