lumière et son - update

Check out what we have been up to!

Lumière et son

We are moving on to our new science unit, light and sound. We are going to start with sound and throw in a lot of our music curriculum as well. Next week, will have centers to explore the characteristics of sound as well as the different instruments of the orchestra. We will gather our learning in a rather new way, a blog! We will have a communal blog where we keep track or our questions and new learnings.

Here is our padlet with overall expectations and some links to explore.

New Years resolutions

Our classroom New Years Resolution is going to be to speak more French! Many of us are very capable of speaking French (or Frenglish at the very least) but aren't in the habit of doing it yet. Many of us are in the habit of speaking to Mme Oliver in French but not everyone in the class does. We are also going to work on speaking French to each other because we talk to each other much more than we talk to Mme. 

Je parle français!!!

Breakout Edu

Breakout Edu games are so much fun! They consist of a solid wood box along with different types of locks. The concept is easy enough...students must solve riddles and collaborate in order to unlock all the locks and find whatever is hidden in the box. Typically, there's a fun story to tie the whole thing together. We played my newly created game to test our knowledge of "les régions du Canada".

We learned that:
- "it's fun"
- "Collaborating is hard"
- "You have to read and follow directions"

Le bouclier canadien et les mines

Our very last inquiry touching on habitats and the regions of Canada will be on "le bouclier canadien".  This will be a whole class shared inquiry and typically it leads us to investigate mines and the mining industry. We will look at the environmental impact of mining but also on the flip side it's importance for the Canadian economy. This leads right into our next science unit, rocks and minerals.

December is always a busy month so I am hoping to wrap up rocks and minerals pretty quickly so we can do some Christmas/advent music.

Here is our rocks and mineral padlet.

Eco Schools

As part of our habitat unit, we looked at what St-Gemma's environmental footprint is. We noticed that we recycle (but not always correctly), that we are good at closing the lights when not in use and that we try to minimize paper usage. We also talked about what we could do more. We surveyed the teachers to see how many power bars were needed so the whole school can easily and efficiently turn off all their electronics when not in use. We mad bins to collect G.O.O.S paper (good on one side) to be reused. We learned that the dryer is more efficient than paper towels for drying hands and that shutting down the computer completely is more efficient than leaving it in sleep mode. We are also creating a visual reminder of what should and should not go in our recycling bins.

This year, St-Gemma is applying for eco-school status so as a class we are getting the ball rolling on being stewards of God's creation. More to follow!

L'écologie et la conservation à St-Gemma

Collaboration partie 2 - résoudre des conflits

We've been deepening our learning of effective collaboration and I realised I had been spending a lot of time coaching students to resolve conflicts during group work but also in every other aspect of school life (e.g. recess for instance). Thus, we spent some class time talking about conflict resolution but specifically how to talk to people so they will listen. Here are the main points we discussed:

1. I need to be calm. Anger, frustration, sadness etc.  are all normal reactions to conflict and we need to learn how to return to a calm state in order to solve the problem. We already knew quite a bit about returning to a calm state because of our focus on self-regulation at the beginning of the year. Some strategies we use are deep breathing, exercise, take a short walk, squeeze a stress ball.

2. Tell the person what you expect/need from them. Ever get told not to do something? Logically we know we should stop but being told not to do something just makes it irresistible doesn't it?! Also, simply telling the person to stop or not to do something might not tell the person what they SHOULD do instead. It's a tricky skill to learn but we practiced telling the person what we want from them instead of telling them what not to do. For instance, instead of saying stop pushing me we can say keep your hands to yourself.  The person is much more likely to listen if we tell them what to do.

3. Avoid general labelling/name calling. When reolsving conflict we want our langauge to be constructive, it should help us solve the problem. Telling the person they are being rude or that they are mean isn't helping to solve the issue. It goes point to point #2 tell the person specifically what they need to do.

I strongly belive that students are able to solve conflict themselves and that if we as adults constantly solve problems for them they never learn to do it themselves. Of course at the end of the day if students have tried the strategies above there's always the option of seeking some adult help.