Wishing you all a Blessed Easter and a relaxing break. Enjoy Family, friends and your children. 

How to help your French Immersion student with Reading

The more fluent a student is in his/her own language, the easier it is to learn another. Read aloud to your child every day. Read books in your own language. Do not worry if you do not speak French; you can instill a love of literature in your child regardless of the language in which you read. By fostering enthusiasm, and motivating your child to seek out books independently, you are laying the ground work for positive attitudes that are essential to life long learning in French or in English. It is important that your child’s first language be as rich as possible; you have the ability to provide that enrichment at home. Besides reading to your child often, let them see you reading and using books frequently. You can help your child’s reading development by:

• reading books with repetitive words and phrases.
• finding stories and poems about everyday experiences which are easily related to their own lives and can be easily discussed.
• reading materials that are just plain fun, like riddles, silly rhymes etc.
• encouraging active participation in reading by asking for their opinion, talking about the pictures, predicting what may happen next, are the events in the story true or factual (fiction or non-fiction), have the student retell the story to another person, draw a picture of their favorite part of the story.
• finding stories on audio tape. Have an older sibling tape a story which can be listened to over and over again.
• playing word games. For example, find rhyming words, especially with the sound wheel.
• don’t stop reading to or with your child once they can read. It’s a great way to spend some time together!

A Quick Mini lesson on pronunciation

Trying to help your child in their reading or pronunciation of French words?  Here is a quick lesson:

• while there are significant differences between the sounds of the vowels in the two languages, the consonants are essentially the same
• h is always silent in French
• an s at the end of a word to indicate the plural is silent
• qu sounds like k (not like kw as in quick)
• th is pronounced t
• ch is pronounced like the English sh
• i is pronounced like the long English e (bee)
• y sounds like yes event at the end of a word
• ou in French always sounds like group (not out)
• oy and oi sound like the wa in water
• au and eau have the long o sound (so)
• ez has the long a sound (way)
• accents change the sounds of vowels; e sounds much like the short English e (deck) while é sounds has the long a sound (hay)
• stress falls on the last sounded syllable (ami sounds like am-ee)
• when a word begins with a vowel (or a silent h), it is usually joined with the last consonant of the preceding word- it will sound as though your child is reading one word instead of two.

Stuff we're doing lately:

Français: writing sentences, making sure that there is a capital at the beginning, a period at the end and that they make sense.

Science: just finishing winter and what a calendar involves.

Math: place value...hundreds, tens and ones. I implemented a karate system where students work at their pace. The sheet has to 100% correct before they continue to the next "belt color". If there are mistakes, it gets erased and they start all over again. I want them to take their time, get it right and move on.

Social studies: we took a detour from past/present. We are looking at the map of Canada, provinces and their capitals. 

ELA: short vowel "e", finishing a story

Health: Emotions, their respective colors and what makes us feel a certain way.

Religion: We will be looking at the stations of the cross.

 Progress reports go home today. On the envelope, if I have checked that I would like to see you, please make an appointment. If there is no checkmark, it means that I believe that your child is doing fine and that I don't have any concerns. HOWEVER if YOU want to come, or if you have some concerns, by all means come on by to catch up, chat, visit or just see where your child is. Please sign the envelope and return asap. Merci.

We did a HUGE clean today as a result of all the sickness in our class lately. We also re-organized supplies and some students will be bringing home a list of supplies to be replenished. Please aks your child what is on thier list to finish the year.

We are hard at work learning to write sentences and sound out words, both in French and in English. The more we practice, the better we become...(hint, hint).

Here are some photos of our in-line skating, which I believe all the students enjoyed.

 

Nous célébrons 100 jours