August/September/October 2019 Newsletter

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.