Chers familles de division 6,
This week, students are practicing their French Oral language and speaking skills by reading their stories and other completed work. A clear voice, eye contact, posture and volume are some of the public speaking skills we are working on. Also, students came home with a speech and family artifact assignment last week. This is due Tuesday March 8th, or anytime beforehand. Students are asked to bring a family artifact and a polished speech using the fill-in-the-blank handout provided (a copy was also emailed as an attachment in case you need to print one from home). These speeches will be presented from March 8th to 11th, which is our last week before Spring Break.
In French grammar, students are reviewing the irregular verbs avoir, être and aller in the present tense. Within the next few weeks, students are learning to conjugate regular verbs with -er, -ir and -re endings (for example marcher, sentir and entrer) in the present tense. These verbs are regular because they have the same endings within each of their categories. For example, all regular -er verbs (except irregular verbs such as aller) have the following bolded endings when the -er ending is removed (using marcher and parler as an example). I will provide -ir and -re verb endings next week.
marcher
Je marche
Tu marches
Il/Elle marche
Nous marchons
Vous marchez
Ils/Elles marchent
parler
Je parle
Tu parles
Il/Elle parle
Nous parlons
Vous parlez
Ils/Elles parlent
In English, grade 3 students are working hard to finish their English grammar booklets. The last topic to cover before Spring Break are verbs. Two types we are learning are action verbs, which tell what a person or thing does. The other type is a helping verb, which is used with an action verb. For example in the sentence "The driver should have turned the wheel", 'should have' is the helping verb and 'turned' is the action verb (also known as the main verb and usually comes last). Students will practice writing sentences using everything they have learned so far. This includes verbs, adjectives, contractions, adverbs, nouns, homonyms, suffixes and prefixes. In Reading, we have 3 chapters left of our novel study "Stuart Little". While we read, students are learning Oral reading skills such as fluency, expression, predicting, phrasing and thinking aloud in order to increase their comprehension.
In Math, Grade 2's are continuing to add and subtract numbers to 100. Grade 3's are getting an introduction to fractions. Today students learned the terminology of the top number (le nominateur), also known as the part, and the bottom number (le dénominateur), also known as the whole. We will continue to practice multiplication, division, counting money and reading a 24-hour clock through a variety of games.
In Social Studies this week, we are travelling across Canada during our magic carpet reading time. Today we read about Newfoundland and Labrador and learned about its history, culture and symbols. We learned that a grandparent of a student in this class lives in Newfoundland! We look forward to sharing our family artifacts and speeches to find our where our family backgrounds are from in Canada and the rest of the world. In Science this week, we are going for a walk to Summit Park in search of local wildflowers and other signs of spring. We will integrate Art by using pastels to draw native wildflowers and learn the technique of blending colours with our fingers.
Last week in PE, students played an active game called "Ship to Shore" designed to help develop listening skills and following instructions (such as running, rowing and laying down). They also learned some soccer skills such as stopping and controlling a ball. On Thursday we will hike up to the top of Summit Park. We also continue to do regular daily exercise such as running and outdoor play to maintain health and focus.
Have a great week everyone,
Mme Garcin