The kids made their way inside, hung up their coats and changed into their indoor shoes without TOO much prompting. :) Quite a few students still need reminders to place their sacs en plastique dans le panier, and to put their lunch boxes into the large bin that is meant for them... but we are working on this! Today's (and this week's) literacy focus was "la lettre Aa." Literacy centres included: An "A comme araignée" craft project, an "A c'est pour l'automne" drawing and letter-tracing activity, "Write the room" (mini clipboards programmed with 'Aa' that the students could use to walk around the room and record words that they saw that started with or contained "Aa"), and a very popular shaving-cream-mixed-with-food-colouring sensory table where the students practiced writing "Aa" with their fingers and managed to get rather messy, but seemed to have a great time! :)
After cleaning up the centre areas (today could have used some improvement in this regard, but I think it had more to do with the novelty of different centres and the fact that 2 were Arts-based), the students met Mme Bennett au tapis. She presented a wonderful music lesson where the kids discussed la métronome and les sons différents - everything from bagpipes from a toilet flushing was played for them from a CD, and they were asked to recognize these sounds before playing a round of sound identification Bingo.
Following the first Nutrition Break and recess, we discussed la lettre "Aa" in some more depth. I recently purchased a big, sparkly lettre A, and I had that on a chart paper along with a picture of une araignée. We played a game of charades with a twist - I would call up a volunteer and whisper an English word that starts with Aa en français. I then had the child act it out for the class. The person who put their hand up and guessed correctly got to come up and draw a picture of the thing on the chart paper to keep my araignée company. ;) I then taught them the French words for all of these objects/things and we rehearsed them as a class. Next, we read the first page in our "Le grand livre des lettres" book. "Une araignée sur mon bras! A, a, a, comme araignée!" See if your child remembers the word and action for araignée. :) After this, we read the book "Aa" (from the A-Z reading site)together. I had a copy of this book for each child to colour, and then I tried to read it with as many of them as I possibly could before sending them home with the students at the end of the day. Please take a minute if you can and read this book with your child for extra practice and to reinforce some of the "Aa" vocabulary that we have begun to acquire.
When all of the students had finished their books and engaged in some free choice play activities, we met at the carpet and read the book "Fall, leaves, fall!" I had intended to use this book as a lead-in to a math lesson about sorting... I purchased a bunch of different "fall leaves" and was going to see if the kids could help me sort them in different ways together, but we ran out of time. :( Oh well! At least the book made for some good discussion, and I translated a lot of it into French and they seemed to understand what was happening... good sign! :) We'll have to try the Math lesson again on Wednesday, along with our number books - we're going to be learning le numéro 'un' this week.
Tired, after the second nutrition break and recess, I let the children recover with 10 minutes of "silent reading" time. We then made our way down to la bibliothèque, where the students signed out their first books of the school year! We will be visiting the library every Monday during the last block of the day (2:05-2:30). It was nice, because Mme Tovell happened to be in the library with a group of Kindergarten students for whom she covers Planning Time. The two groups could then enjoy another read aloud together and each others' company! :)
Hope that you have a fantastic evening, and I look forward to seeing all of your lovely children on mercredi!
Mlle Craig
No comments:
Post a Comment