December fun: Looking for volunteers!

Bonjour,                                                    
Can you believe December is 4 days away? November just flew by! We hope you are all well and ready for the season.
We wanted to fill you in on a few of our upcoming events and learning. With our literacy buddies in Mme Marie- Anne's 4/5 class, we will beginning daily literacy- based activities.  Students will be working side by side, practicing their oral language, reading and writing skills through a series of centers that focus on the spirit of giving and sharing.  With the help of a parent volunteer, students will also have an opportunity to bake, following a Christmas cookie recipe. If you are interested in helping in this area, let us know.  We plan to be doing these centers  most days in December from 10h45- 11h15.
As mentioned during our student- parent- teacher interviews, we would like to extend an invitation to all of you to come read your favourite Christmas/Winter story to the class. It can be in French or English and we are extremely flexible with the time of day. The only restriction would be from 1h10- 1h35 as that is when we have Phys.Ed. and Music.  Please consider this invitation as it really is magical to have parents with us in class. It means the world to your children too!
On December 9th, we will be heading to the Wyatt Heritage Properties with our literacy buddies learning lessons from the Summerside archives. We will be visiting 3 heritage homes and in each one, we will take part in a special activity. This truly is my favourite Educational excursion as it offers, history, Art and culture all in the span of 2 hours.  We will be walking that day, regardless of the weather so it is important that students dress appropriately. If you are interested in joining us, we will be needing 3 volunteers. (We would leave the school at 9h15 and return by 11h30)
On December 12th, we have the great pleasure of  having local French Artist, Julie Thiffeault join us in class to teach us one of her crafts: clay- based Christmas ornament making.
Finally, just a reminder that December 16th is our in -school Christmas Concert. More details to follow shortly.
Any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Take care of each other,
Mme Carolyn and M. Terry

Reading strategies and websites

Bonjour!                                          


It was lovely to see all of you last week during our student led parent-teacher conferences. Your children were stars! I thought I would take this opportunity to review a few of the reading strategies we've been working on in school so that you can continue to support your child while reading at home.

We have focused on the all-important comprehension strategy of ‘Check for Understanding.’Your children are learning that readers stop often to go back and remember what they read by doing a quick re-tell before reading on. When you are reading with your child, stop every page or so and model “Checking for Understanding.” That means you talk out loud about what you just read.

We have also been working on  the strategy of 'cross checking' . This strategy came up quite a bit during our conferences so I thought I would review it for you: 

Cross-checking is when students look at the picture,look at the letters in the word and cross check to see that they match and sound right as well as make sense. For example,  the page of a book I'm reading has  a picture of a peacock and instead I read ‘bird’. I would show the class that when we cross check, the picture started with a letter P for peacock, but I read bird instead. That couldn’t work because bird starts with the letter B. So I  would have to go back and reread it to make the correction that looked right, sounded right and made sense.

The VERY best way to support your child in school is by reading to them for a minimum of 20 minutes each night. Spending that quality time with your child will help develop their vocabulary, comprehension, pre-reading skills as well as their ability to sit and focus.

Invest the time at home with your child each day by reading to them, playing a variety of games and talking with them for extended periods of time!  Here a few great links to on- line audio books:

• www.library.pe.ca (click on Tumblebooks and choose French)
• www.speakaboos.com (great for nursery rhymes, fairy tales etc...)

Report cards will be going home on the 24th. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any concerns, questions or great ideas!

Take care of each other,

Mme Carolyn and M. Terry