Show Me The Money!!!

Well, Day 1 of the grand money experiment has come to a close. Students were allowed to request (politely) Monopoly Money from their friends if they spoke English in conversation with them. While it proved to be somewhat distracting for a few students, they net effect was remarkable. With the allowable exception of Recess and Lunch, students spoke almost exclusively French. It was like I had flicked a switch! I am very proud of what they were able to do, and reassured that we will make huge leaps and bounds this year.

After our Grade-level meeting today, I can confirm that starting next month students will be expected to produce one Book Report per month. These will alternate between English and French, or can be French every time if the student wants to. There will be a wide array of media and formats that the reports can follow, something I will outline later.

We are coming along well in math; I focused more on the practical, tactile side of things today as we worked on terminology, spelling and the use of Base 10 Blocks. I will be sending home a vocab sheet and some practice work before long, because our first test will take place in a few weeks. As I mentioned at Curriculum Night, I will provide exhaustive rubrics and specific expectations for all graded work.

Our first "Etudiante de la Semaine" presented today, and besides being a very engaging, complete presentation it gave ample opportunity to discuss the elements I mentioned in my last post. We talked about strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes and more in an effort to begin examining more involved vocabulary and conjugation related to emotions and dispositions.

The class was quite preoccupied with Hurricane Igor today, so we took the opportunity to look at live satellite weather maps and discuss the path, origins, naming practices and severity of hurricanes. I will reiterate here that I am incredibly happy and lucky to have such an engaged class! We found out that Hurricanes were originally named after Presidents (circa 1896), then Presidents' wives, then Women, then Men, then Women, then Men and Women.

We will be starting our first real analysis work in French and English Language Arts this week, in an effort to help students look more critically at what they are reading. The focus will be on pushing their boundaries, asking questions and developing a greater curiosity about the world around them and the printed word.

In Science, we have elected to do one or several of the following to represent the data we gathered about the habitat on the lawn of BCE. The first idea is to create a simple board game, the other would be to create a video, and the third to create and bind a simple book. The first thing to do is combine and analyze the data (graphing), but everyone seems fairly interested in the process.

Since we haven't had a chance to analyze Art much in the last couple of days, I am attaching a site that helps explain a lot of the things we are talking about in class. They are arranged as Powerpoint Presentations, and there are also some games and reviews.

http://art.pppst.com/elements.html

If you are looking for review or additional activities for French vocabulary, I would suggest exploring QUIA. This is a Quiz/Review/Game website that is linked to the right of my blog.

Talk to you tomorrow!