A QUICK UPDATE

Welcome to a quick view of what is going on in Room 205, Grade 5 Extended French.

CLASS RULES:

We will work to create a reward system to encourage students and to reinforce desired behaviour.

FRENCH: We are working on spelling words for our dictée, focusing on the o/au/eau sound.  Students must write two sentences using words from the list and memorize them for their dictée this coming Friday.

We have also been answering questions with short french text to deepen our comprehension and broaden our vocabulary.  Students who have not complete "Lucie est malade" should do so tonight as homework.

Students practice a daily conversation each month, then perform a presentation at the end of the month in front of the class.  This month, we would like to try video taping a two person dialogue, them uploading our conversation for teacher and peer viewing.

MATH:  My blended math group has been working on data management. Collecting, organizing, displaying, reading describing and interpreting primary and secondary data.

From a display of our work, we have created success criteria for graphing.

We have created a Math Word Wall of Data Management terms to help us with our work.

 
We worked on creating and interpreting broken-line graphs.

We are currently working on organizing the data to create bar graphs with intervals.  Students will complete and Exit Ticket (ask your child about Exit and Entrance Tickets).

In English Writing, we are currently working on writing a personal narrative.

In Reading, we are focusing on thinking beyond the text by making connections, predictions and inferences.  We are currently reading "Among the Hidden".

SOCIAL STUDIES:  This term we are learning about Canadian Government and Active Citizenship.  This week, we are working on thoughtful questions for Mayor Sandra Cooper, who will be visiting  Grade 5 classes on Thursday afternoon.

WELCOME TO GRADE 5 EFSL 2015-2016!

Dear students,

I would like to welcome you to Grade 5 Extended French at Admiral. I hope that you and your family had a restful and enjoyable summer and are ready for a fun filled year. I am enjoying getting to know each other, and establishing routines.

This year, I will teach you French, Language Arts, Social Studies, Visual Arts, Drama and Music.  Apart from Math and Language Arts, all subjects taught by me will be taught in French.  Mr. Kemsley teaches Phys. Ed and Health to our class, as well as some of the Science curriculum.  EFSL students and the English Grade 5 students are blended together for Math and Science. I am one of the four blended Math teachers.  Mme Carter, Mme Denbok and Mrs. Barr also teach math.  Mr Kemsley, Mrs Lashley and Mrs. Cholewinsky teach Science. Over the course of the year, all students will rotate to the different science teachers in their blended group.

I am looking forward to learning new things, exploring and experimenting with exciting concepts and celebrating our successes throughout the year.  It is with great pleasure that I am able to share in your journey through elementary school.

I am looking forward to becoming acquainted with you and your parents. If your parents have any questions or concerns, please tell them to contact me, without hesitation, at school (705) 445-0811.

email.  klemire@scdsb.on.ca

Sincerely,

Kimberly Lemire

Happy Friday!!!

We began the day signing our little French hearts out with Magic Systems, "Magic in the Air".  Here is the official video, followed by our short clip of happy singers.

Then we sang and danced to "Agadou".

In Dance, with Mrs. Lashley, students have been creating their own dances to "Uptown Funk".  The first video is a mash up of all their dances, followed by individual groups.

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

 Half of Group 4 was helping Mme Bosse's students teach the assembly dance to the whole school, so they will add their dance to this blog at a later date.

In the middle block, we had our Recognition Assembly and our Volunteer Appreciation Assembly - we are lucky to have so many caring community members that volunteer their time to our school.  I love these assemblies because it gives us one more opportunity to recognize deserving students for their efforts.

At each assembly, we try to have a flash mob or a school wide dance.  This month Mme Bosse's class, along with Kendall and Lia from our clas,s taught the whole school a dance from Glee Club.  They did a terrific job!

What a great way to end the month!

At the assembly, we learned that our school raised over $13 000 with their chocolate fundraiser.  The parent committee did a wonderful job with this - they all work so hard to make our school a better place.  Our class raised over $1800 dollars towards this initiative!  We won a 5 pound chocolate bar to thank the students for their outstanding effort!  If your child was a little hyper this Friday evening, it may have to do with the chocolate consumed in class, during our Tea Time Read Aloud.

ART INSPIRED BY NORVAL MORRISEAU

NORVAL MORRISSEAU

Norval Morrisseau was born in the early 1930s on the Sandy Point Lake Reserve north of Thunder Bay in Ontario Canada.

He was raised by his Grandparents and through them learned traditional Ojibwa customs, values and beliefs. It was in his youth that he received - from his Grandfather - his "mission" to share through art, all of those things he was taught to respect about Ojibwa culture.

During the 1950s, Morrisseau was hospitalized with Tuberculosis. While in hospital, he began painting and drawing his visions on birch bark and brown paper bags... he painted visions which were uniquely his own. Later, in the 1960s he traveled widely to bush communities in Canada and visited some northern Minnesota reservations where he met with many who today are considered knowledgeable elders, both to learn from them and to teach. He taught by painting, as well as writing. 

A medicine man or shaman, Morrisseau developed a style which has since evolved and been used by many Native artists. The style is called the Eastern Woodland Style and can be seen in the works of Daphne Odjig, Carl Ray and Blake Debassige. (http://www.kinderart.com/multic/norval.shtml)

We found the following lesson plan to help guide us:

1. Norval Morrisseau used what is referred to as an X-Ray technique when he painted a work of art. Not only do you see the person or animal that has been painted, but you also see the energy within the animal or person.
2. Have your students choose a subject for their painting - a fish, a bird, a turtle, etc.
3. Students can then sketch the outline of their subject on their paper.
4. Next, students should think about the interior of their subject - the energy and emotion inside.
5. Students can then draw lines (using ink, crayons, oil sticks, oil pastels etc), colors (using paint, oil pastels, cut up paper etc.) and shapes inside the subject ... the more the better.
6. Let imagination take over as the paper is filled with paint.

Materials:

• Heavy paper or cardboard (about 12" x 14" per student)
• Thick water based paint. (Acrylic is wonderful but you can also use tempera or poster paint)
• Paintbrushes & water
• Examples of Morrisseau's art
• Images of animals for reference

Guided Reading

The last couple of  weeks, we focused on Making Predictions at the guided reading table.  With lots of practice and feedback students are now ready to make predictions on their own (summative evaluation stage).  While working on predictions in their rotations, we are focusing on summarizing narratives at the Guided Reading table.  Students have done a wonderful job in guided groups and are ready to tackle summarizing on their own.  They have been summarizing in their reading response journals, but next week they will summarize at the Reading Strategies center during rotations.

We noticed that level 3 and level 4 summaries in the CASI exemplars included an inference, so we added an overall inference about the author's message, or the narratives theme to strengthen or summaries.  We read the "Listen to the Wind", an non-fiction narrative based on the novel "Three Cups of Tea".

Each group thought we should include the WHERE AND WHEN in our summary so we had all the 5 Ws (What, Where, When, Who, Why).  They felt it was important enough to add.


Here are the results from the three first groups...two more groups will visit the Guided Reading table next week.

We tried to stick to the main ideas only and keep our summary short and concise.

Predictions from Prediction Center:

Here are some of the Reading Response Journals.  Students have been writing me letters about what they are currently reading.