Teacher Professional Growth Plan

It's that time of year - reviewing our Teacher Professional Growth Plans.  I had fun with the creation of mine this year and enjoyed going back to revisit it this weekend.  It's hard to believe those 3 goals were just dreams when I wrote them out.  They seemed ambitious.  I got there though and I feel proud.  Seventeen days to go and so much to accomplish in that short amount of time.  Here's to a great year of learning, both for myself and my students.  We've come a long way.  Well done 1W!

valentine's inchies on photo peach

I try to experiment with 1 new technology tool every week and implement or play with one a month.  This week's venture is Photo Peach thanks to Aviva and her Blog (http://avivadunsiger.blogspot.com/).  

That was so much fun here are the Valentine's inchies we made.
These quilt inspired grids of love originated with that artist woman.

Fall inchies

Christmas inchies 1

Christmas inchies 2

Valentine inchies

Les coeurs pour le jour de Saint Valentin on PhotoPeach
Once you click play you can also click on individual
art pieces to freeze them and zoom in close.
Be sure to turn up the volume!

"L'hiver" - collage art project

Ah, les beaux arts des élèves de la première année!  

la moufle

Mitten animals word strips (printable)
Puppets, sequencing, texture experiment (printable)
We Give Books online version of The Mitten (teacher must narrate in French)

La moufle

The Mitten by Jan Brett

We began a unit today based on Jan Brett's story "Nicki et les animaux de l'hiver"  (The Mitten).  After polling each child about which animals they had actually seen in real life (someone had held a hedgehog) we found that the most unknown animal was the badger.  Tomorrow I plan to ask, which animal do you think might be the most vicious (I am trying to engage my boy audience here)?  Once they make their choice we will watch this bit of a National Geographic video.  

I have had difficulty ordering Jan Brett's version of this story in French.  I recently discovered that there are other versions available.  Our journal sentence structure this month is "Qui, Quoi, Où".  We identified these elements in The Mitten and the story La Moufle.  We discussed the owner, the item, the animal and the catastrophe.

  

  

We discussed what item belongs in what kind of setting.  The mitten and the animals in the story belong in a winter setting.  A cowboy hat would belong on a farm, a seashell on a beach. We will revisit our ideas when we write our own stories based on the mitten.  It was helpful to hear from Jan  Brett and how she writes and illustrates a book.

We made puppets of the animals in the mitten.  We sequenced them according to the order they appear in the story and we categorized them based on their textures as we are learning about the sense of touch in our science unit.  

My son told me today that when his class retells the story with their puppets, when they get to the part where the bear sneezes, they get to throw all of their puppets up in the air!

Next week, we plan to stitch up our own mittens.  We practiced a whip stitch on the kindergarten lacing cards today.  There was some nostalgia among my students whom I taught in kindergarten.  Madame?  Do you remember we did this at centres in maternelle madame?!

Mapping - Understanding 2D and 3D

We built cities out of blocks and math manipulatives in small groups.  The students loved their cities (some asked for a white sheet underneath to design roads).  We had to take photos.

The next day it occurred to me to make a map of our 3D structures.  Then we added a legend.  We had already made a map of our classroom but the legend concept was tough for many.

This time everyone was able to identify and label three structures from their map in their legend!

Leveling Books in French

We have been planning a major purchase of "I can read" books for our grade 1 French Immersion classes.  We have been looking for a system to level the books we have and those we might acquire.  It is so much easier to find that "just right" book when the volumes are logically organized.  Thank you to a teacher in Kamloops who passed on this site.  Books are leveled across publishers and series using a common system.  The criteria for each level is clearly explained.  

www.atelier.on.ca

Our task may have suddenly become so much easier! 

Branché en immersion website

School District #61, Victoria, BC

Excellent list of Basic Essentials by grade for French Immersion (literacy very helpful)

Detailed leveling criteria for books (Under heading Criteria Sheets) as Atelier site seems limited and not working

qui? quoi? où?

"Où" visual dictionary (printable)
"Où" word strips (printable)
"Quoi" (les actions) visual dictionary) (printable)
"Quoi" (les actions) word strips (printable)
Personal dictionary (printable)

This month we are beginning with the sentence structure "Qui?  Quoi?  Où?"  We begin with an oral activity or game.  Three stacks of cards are presented, students turn over one of each cards and say what they see, "Papa danse à la plage."  The following week we will use this structure in our journal writing.


Move and live the action words before saying and writing them.  Play charades.  In later charade games students use the verb in a sentence rather than simply identifying it.