This place is called "Les calanques de Marseille", it is a perfect mix between hiking and relaxing on the beach. This is my go to every year! This is also where I met my husband! -Welcome to our Newsletter! TAOKI - We studied and learnt the spelling and the sounds of : /s/, /u/, /f/, /e/, /m/ and are working on the /ch/ - We worked on the vocabulary and created sentences related to the daily life of a student, at school, after school, or during a field trip, the thematic of our poster were : the street (Taoki and his friends taking the bus downtown), the playground at school, the classroom (Taoki and his friends and gardening in the class), the lunch room, the museum. - We continued our reading learning journey, students really improve their fluidity I noticed a lot of them use a lot the sign related to the sound to help themselves to read a word which is really great ! - We worked on the vocabulary and created sentences related to outdoor activities (biking/hiking/forest...). - I will increase the amount of writing production, and every new Taoki poster and/or album will be new writing/sentence creation opportunity. - To guide the students into this task, I use a color code to show how to compose a basic French sentence : *When the action takes place are the "blue words", we focus on present with words like "now, today, at this moment... *Who does the action is always green * What is the action (verb) is always red, *Where the action takes place w is black. Example : Aujourd'hui, Taoki joue dans la classe Today Taoki plays in the classroom - I will introduce the "writing blue pen" as we do in France. Indeed French students in France rarely use pencils to write, so we will be working on holding properly the blue pen, and be careful and focused on our writing since there is no possibility to erase. - Students keep progressing in reading and some of them completely amazed me recently by their reading skills and good pronunciation ! The two classes are really involved and interested into reading and appreciate our reading time MATH - We worked deeper on additions and subtraction equations with the topic 5, we extended our counting sequence to 120 thought 1 to 1 counting, 10 to 10, some students don't need the number chart to count and memorized very well the name of numbers in French, this was with the topic 7. - I wanted to thank you parents with your involvement into the homework, every time I am checking them, I see how seriously everything is done ! -Math is getting harder as well. Indeed the topic 10 in which we are working right now focuses on addition equations under 100. - The most challenging part now is to understand that 10 ones make one ten, and represent it, applies it to find the right result of a given equation. - I grade the students "in situation", during the daily math lesson . I will give as well some test, but I am trying not to overwhelm too much the kids and to propose them different assessment type (I noticed that the kids are a little more relaxed when I assess them during the daily math lesson or orally). MORNING RITUALS - Every morning, we are doing the date, the weather, the schedule etc... - In a few days, I will introduce a new form of rituals : I will give my "very official" French badge and my microphone to a designated student, who will do the attendance, interact with the class, ask "class, who wants to come on the board and say the date of today ? " or "class ? How are you today...." I did it last year and it was really awesome to see ! - I will increased the amount of mental calc, so pretty often during the ritual we will throw a ball and when a student will catch it up he/she will choose an equation and throw the ball to another student who will have to say the result and choose a new equation, etc... -A lot of fun ! - During some Fridays of each month, we are doing the "Big Friendly Friday". It consists into mixing all the 1st grades together to create 4 new groups who rotates between the four first grade teachers. - These BFF are the occasion for me to introduce the other students from the magnet and traditional program to French culture. Our little French Immersion kids are very proud to show and help their friends from other classes to understand what I am saying. BEHAVIOR - The students are gaining a lot of autonomy. They know the rules of the classroom, understand them, and respect them and now is the moment in which I give them as much autonomy as I can, the only condition is to be respectful and responsible. -Between each switch, they go to the bathroom and relax and get to talk together for 5 minutes, I noticed it makes it easy to have them focus. - I showed them how lot use the computers (finding their numbers, their headphones, unplug/re plug it properly. - I am using a lot lately the reward system from bloomz, I switched the little flower for a baby dinosaur who will grow inside its egg until he comes out! I would love to have your feedback on it! CULTURE / GENERAL ACTIVITIES - Our holiday winter songs were a success and it was so fun to teach jingle bells in French! - You can find french songs in the "sing and train" part of this website and a lot of different resources (science video, vocabulary pronunciation, books...) - All the 1st grades trained 2 times a week, at the end of the end to learn our songs, we also trained during our BFF deeper in French to understand more the meaning and the pronunciation. - SEP Conferences are coming, I will give you your child proficiency report in French. If you have any question, feel free to contact me through this website or through Bloomz. Thank you ! As usually, if you have any question, feel free to contact me through this website or through Bloomz. I wish you all the best for the coming year ! Marseille, France (my home city) Welcome to our first newsletter!
Since the beginning of the year, students drastically improved their "staying in a class during a whole full day" skills. They are use to the class, the rituals, they know what to do when they arrive, when a work is done, if they need help, etc... They are still in the “gaining autonomy process”, which is my ultimate goal, giving them as much independence in the class, in their learning in order for them to go at their own path. They take care of our material, clean up chairs, pencils, etc… and are really involved into helping. Rituals Some of them can say the schedule of the day "at 9:30 there is mathematics, etc...". Asking them the schedule of the day is also the occasion to start to learn how to say hours and get familiar with the clock. Basics directions like "we close the book / we tidy our pencils / let's line up for lunch / turn on/off the light are now understood, so are basics sentences like “can I go to the bathroom? Have a drink? Read a book” The morning rituals vary every day, to increase the kids ability to adapt and think of what is said instead of being into a repetition circle. I have little phones into the class, we are pretending we are on the phone and go through a lot of vocabulary. Sometimes we are doing challenges/games like "touch something red", or "find the kid who has red hair, white short.... etc. Most of them can say the date of the day, the day before and the day after, they can say the weather, the temperature, how they feel and play it (it is SO funny when I ask them "show me you are sick / You are tired / sleepy / upset, etc....", we have pretty good actors in our class;) ), Mathematics - The 3 first topics focused on solving addition and subtraction problems, learning strategies to solve the equations, using addition to solve subtractions. Mathematics in French is not a big deal anymore, the majority of the students can work independently on exercises and try to find clues into the words they already know. - I make sure to stimulate them in mathematics during the morning rituals as well, every day we have "the number of the day" that we decompose into tens and ones, we review how to count in French, we even learned how to "sign" numbers. We learn how to count to 70 (about this number, in French the name of it is "sixty-ten" -> soixante-dix, because 70=60+10, when I showed and told them why they were pretty surprised and some of them guessed how to say 71... (clue : 60+11). Some days we pair work, others we manipulate cubes, others we do games.... We are now going to work on topic 5 which goes deeper into addition and subtraction concepts. Thank you so much for your involvement with the homework, I can see how hard you are working with the kids at home and I really want to express my gratitude with this. French Spelling - We learnt the name of family members, month of the year, days of the week, seasons, sport activities, body parts... - About French Spelling (sounds / topics) and books, you can check what we did on the “letter of the week” section of this website. During this coming months, I will focus deeper on how to recognize different sections of a sentence to then introduce the kids to write their very own sentences. Sorry for my English spelling I am sure there are tons of mistakes! Don’t hesitate to contact me for any question. Le port de Cassis, South of France I am so trilled to start my third year at Morningside ! I am so exited to meet my future students and start to teach !
Here are a few informations about our first day back to school (Monday, August 19th) You will have the opportunity to meet us during back to school morning (August 19th) after a meeting in the gym with our principal. We will then introduce ourselves, our own classroom, expose our work as partners during two sessions, here is the schedule : - 9:05 to 9:30 : Welcoming in the gym by our Principal - 9:40 to 10:00 : Session 1 meeting, in the 1st Grade French classroom - 9:05 to 10:30 : Session 2 meeting, in the 1st Grade French classroom Mrs Squires I would love to know more about you and your child, please answer this little quiz for us ! Click HERE Saint Remy-de-Provence Still in South of France, Saint Remy and its area is one of my favorite, I can't wait to go back there this summer. Walk over the typical Provencal little streets, smell lavender, feel the warmth of the sun, enjoy some nice cheese at the farmer market, stop at a typical little hidden restaurant where you will be able to eat fresh home made food... I could go on and on but I have to write the newsletter haha. Holidays in 3 weeks from now !
TAOKI / FRENCH SPELLING & WRITING - We studied and learnt the spelling and the sound of : /j/ /g/ /d/ /an/ /en /t/ /h/ - Next week we will do some reviews of all the sounds we studied and then work on more complex sounds like /br/ /cr/ /dr/ /fr/ /pr/ ..... - I am recently introducing some reading and comprehension work, you might have seen the papers coming home. Indeed, the students are gaining more fluency in reading, words are less "resistant" and they recognize more words globally so I increased the difficulty a little bit with introducing longer texts. How do I process ? I read the text to the students and ask some kids to come at the board and show/act in front of the other to represent a word, a concept, sometimes I just draw the story as well... And then we all underline the important words which will help to answer the questions. They are doing good ! MATH - Quarter 4 counts 4 standards, I am done assessing all of them, they were : -> Organize, represent and interpret data with up to three categories, ->Distinguish between defining attributes, -> Compose two dimensional shapes, compose three dimensional shapes ( these standards were not easy, I spent a great amount of time reassessing the students to make sure everybody gets a great grade, we also did a lot of manipulative to help) -> Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal squares. - Now we are working on the last "topic" of the book which is about preparing for 2nd grade. About getting ready for 2nd grade, I started to get the kids used to work with the all book (and turning the pages.... instead of cutting each topic) because this is the way Mrs De Baker is processing in 2nd grade. CULTURE / GENERAL ACTIVITIES / GENERAL INFOS - Art Lesson on May 17th - Fun run on May 22nd at 1:00 pm - Talent show on May 14th - Last day of school : May 24th with early out - Students loved our "social field trip" on April 25th, they got to know Mrs De Baker and do fun activities with her! PRACTICING FRENCH DURING SUMMER - You can find quick links on the right which will leads you to a whole section of interactive activities (if you are on your phone those links are all the way down of this page) - You can find the books we read all this year in video ( French Literacy- Album 2018/2019) section of this website - You should still have access to the online TAOKI BOOK THANKS - The PTA for helping for art night, thank you for the decoration of my door it looks incredible, thank you for all you did for the class and for me this year. - Thank you to the parents who volunteered all year in my class. - Thank you for all the sweets messages I received on my teacher evaluation, it touched me a lot As usually, if you have any question, or just want to share something with me, feel free to contact me through this website or through Bloomz or just come to say hi ! Thank you ! Carrières de lumières - Les Baux de Provence (click fo website) I highly advise this place to anybody who share with me the wish to go to France. This place, located in South of France is an old quarry (see last picture) transformed into an incredible art spectacle ! Every 6 month approximatively there is a new artist honoured (now it is Picasso), all the paintings are projected on walls and floors and roof ! To that is added incredible classic music which matches the paintings. It is a must see !! There are a lot of typical south of France romantic hotels around, and the cottage of "Les Baux de Provence" is gorgeous, the food there is incredible. Hello parents ! Here is the February/March newsletter !
TAOKI / FRENCH SPELLING & WRITING - We studied and learnt the spelling and the sound of : /ou/ /z/ /p/ /e/ /b/ - What I really like about Taoki reading method is that each week is correlated to each other, thanks to that we can see and learn a lot of vocabulary every week but always in a logical progression. - I keep increasing the amount of writing productions using Taoki poster (tomorrow, I am going to hang your student's productions on the wall, feel free to come and check it out ! You will be so proud ! - I also use our weekly Album to create writing activities, since last newsletter, we write about feelings, we worked on how European countries celebrate the Carnival (I showed them videos and pictures about the costumes in Venise, and in South of France), we learnt place prepositions, the difference rooms in the house (students where very surprise when I told them that there is no basements in France) MATH - We worked on 9 standards : represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction within 20, compare two digit numbers, add within 100, mental calc (10 more 10 less), subtract multiples of 10 in the range 10-90, order three object by length, express the length of an object as a whole number of length units, tell and write time in hours and half hours, identify the values of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. - Students know perfectly the math rituals and are extremely on task, interested, involved, respectful, ready to learn every day. This group is really a daily pleasure to teach. MORNING RITUALS - I include in our rituals little exercises linked to the math standards we are working on. Recently we have our new ritual "quelle heure est-il ?" ( what time is it ?) CULTURE / GENERAL ACTIVITIES / GENERAL INFOS - Field trip March 21st - Art lesson on March 29th - Big Friendly Friday on April 6th - Field trip "This is the place" on April 23rd - Art night April 26th BEHAVIOR Nothing to add, they are awesome !!! As usually, if you have any question, feel free to contact me through this website or through Bloomz. Thank you ! Chamonix Mont Blanc, France Hello parents ! Here is the first newsletter of the year !
TAOKI / FRENCH SPELLING & WRITING - We studied and learnt the spelling and the sound of : /ch/, /n/, /ê/, /è/, /v/ - We worked on the vocabulary and created sentences related to outdoor activities (biking/hiking/forest...). - During all the month of January, the students had the opportunity to memorise and re-use all this outdoor vocabulary into sentences we orally create and then write. - I highly increased the amount of writing production, and every new Taoki poster and/or album is a new writing/sentence creating opportunity. - To guide the students into this task, I use a colour code to show how to compose a basic French sentence : the subject of the sentence is always green, the action (verb) is always red, the place where the action takes place is blue. - I introduced the "writing blue pencil" as we do in France. Indeed French students in France rarely use crayons to write, so we are working on holding properly the blue pencil, and be careful and focused on our writing since there is no possibility to erase. - Students keep progressing in reading and some of them completely amazed me recently by their reading skills and good pronunciation ! MATH - As I explained on a post on Bloomz, Math is getting a little harder as well. Indeed the chapter 10 in which we are working right now focuses on addition equations under 100. - The most challenging part now is to understand that 10 ones make one ten, and represent it, applies it to find the right result of a given equation. - I explained the student this might be a little challenging but they all go for it, actually I saw amazing progress during this chapter. Literally I am very impressed of the hight level of involvement of the kids. - I started to assess the students "in situation", during the daily math lesson for the next quarter grades. I will give as well some test, but I am trying not to overwhelm too much the kids and to propose them different assessment type (I noticed that the kids are a little more relaxed when I assess them during the daily math lesson or orally). - Our first graders are doing very very well, I am a very proud teacher ! MORNING RITUALS - Every morning, we are doing the date, the weather, the schedule etc... And since few days, I am trying a new form of rituals : I give my "very official" French badge and my microphone to a designated student, who will do the attendance, interact with the class, ask "class, who wants to come on the board and say the date of today ? " or "class ? How are you today...." it is really awesome to witness and super cute ! the students have progressed a lot. - I increased the amount of mental calc, so pretty often during the ritual we throw a ball a student will catch up and choose and equation and throw the ball to another student who will have to say the result and choose a new equation, etc... - We are having a lot of fun ! CULTURE / GENERAL ACTIVITIES - During some Fridays of the month, we are doing the "Big Friendly Friday". It consists into mixing all the 1st grades together to create 4 new groups who rotates between the four first grade teachers. - These BFF are the occasion for me to introduce the other students from the magnet and traditional program to French culture. Our little French Immersion kids are veryyyyyyy proud to show and help their friends from other classes to understand what I am saying. BEHAVIOR - The students are gaining a lot of autonomy. They know the rules of the classroom, understand them, and respect them and now is the moment in which I give give them as much autonomy, personnalisation, choice as they want since I know they will considerate the others and be respectful. GENERAL INFOS - SEP Conferences are coming, I will give you your child proficiency report in French. Please call the office to schedule an appointment with Mrs Squires and I. As usually, if you have any question, feel free to contact me through this website or through Bloomz. Thank you ! Mont Saint Michel, France. Hello parents ! Here is what happened the two last month of 2018 !
I wish all of you enjoyed family time and the best for the coming year ! TAOKI - We studied and learnt the spelling and the sounds of : /s/, /u/, /f/, /e/, /m/ - We worked on the vocabulary and created sentences related to the daily life of a student, at school, after school, or during a field trip, the thematics of our poster were : the street (Taoki and his friends taking the bus downtown), the playground at school, the classroom (Taoki ans his friends and gardening in the class), the lunch room, the museum. - We continue our reading learning journey, students really improve their fluidity I noticed a lot of them use a lot the sign related to the sound to help themselves to read a word which is really great ! The two classes are really involved and interested into reading and appreciate our reading time MATH - We worked deeper on additions and subtraction equations with the topic 5, we learnt how to read and represent a data with the topic 6, we extended our counting sequence to 120 thought 1 to 1 counting, 10 to 10, some students don't need the number chart to count and memorized very well the name of numbers in French, this was with the topic 7 and then we finished December with some reviews. - I have assessed the students a little everyday at the end of a lesson or during a lesson for example, they have 3 little assessments for one standard/topic which are spread during the week. - I graded a lot of very good tests, I am very proud of our little 1st graders, a lot of them figured their own preferred math resolutions methods, other really stick to what I have been teaching, other use a little combination of everything. They are very involved in math ! - I wanted to thank you parents with your involvement into the homework, every time I am checking them, I see how seriously everything is done ! CULTURE / GENERAL ACTIVITIES - As you know, we prepared a holiday winter program to offer the students and family the occasion to share about different holiday celebrations which take place in different culture. - You can find the two french songs in the "sing and train" part of this website. - All the 1st grades trained 2 times a week, at the end of the end to learn our songs, we also trained during our BFF deeper in French to understand more the meaning and the pronunciation. As usually, if you have any question, feel free to contact me through this website or through Bloomz. I wish you all the best for the coming year ! |
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ABOUT MEI come from south of France (Marseille) and I moved in SLC in July 2017 . Archives
Mai 2021
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