We have been going full steam ahead with our classroom economy this week. Some students have caught on to the fact that they get extra nickels whenever they make a solid effort to speak in French, or whenever they voluntarily help out and do extra tasks, so they've begun swimming in cash. Others had a hard lesson today during "magasin" time (the class store) when they realized that they didn't have any spending money left after paying their rent, putting money into savings, and giving to charity. Another important learning piece is figuring out how to keep our money safe by putting it in our wallets right away every time. There were several slumped shoulders but we bounced back quickly and did an amazing job at the end of today pitching in to clean up and doing our best to try out some French phrases. And Mme Van Sickle didn't find any nickels on the ground after school today. :-) Our goal is to have everyone able to purchase something from le magasin next week. In Math, we have been reinforcing the concepts of estimating and addition. The students have been enjoying playing a variety of dice games to practice their adding, and the Kindergarten students have been pushing themselves beyond the regular K curriculum to keep up with the Grade 1s, using 100s charts, counters, and number lines to help them add. Mme Van Sickle did a show-and-tell of sorts this week when she brought 2 of her own kids to class for centre time. They definitely felt the love from all of the "big kids", getting their cheeks pinched a dozen times and going home with arms full of art work made for them by the students. They are asking when they get to go back again. Mommy's not so sure she wants this to become a regular thing.
Another week, another nature walk. We got lucky today and had another dry day for our "promenade" to Hoffman Park. Once again it was fort-building city as hollowed-out stumps were transformed into castles, houses, and even "water fountains". We played "fairies", tag, and hide-and-go-seek, and learned about how pinecones grow into trees. This week we also had the chance to create our "savings accounts" for our classroom economy with our big buddies. We made piggy banks out of water bottles for storing all of the nickels that we want to save. (The wallets are for our spending money only). Today students got to visit the store ("le magasin") for the first time and spend any money they had left over after giving to charity, paying their rent, and putting money into savings. In French class, we continue to practice our reading skills by reading syllable sounds one-on-one with Mme Van Sickle almost every day or, for our more advanced readers, delving into real books one-on-one with Mme. It's so exciting to see the improvements and the light bulb moments. During the one-on-one reading time, the rest of the students are practicing their dictée words at various stations around the classroom, writing their words in salt, using magnetic letters, putting together Bananagram letters, typing the words on keyboards, writing with smelly felts, etc.
Oops! In the busyness of going back after the holidays, I forgot to write a blog entry last week! Here we are, 2 weeks in after the holidays, and we're all starting to readjust to routines. Since we're all getting a little more efficient at cleaning up after ourselves, Mme Van Sickle was able to introduce a few new centres - painting, fake snow, and an electric keyboard. These have been very popular and it has been great to see the kids stretching their creative muscles artistically and musically. We have also now launched our dictée program, with students learning to read and write 10 key words/phrases every 2 weeks. We have been practicing our words every day through various games and activities and the students' confidence has really been building with the words. The students have also really been stretching themselves lately to try speaking in French. While most of them are getting to be great French listeners, up until now their responses and interactions have been predominantly in English. However, we have begun playing more targeted oral language games and have also introduced a gum ball reward system for every time somebody speaks in French. When Mme Van Sickle hears them utter a French phrase, they get to use a coloured Bingo dabber to fill in a gum ball in their machines. When the machines are filled, they will get to choose a sticker and will get some bonus classroom money. It has been so exciting to hear all of them begin to step out of their comfort zones and repeat phrases they've heard in class or even attempt to put new phrases together that they've never heard before. ...and speaking of classroom money, we have now begun our classroom economy. At the moment it is based completely on nickels. We learned about what the nickel looks like, why the Queen is on the back of our nickels, and how much each nickel is worth. In Math class we are using them to count by 5s, and learning how to identify where various multiples of nickels would fall on a number line. The kids have been learning to play a game in which they take a nickel, locate it on the number line, and then add a number to that to find a total. An exciting part of introducing our classroom economy was choosing our "homes". Our cubby baskets are serving as our homes and each one represents a place in Pitt Meadows of our choice. We learned that we will have to pay rent each week to keep our things in our homes and, surprisingly, we are all very excited about this! We also decided as a class that we would like our charitable donation money to go towards Children's Hospital. This week we were so happy to have some nice weather so we went outside to play and explore a couple of times. On Tuesday we went to Spirit Square with our Big Buddies for a nature scavenger hunt. After practicing with them, we were scavenger hunt experts and were able to do one on our own the next day when we walked to Hoffman Park. We also had plenty of time left over in the park to build forts and pretend campfires.
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