Monday, December 5, 2016

Monday and Tuesday December 5/6th

We are working this week to finish our stop motion animations before the end of term. Most of the groups are at least half way through so hopefully we can make it before next Friday! They still have some editing and voiceovers to do once they have finished filming this week.

In maths we are continuing to look at multiplication, and these two days the students made 'fortune 'teller' times table crafts to practice with. It was great to see so many people willing to practice their times tables when lining up after school! After the break, we will be moving on to some geometry in maths class now that we have a good grounding in basic calculation skills.

We are also continuing to work on adjectives which is a precursor to our next literacy topic of writing adventure stories. I was really impressed with the receptive knowledge of adjectives that the students had (lots of reading!) but we do need to work on using them in our speech and writing.

Finally, many of the students have already reached level 20 of the spelling tests. From spelling 20 onward, every other spelling test will be a vocabulary test too. That means that I won't dictate the word, but instead say the meaning of the word I want them to write. It isn't easy, but all the spelling tests are available to practice in advance here. This isn't cheating. The most important thing is that they learn the spelling and meaning, the test is merely a check for that. From spelling 37 onward, every other spelling test will require the students to make sentences with the words.  We have made great progress with the spelling tests, and most students are ahead of the typical CE1 progress point (spelling 16 at Christmas) so now I want to ensure that we are learning words fully.


Thursday, December 1, 2016

Week of November 28th

It has been a very busy week for us this week. We are preparing for the Christmas show in CE1.2, we had a wonderful outing to Yingge on Tuesday and we have been working on filming our stop motion animations in both classes.

The animations are starting to come along, and it has been interesting to watch the groups grow and improve their skills during the filming. Not only are they becoming better animators, but they are also improving their communicative and collaborative skills in the process. I won't post any unedited versions on Seesaw so you will have to wait a little bit longer to see the final videos.

We have also been keeping up our work in both maths and English classes despite our busy schedule. this week in English class we began to look at adjectives, and next week we will differentiating and taking this topic further. In maths we are continuing to introduce multiplication with arrays and the 'not Pokemon' balls. Next week we will continue this with a look at the grouping method of multiplication and some times tables.

Some photo and videos from our trip to Yingge can be found here.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Wednesday and Thursday November 24th

Literacy Stations

This week the students were trying to use prepositions of place in their writing. I also introduced to them a new way to correct and edit their writing. After they finished writing, I asked them to read a model version that I wrote. The idea is that the students then look for differences and try to notice possible errors in their own writing.

This is something that is very new to them and wasn't easy, but noticing is a really important skill to learn. The students in CE1 read so many books, and learning how to notice things in the texts will really help them progress their language ability.


Maths Stations

We are beginning to slowly move our focus in maths class from addition and subtraction to multiplication. We have begun to do this with some skip counting activities and a race to 100 array game. Drawing arrays is an excellent way to start learning about multiplication because it allows easy entry (counting squares) but also allows students to practice repeated addition (by counting rows).

Outside the classroom this week, I have been posting 'not Pokemon' balls on the wall. There is a pattern contained within these balls for the students to discover. I will keep adding two each day, and ask the students to try to predict the colours of the next two balls to appear. We will be working more with these balls in class over the next few weeks.


Stop Motion Animation

We are nearing the important filming stage of the project now. This week both classes made some set props and will have a chance to do a practice film. Hopefully this will help them get some idea of how they will do the real thing next week. Some of the ideas are starting to take shape now, and I think the others are on their way. It is going to a busy couple of weeks in class getting them finished before the Christmas break.



Sunday, November 20, 2016

CE1.2: Monday November 21st

This morning we had the chance to practice singing our Christmas song for the show. I think the song is pretty simple and not too fast. Most of the students seem to know a lot of the words now so I think we will be fine for singing. A big thank you to Lucie, Zachary, Emilie, Camille, Timur and Nathan for volunteering to be our dance teaching team. We will work on a dance over the next few days, and then they can teach it to the others.

We were able to make our models for our Stop Motion animation today that they didn't get a chance to do last week. It was quite difficult to mould the clay into the exact characters that the students wanted, but there are a lot of cute ones that look pretty good. See Seesaw for pictures.

In today's maths class, I asked the students to work out the value of their own name using:

A=$1, B=$2 etc.

The challenge is in adding up a large number of digits so they had to use the technique of finding tens that we saw on DreamBox and practiced in class previously.

For students who finished their name, the next challenge was to find a word like 'elephants' that is worth $100. On Wednesday we will be looking for more $100 words!


Thursday, November 17, 2016

Semaine 13

Nous continuons notre travail sur le verbe et plus particulièrement cette semaine la recherche de l'infinitif. Nous le découvrons à travers des lectures, des exercices, de la production orale mais aussi en passant par le jeu, de façon à prendre plaisir.







Cette semaine nous découvrons le son "v" et nous travaillons sur la confusion de son v/f, mais nous avons associer la chasse aux mots en "v" avec la recherche de verbes contenant le son "v".


Voici les photos du Spectacle droits de l'enfant.

Nous avons découvert l'architecte espagnol Antonio Gaudi et quelques unes de ses oeuvres dans la ville de Barcelone. Nous sommes émervéillés par les couleurs et les formes.

La Sagrada familia
Le parc Guell
Le lézard

Aujourd'hui, journée de la lecture, Stéphanie, la maman de Nathan est venue dans le classe nous lire des histoires avec des animaux du Canada.


















Nous avons eu aussi les ateliers CP/CE1 sur le Chat botté, ensuite nous avons écrit en imaginant
"Je suis le chat botté, je frappe à la porte d'un beau chateau." Qui m'ouvre?











Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Informations

Demain à 15.30 découverte de la musique baroque, atelier et participation active des enfants.



vendredi c'est la journée de la lecture!


et n'oubliez pas....





CE1.2 Christmas Show - December 14th

This is the CE1.2 song for the Christmas show. I have changed one line of the lyrics (in bold below) but other than that, it will be the same song. We will start preparing next week, so it would be a good idea to have a practice singing first this weekend. 

This is my suggestion for students' outfits on that day. It isn't imperative that you follow this, but I think it looks a lot better when the students wear the same outfits.

Boys: Dark trousers, white shirts
Girls: White dress

We will also make some accessories in class to go with this.


It came into my dreams last night
A great, big man in red and white.
He told me that it's gonna be
A special year for you and me.

Underneath the mistletoe
Hold me tight don't let me go
The snow is high so come inside
I wanna hear you say to me!

It's a very, very, merry, merry Christmas.
Gonna party on 'til Santa grants my wishes.
Got my halo on I know what I want
It's who I'm with.
It's an extraordinary merry Christmas!

It doesn't come as a surprise
Who's been naughty, who's been nice.
There's someone here for everyone
Another year has just begun.

Silent night, not inside
Sleigh bells ring until the light
Hearts explode, here we go
It's all like they're inside your eyes!

It's a very, very, merry, merry Christmas.
Gonna party on 'til Santa grants my wishes.
Got my halo on I know what I want
It's who I'm with.
It's an extraordinary merry Christmas!

Won't you meet me by the tree?
Slip away so secretly.
Can't you see how this could be?
The greatest gift of all!

It's a very, very, merry, merry Christmas.
Gonna stay with you 'til Santa grants my wishes.
Got my halo on I know what I want
It's who I'm with.
It's an extraordinary merry very, very, merry, merry Christmas!
Gonna party on 'til Santa grants my wishes.
Got my halo on I know what I want
It's who I'm with.
It's an extraordinary merry Christmas!


CE1.1/CE1.2 November 14/15


So far this week at school we have continued to work on the planning of our stop motion animations. It does take a little bit of time, but it is good for the students to have a clear idea of what they are going to do before they start filming.

Most of the groups have been working well independently and cooperating to get the jobs done that they need to.

In maths class we looked at the question "How many ways are there to add single digits to make 10?". Adding numbers to ten is an important strategy in both addition and subtraction, but this problem also involves using logic and trying to work through a problem in a logical way. It's difficult because there are a lot of stages involved even if the maths at each stage is fairly simple.

Although the students didn't all work through the whole problem, each class was able to solve it together by combining their answers. The CE1.1 class even tried to see if there was a different number of ways to make other numbers. We found quite an interesting pattern when we looked at the numbers from 1-10.


Saturday, November 12, 2016

Semaine 11 et 12

Durant ces deux semaines nous avons travaillé sur comment se servir d'un dictionnaire en grand groupe et en petit groupe. Nous commençons à nous y retrouver mais ce n'est pas facile.

Maintenant que nous sommes bien au point sur la phrase nous avons commencé à parlé du verbe, à quoi il sert, comment on le trouve dans une phrase. Nous le représentons par un petit personnage qe nous retrouverons tout au long de notre apprentissage de la grammaire.

Pendant les deux prochaines semaines nous allons continuer à travailler dessus tout en revenant sur la phrase.

Vous pouvez regarder une vidéo sur le verbe sur la page ressource.

En mathématique nous avons revu comment poser et effectuer une soustraction et plus particulièrement une soustraction avec retenue. Nous avons vu deux façon de la résoudre, les enfants peuvent choisir celle avec laquelle ils sont le plus à l'aise.


ou

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "la soustraction à retenue ce1"

Vidéo sur le site ressources.

Nous avons continuer notre préparation de spectacle sur les droits de l'enfant. Le spectacle de vendredi était très beau et nous sommes bien contents d'avoir travaillé sur ce sujet. Des photos bientôt.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

CE1.1/CE1.2: November 9 +10th

In this week's maths class, we worked on another 3 act maths problem involving Pringles. We were hoping to build a Pringle Ringle, but unfortunately it seems Pringles in Taiwan are now smaller and our attempts were unsuccessful. We did get a chance to work on some problem solving skills though!

In this question, the students were asked to find out how many Pringles are needed to build a Ringle. The actual maths involved is not particularly difficult, but the difficulty comes from being able to choose which calculation to apply to the problem. Given that a full can has 78 crisps and there being 14 left at the end, how do we work out how many are in the Ringle?

Another challenge I have given the students this week is the Circle of 'Sitting Down'. The original version of this puzzle was called the 'Circle of Death', but I thought sitting down was more appropriate! It is a very solvable puzzle, that requires no complex maths knowledge but is still very challenging for the students. No one has managed to solve it yet! If anyone does try at home, please don't show them the solution.

We used a hundred square to try to solve it today. I would recommend using different colours for crossing out 'people' who sit down each cycle to help spot patterns. 


You may also have read my letter that I gave the students this week for homework. Part of my reasoning for writing that was to encourage the students to get involved in the discussion and think of reasons they need break, but I also wanted to see if they would check words they didn't understand. The letter ends with (tongue-firmly-in-cheek) which is a phrase that I wouldn't expect them to understand, and when we don't understand something we read we need to find out what it means.

We did have a lot of good discussion in class, and it is really good to see students arguing points with each other, listening and adding to classmates suggestions. I think the Socratic seminars are working, and each week we seem to make some improvement.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

CE1.2: Monday November 7th

This morning we worked on some story-writing skills that will be useful as the students start fleshing out their animation plans this week. I showed the students a (kind of real) headline from a newspaper: Hello, I've just jumped off the top of Taipei 101

The students then discussed how this headline came to be and gave some suggestions - parachute, giant marshmallow, helicopter, a dream? I then gave pairs of student a few more words from the newspaper article and asked them to go to think about how they could piece it together to make a real story. They came up with a lot of interesting ideas, and most students were able to create a logical story. Finally, they wrote their story into four acts just like we will do for our stop motion.

In the afternoon the students worked on an addition problem to find as many different sets of two digit numbers that add together to make lucky number 66.

I also spent some time to meet each group today and try to make sure they are on the right track to have their storyboard finished this week.

The students also stuck their reading for Wednesday's Socratic seminar in their yellow books today. Please make sure that they read this at home and have a think about what they can say. A little preparation will allow them to participate much more in the discussions.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Spectacle Droits de l'enfant

Les élèves de CP, CE1 et CE2 vous invitent vendredi 11 novembre à 14h dans l'amphithéatre pour un spectacle de chansons autour des droits de l'enfant.

Les élèves de CE1 devront porter un tee shirt vert ou jaune,

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

CE1: Wednesday & Thursday November 2nd/3rd

Literacy

In addition to spelling and Lexia, this morning the students worked on completing the final draft of the persuasive letter in one station with Joy. The other station worked with me on some Slow Writing. In the Slow Write, some students worked on capitalizing proper nouns and others worked on compound sentences. The Slow Write is to get them to focus on 'how' they write, and particularly on the structure of their writing (both in terms of sentence and whole text).

I hope to be able to use this to target areas of grammar/writing that each student needs to work on.

Maths

It was a busy maths class today as we worked on DreamBox, used blue-bots to solve problems, worked on word problems and tried our counting whoppers 3 act maths.

We haven't had a lot of chance to use the blue-bots yet in class so I gave the students a chance today. They had to solve problems by moving the robots around a number board to get to different numbers on the board. Then they had to figure how they can program the bot to move between different numbers.



We have spent a lot of time in class working on addition and subtraction skills so today the students were applying those to word problems.




In the final activity, students took part in a 3 act maths activity. The 3 act refers to a way that the problem is presented - in three acts. In act 1, students watched a short video of someone filling a glass jar with whoppers (small chocolate balls). Then they were asked to come up with a question - How many whoppers are in the jar? They then predicted how many they thought were in the jar.

In act 2, they get some more information that helps them find out the actual number. In the future when we do these, students will have to ask questions to get information so they have to think about what they need to know in order to solve the problem. Today, they got to see the photos of how many packets of whoppers went in the jar, and how many whoppers were in each packet. The solution wasn't obvious for most students so as I always suggest in this situation the best idea is to draw a picture of what is happening. When they do that, it becomes more clear that we are left with some addition to complete the puzzle.



Finally, in act 3 they got to watch the video of the whoppers being counted out of the jar to check their answers. I think it was a really interesting problem, and most of the students seemed to enjoy this format.

Project

In the afternoon, the students got to pass on their letters to the director of their choice. All of the students were chosen by their director! Well done everyone!

They had a little bit of time to talk together about their story and the characters that they will be making next next week.

Next week they will be making a 4 act storyboard and coming up with designs for characters and backgrounds.

CE1.1: Tuesday November 1st

This morning we talked about some of the jobs the students will need to do during the stop motion animation project. Then we worked on writing a formal letter to persuade one of the directors to let us work on their team!

The students began this by using a graphic organiser to prepare their ideas. They had to choose some skills that they have that match a job they could do. Then they had to think how they can prove to the director that they have that skill.

e.g. I enjoy doing artwork.  ---- I always draw pictures in my free time at home.

I'm good at making things. ---- I went to an ECA for making things with clay.

Most of the students have finished their letters and will pass them on today!

In maths class we worked on making diffy squares. I was really impressed with how excited and curious the CE1.1 students got with this. It is such an interesting puzzle because there are so many possibilities of what you can investigate, but it is also easy to get started with. We worked together and think that we now know how to make D1, D2, D3 and D4 diffy squares! (D1 means that you only draw one square before the differences are all zero)

Monday, October 31, 2016

Le dictionnaire

Depuis hier, nous travaillons sur le dictionnaire, comment trouver un mot, lire sa définition et connaitre son orthographe.

Arrivés en CE1, il est important que votre enfant puisse commencer à chercher un mot qu'il ne comprend pas, qu'il ne sait pas écrire. POur cela il lui faut un dictionnaire adapté à son âge avec des explications simples.
C'est bien de pouvoir chercher sur internet mais rien ne remplace le fait de tourner les pages et de chercher par soi-même.
Pour ceux qui n'ont pas encore de dictionnaire à la maison, voici celui que nous utilisons en classe. Je ne peux que vous encourager à vous en procurer un dans les semaines à venir.




CE1.2: Monday October 31st

This morning the students were introduced to some of the jobs they will need to do for stop-motion animation. They are going to write a persuasive letter to some of the directors on Wednesday to ask if they can work in their team. Today they used a graphic organiser to organise their ideas. The idea was to choose some of the 'skills required' for the job they wish to do, and then show the director why they are suitable for the job.

On Wednesday we will write the letters, and then the directors have a chance to choose who they would like to interview for their team. Once they have their team together, they will need to work on writing a four act storyboard for their group story.

In maths class today, I introduced the students to a Diffy Investigation. This is a diffy square below:



Students began drawing their own diffy squares in their red books. Then I challenged them to find a D1 square, or a D2 square. D1 refers to a square that only has one square before the differences reach zero. The example above is a D4 square.

This is a really interesting problem that is easy to get started on, but offers a lot of opportunities for extension. We will continue working on these on Wednesday trying to discover patterns and see if we can work out some rules for making them.

Finally, we had a few more students try out our Close to 100 multiplication game today. The challenge is on the window outside our classroom. One group hit 97, and another 99 today. I wonder who will be the first to get a verified 100! (I need to watch the final roll for it to count)


Sunday, October 30, 2016

Informations Marché de Noel de Strasbourg

L’illumination du sapin et du lancement du marché de Noel à Taipei Chers parents, Pour la première fois cette année à Taipei, le marché de Noel de Strasbourg (France) sera présent durant le mois de décembre. A l’occasion de l’illumination du sapin et du lancement du marché de Noel, des enfants de la section française chanteront. Pour cela autorisez-vous votre enfant à participer à l’illumination du sapin le jeudi 1er décembre entre 18.30 et 19.00. Vous devrez emmener votre enfant sur place à la tour 101 et le récupérer à la fin de la performance. Il faudra, également, que votre enfant s’engage à assister aux répétitions qui auront lieu de 12.00 à 12.30 les mardis 8,15,22 et 29 novembre, les vendredis 18 et 25 novembre et le jeudi 1er décembre. Plus de renseignements seront communiqués aux participants. Merci de répondre le 2 novembre au plus tard. Pour plus de renseignements vous pouvez me contacter : valerie.brignon@tes.tp.edu.tw Cordialement Valerie


 Christmas market in Taipei: Christmas Tree illumination ceremony Dear parents There will be a French-themed Christmas market in Taipei for the first time this year. The French Section has been invited to sing at the Christmas Tree illumination ceremony and to kick off the celebrations. We would like to form a small FS choir for the occasion, so for this reason, we would like to know if you allow your child to perform at the ceremony, which will take place by the 101 Tower on 1 December between 6:30 and 7:00pm. You would have to accompany your child to the 101 and collect them after. The choir will rehearse from 12:00 to 12:30 on Tuesdays 8, 15, 22 and 29 November, on Friday 18 and 25 and on Thursday 1 December. More information will be shared with the participants later. Please return this form by 2 November if you would like your child to join the choir. You can also contact me if you have further questions: valerie.brignon@tes.tp.edu.tw

Fabrication du saucisson au chocolat

Avec Isabelle, les élèves de FAL ont travaillé sur le vocabulaire de la recette du saucisson au chocolat.

Ils sont venus nous présenter cette recette en classe et nous avons pu le déguster. Ils se sont bien débrouillés et étaient très fiers d'eux.

Mardi 25 c'était les CE1.2
































Aujourd'hui lundi 31 octobre, c'est au tour des CE1.1 de faire leur présentation.























Tout le monde s'est régalé! Merci!