Needs of living things

I've been teaching the needs of living things vocabulary for a few minutes each day over the past week and a half. This gives them lots of exposure to the vocabulary over a chunk of time. We've been practicing "J'ai besoin de..." and 6 words to complete the sentence. 

I write "J'ai besoin de..." on the board, and add 1 card at a time as my students tell me them. Then once they're all up there, we go through them again together in French. 

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Les prépositions

We have been practicing our prepositions for the past few weeks. I've been reading "Ou sont les animaux?" to them, and it's posted on my website so they can practice from home. 

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"En automne, je..." books

Last week we started working on our "En automne, je..." books. It's so cute to see the little pictures that they draw! 

We talked about how they can "bump up" their work - adding numbers, colours, prepositions, "et", etc. We also talked about how the sentences should make sense - e.g. "je mange une pomme" instead of "je mange un manteau"!

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Living things - Journal practice

We have talked a LOT about "bumping it up" in school this year. When I get my students started on an activity we go over the basic expectations, and then we always talk about how we could "bump it up". They are slowly learning that it feels good to challenge yourself even though it is of course more work. 

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French homework duotangs

Here's the song we are working on this week for our French homework duotangs...

They cut out the pictures and glued them in the boxes so they have a visual to help when they practice at home. On the back, I photocopied a quick activity with the words of the week that they can practice at home! 

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Fall sentence starters

We have been working hard on our fall vocabulary for a few weeks. It's so fun to hear them say the fall words with so much confidence now!

We practiced a venn diagram together as a class to compare "fall" and "winter" as part of our seasonal changes unit. Then my students tried it independently on mini whiteboards. They shared their ideas and sentences with a partner each time, before erasing and adding new ideas.

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Words of the week detectives

Now that we are 5 weeks into our words of the week, my students have 20 simple words that they're beginning to recognize. The fun part is that most of these words can be found in our weekly songs and poems!

When we filled out the page for their homework duotang last week, they started to circle the words they knew in the song. When we practiced our "novembre" poem last week we hunted for words that we recognized. We pulled the squirrel card from the fall word wall, and the words of the week from our word list. Being able to place the cards directly on/beside the poem was a neat visual connection for them!

Today we brainstormed and filled a venn diagram to compare fall and winter. I wrote simple sentences based on their brainstorms and then we hunted for words from both word walls and circled the words we could find!

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Pictures from this week

Here are some pictures from our centres this week!

My students have been enjoying the magnet centre. It's hands on, and great practice for the vocabulary we are working on! I picked up some more cookie trays from the dollar store so that more of them could use this centre when they finish up their work for the day. They have been choosing the French centres instead of free choice activities on rainy days too!

They're getting lots of practice with the whiteboards. This centre never gets old! They are much more willing to write when they use the whiteboards. For assessment purposes, I walk around with my clip board in between pulling small groups and take lots of notes about what they're producing. If you want to, you can also photocopy their whiteboards! I had no idea how well this worked! I do this when I want to save something a student has written. You could also take a picture of their work to print later :) 

We are still using our visual dictionaries in our whiteboard centre. They've been working really well! 

They love this spinning game for our words of the week. I make 4 copies of the sheet and put them in page protectors. Then I put a pin through the page protector and the paper and they can hook a paperclip on over the head of the pin. 

I also post our 4 words of the week on my website each week using "quizlet". They can click through each set and hear the audio that goes with each word to practice from home.

We've started practicing more sentence starters too. We've added "je n'aime pas" and "voici" this week. 

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L'automne, je vois.... books

Last week my students finished up their "Je vois" books for l'automne! I had read my teacher book to them many times over the 2 previous weeks, so they were familiar with the vocabulary. I also posted a video of me reading the book on my class website.

To complete their own version of the book, they traced the words and drew the picture to match. They practiced reading a few different times to partners as well. Then they read their books to me. I used the rubric in the file as a beginning reading mark as well.

The rubric is the same as the rubric from the "Mon ecole" book pack: 

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Living things

We have split our "Seasonal changes" unit up to be taught at 4 separate times over the year. This lets us teach about each season during the season itself! So we are pressing pause on that unit and have started learning about living things.

This week we talked about living and non living things. We used our fall French vocabulary cards to sort and create sentences using "vivant" and "non vivant". 

I gave each student two sticky notes and they each drew one thing that is living and one that is not living. Then we shared all the sticky notes and stuck them on this anchor chart:

They used simple sentences to share, eg "Une chaise est non vivant", "une fille est vivant". 

I also added "autour du monde" cards for the needs of living things to my tpt unit - so if you've downloaded it, make sure you check out the new updates! 

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Seasonal changes - 3D trees

Last week we made 3D trees! My students LOVED their finished trees!

We talked about what a tree would look like in each season. They drew in details and cut out their trees. I helped with the folding and gluing for their trees.

Here are some pictures of the finished products!

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