First Day of School!

By Friday afternoon, my Grade One classroom was finally ready for the first day of school. I've posted pics I took with my phone on the way out the door.

I remind myself every September that even though I'm tempted to put up a whole lot more, I need to start out with blank bulletin boards - or simply placeholders - until I have the chance to actually teach the various posters and displays.  Especially in Grade One French Immersion , there's little point in displaying anchor charts or posters of sounds or numbers until they can actually pronounce, let alone read, the content. Might as well use wallpaper! Plus, I like to have at least two boards of student work up for Curriculum Night.

The Guided Reading Board and Word Wall are ready to fill in. I did, however, manage to get the alphabet letters up - with staples this time - forget about "mavalus tape" - my room is the queen of masking tape resistance.

My centre d'écoute and centre de lecture.  New this year is an idea I found on Pinterest for organizing magnetic letters for initial alphabet/writing centre work. It's a shoebag, bought at Canadian Tire for around $12. Now, almost each letter has its own labeled see-through pouch. It's not that I don't appreciate the sensory thrill of digging through a basket to find a letter, I just don't get the frustration involved when they can't find the right one, or perhaps there are no additional letters to be found. This way, the children can immediately see if there aren't any more available.

Now, I still need to create some duo-tang labels and to repair some of the classroom library books.

Looking forward to a great year!

Over the moon with AIM story re-tell!

My grade ones decided not to contain their excitement as they headed off in partners with their new "Compositions" cahiers! 

Journal writing in Grade 1 French Immersion is so boring! At least it is the way I do it (blush)! Since the children start out with no French at all, it is so often a case of fill-in-the-blanks when it comes to writing in their journals. Okay for calligraphy practice but...boring.

This year's last AIM play was "Les trois petits cochons". My class were pros by the time it was introduced and could recite the entire play along with me from it's very first presentation. Of course they'd done the fantastic scaffolded worksheets and answered tons of questions. They'd presented puppet shows and were just about to perform their "live action" play. 

Following an AIM document (sorry - unknown photo copy) 

• I began by asking the children if the story I recited verbatim was exactly the same as the play they knew so well. Yes, they agreed it was. 
• Then I began to paraphrase the story, adding some juicy details, but essentially telling the same tale. Well! Such delight when they learned that le premier petit cochon adored pizza with fromage while the deuxième petit cochon liked to watch TV.
• First the students were invited to start re-telling the story orally - much appreciated. Mama cochon tells them they are too big for the house etc...
• Then they are shown new cahiers and told that the may write and illustrate their own version of the play.
• The hook is that they are to work in partners and share ideas but essentially write their own tale.
• Huge excitement as they spread out in the classroom two by two.
• The key, of course, is that they now had all the tools they needed to start writing: they were totally comforable with the play, its vocabulary and sentence structure; they knew how to use their word wall and they knew how to use their primary dictionary. 
• Add imagination et voila! I couldn't get them to stop writing for recess! :-)

BRAVO!

Guided Reading / Stratégies de lecture

Here are the small guided reading posters I created last year and have to re-print (I must have put them somewhere logical !!?).  I limit myself to only putting one up at a time on the Literacy Board.  Forces me to teach or re-teach the specific strategy on each poster with each reading group.

Can't figure out how to attach a Word document to this blog so here's the link: 

 Grade 1 Guided Reading Strategies

October in the rearview mirror...

Yikes! All of a sudden there was so much to do!!

Have been using the WBT calls. My favourite teaching strategy is "Enseigne" / "D'accord!". The children love spinning around and teaching each other. Need to do more "Dix doigts hourrah!"

Here are a few photos of my classroom from Curriculum night to Halloween:

My students are just finishing their "La petite poule rouge" puppet shows and are now working on the expanded scaffolded cahiers. 
Remembrance Day memorials were moving. 
Another season is just around the corner!

Another improvement! We've tweaked the first rule and poster to the more correct "Je suis les instructions rapidement". Here's the new poster:

Posters - Les affiches des règlements

Here are the posters I've created for this first week. Guess this means another trip to the laminator :-)

Les règlements

My grade 2 colleague, Anne-Marie Gouin-Wolbert, has incorporated the Whole Brain Teaching rules into her French Immersion classroom. Here they are:

1. Je parle toujours en français.
2. Je suis les instructions rapidement.
3. Je lève la main pour parler.
4. Je fais des bons choix.
5. Je rends mon enseignante fière de moi.

The first rule is, of course, really important in grade 2 FI. We both liked her wording of rule #5 as we prefer that the children are tasked with making us proud of them, as opposed to the more ethereal "making us happy".

I think she did a great job! 

As our little grade ones have not had any previous French experience at all, I'll drop her rule #1 until later in the year. My 5 year-old littlies are generally bussed in from other areas and need lots of time getting to know each other and feeling at ease and confident in a new school and in a French class. They need to be able to whisper and speak to each other in English for the first few months. This is not how I approached my AIM core French classes but then I only had the grade ones for 30 minutes a day.

Happy to hear any other approaches!