Heritage Fair Reminder

Just a reminder that our Heritage Fair is tomorrow from 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm in the Learning Commons.  Please be sure to sign in and sign out in the main office!

See you tomorrow!

Mme Longchamps

Heritage Fair New Date & New Unit

Mother Nature had other plans for us last Wednesday.  I thank all of you for your patience while we have been working to rearrange and work with a variety of schedules and school events to find a new day for the Heritage Far parent and school presentations.  The new date will be February 22^nd, from 2:30 to 3:30 pm in the Learning Commons.

The grade six students have completed their in class Heritage Fair project and have all presented their projects in a mini fair setting held last week.  Students will be receiving feedback shortly.

As we end our Social Studies unit we move forward and are now jumping into a new Science unit. This week we are beginning our space unit! Students will complete two small research projects based off of their own inquiries.

I look forward to seeing many of you on February 22^nd!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Joyeuse St Valentin !

Mme Longchamps

Heritage Fair

Hello,

A small reminder that tomorrow February 8th is our Grade 6 Heritage Fair.  This will take place between 2:45 pm and 3:30 pm in St. Gemma Catholic School's Learning Commons. We hope that some of you are able to make it.  If you are able to attend please remember to sign in and sign out at the main office.

Although we are all very excited for our Heritage Fair, Mother Nature may have other plans! If busses are cancelled tomorrow due to inclement weather we will postpone our Heritage Fair to a later date in the coming weeks.  Students will still present their project this week to their peers.  If this is the case, stay tuned for more information!

Fingers crossed for wonderful weather! We look forward to hosting you!

Mme Longchamps

Ski Forms

Junior Ski Day is February 15, 2017. A reminder to please return the permission form. It would be greatly appreciated if all forms could be returned by this Friday, January 27, 2017 to allow us time to send Mt. Pakenham all of the information!

Please, pay using Cash Online.

We are excited for a fun filled day of skiing!

Heritage Fair Invitation

Yesterday your grade 6 child brought home an invitation to our Heritage Fair.  Students have been conducting research projects on a heritage, an event or a famous person who contributed to the Canadian identity.

The Heritage Fair will take place in the Learning Commons at school on February 8, between 2:30-3:30.  

All are welcome! We look forward to seeing you there!

Hello

Bonjour!

Hello!

I hope everyone is as excited as I am for school to start up again!

With a new year comes many new changes and a lot of excitement. This year you can add a new teacher into the mix! I know many of you (both students and parents) are likely a little nervous and/or anxious about this change. I am hoping with this introduction to ease some of your worries.

Firstly, here are a few things you should know about me.  I have a Bachelor of Arts in Honours French Literature with an Emphasis in Teacher Education, which I obtained from Trent University.  I then completed my Bachelor of Education with an Emphasis in working with youth at risk from Queen’s University.  I am certified to teach from kindergarten to grade 12 in Ontario schools.  I come to St. Gemma with previous experience in Ottawa at St. Thomas More. I have experience teaching intermediate and senior French, and understand the next steps of your child’s French second language education. I am excited and passionate about making French relatable and useful through authentic learning experiences. I have worked with a variety of organisations that work to build up resiliency skills in junior and intermediate age children to allow them to better address stressors such as self-esteem, body image, relationships, media literacy and mental health. I hope to bring this experience with me into the classroom to create a positive and safe learning environment. I am enthusiastic about building up students to encourage them to take pride in themselves and their accomplishments.  I have coached an array of teams including boys and girls soccer, wrestling, track and field, swimming, and cheerleading. During my undergraduate degree at Trent University, I played soccer on the Women’s Varsity soccer team.  On a personal level, I love outdoor activities, enjoy reading and cooking in my spare time, and love my two Australian Shepherds. 

If you have any questions or concerns I encourage you to contact me at my OCSB email (Jessica.longchamps@ocsb.ca) or to stop in and see me at the school during the week.  I will be continuing Mrs. Oliver’s blog and padlet.  I would also encourage you to “follow” me on Twitter (@MissLongchamps).  I will tweet out news updates, class reminders, and photos of activities we will be doing throughout the day. 

This week in grade 6 we will be continuing to work on the Heritage Fair!

I am looking forward to meeting all of you!

Merci et Bienvenue!

This week is bittersweet for me because though we as a school prepare for the excitement of Christmas and holidays (and baby's arrival) it is sadly my last week with the students. I want to take this time to thank the parents and the St-Gemma community for a wonderful 2016. To the grade 6 students in particular I must say a huge thank you because they have been taking very good care of me (not letting me carry anything, offering me chairs, making sure I eat and drink enough). They are an incredibly kind group and I know they will have a successful rest of their year.

Conversely, I am very happy and excited to announce that Mme Longchamps will be taking over for me after Christmas break. Mme Longchamps is currently completing an LTO at nearby St-Thomas Moore in Kindergarten. Though K to 6 is going to be a big change, Mme Longchamps has taught high school before so she knows quite a bit about where are grade 6s are headed and how to prepare them best. She is very excited to meet the students and get started in the New year!

Foire des héritages

With electricity finished we are moving on to our first social studies unit; Canadian identity and heritage. For this unit, students will study a group or person who has made a significant contribution to Canada's heritage and/or identity. Students will present their projects in a heritage fair in a similar format to a science fair. We will invite parents and the rest of the school to come and visit our fair (most likely at the end of January date TBD).

Unmaker fair

We had a blast yesterday! We took apart computers, old cell phones, keyboards, remote control cars, a stereo and a hair dryer. We learned a lot about how electronics work...particularly how systems are closed or opened with buttons or other devices and how this makes the device perform different actions. We learned how heat is produced in a hair dryer. We even got to learn about the components of computers like the fan, the hard drive etc. A huge thank you to everyone who sent in their broken electronics, gloves and tools. Additionaly a big thank you to A.M.'s Dad who supported us in our tinkering.

Unmaker fair postponed

Due to possible inclement weather we will postpone our Unmaker fair till next Tuesday.

Unmaker fair update

We will be holding our unmaker fair on Tuesday November 29th in the afternoon.

We would love to have some parent volunteers to help take apart our electronics. Let me know in your child's agenda if you can come volunteer for part or all of the afternoon.

Also, we will be looking to borrow some tools and work gloves on the day of. If you can lend us some please send them in with your students. Make sure to label with tape so we know what belongs to who.

L'électrcité

We are starting our second science unit this week, electricity and electrical components. For the next few weeks the class will work in shifts on  two separate learning goals or projects.

1. Students will read about static electricity, simple circuits and safety while doing a few hand on experiments such as constructing simple circuits with a few components. 

2. Students will prepare for a debate where they will have to prove that their type of electric (hydro, geothermic, solar, fossil fuels, etc.) is best (cheaper, better for the environment etc.) 

Here is our electricity padlet with videos, links and curriculum expectations. 

Évaluation biodiversité

In their science folder students have a received feedback and an evaluation on the caractère progression we co-created. Three important things to mention about these assessments:

1. While I normally make it a priority to communicate in French to students I wrote the feedback in English so parents and guardians could also read the feedback and have a good idea of how they are doing and where to go next.

2. While we created the caractère progression together, the original progression is not age or grade specific. Thus, very few students will have achieved the highest level of achievement. This does not mean that they didn't get a level 4 or their project. For our purpose, we were aiming more for the 2nd or 3rd row.

3. You will find no grades. I do this because the students tend to fixate on the grade and the really useful feedback falls on deaf ears. You and your student should be able to tell by the feedback whether they demonstrated deep or vast learning. For many of the students the next step we will be working on is collaboration (more to come on this subject!)

Unmaker faire

We are winding down our biodiversity unit and I am trying to prepare for our electricity unit. Last year one of the highlights of the unit was our unmaker fair. Students and parents brought in old electronics and we took them apart to get a good look at how they work and the electrical components behind them. As such, we are looking for any broken electronics you have lying around at home or might notice being thrown away. 

Things such as:
- hairdryers
- clocks
- electrical toys
- phones
- music devices (stereos or the like)
- computer and components (keyboard, mouse, monitor)
- kitchen appliances (blender, electric tea kettle)
- flashlights
- remotes
- cameras
etc...

 As the day approaches we will also be looking for parents willing to help us safely use tools and take apart our loot. Thus, more info to come!

Caractère/Biodiversité

We've been hard at work on our biodiversity deep learning journey! I must say that this class has taken to deep learning like fish to water. Most students are really excited to learn about a topic of their own choosing. We are developing classroom experts in; climate change, ocean conservation, energy conservation, tropical/amazonian forest ecosystems and conservation, medicinal plants, illegal and big game hunting and the arctic ecosystem to name, solar panels and many more interesting ideas!

Most students have recorded a lot of their learning in folders or slides. They have now moved on to choosing/creating a final task. At the beginning, most of the class was solely interested in creating google slides to present what they had learned. However, we took a second look at the Character progression and noticed that at the most advanced level students use their knowledge to come up with solutions which improve their own lives but also the whole worlds. Thus, I am trying to get students to come up with final tasks that make a difference. This has been our biggest challenge so far as climate change or the destruction of the rainforest are complex problems and it's hard to come up with a solution that WE can do. So far final tasks vary from websites to inform the world on a particular issue,  creating a book to put in our classroom and school library, raising money as a class to "adopt" an animal through the WWF, writing a proposal on the possibility of installing solar panels on the school. I am really trying to open the student's eyes to the possibility that there is more to life than Google slides.

We will hopefully be working on/finishing up our tasks/projects this week and slightly into next week if need be.

New pedagogies - Caractère

New Pedagogies  are a new way of thinking about teaching and learning for the 21st century in a highly complex and ever-changing world. 

In this model, the role of the teacher is "that of activator of learning who designs learning experiences that build on learner strengths and needs, creates new knowledge using real-life problem solving and help all students identify their talents, purpose and passion." . 

Six competencies guide the learning (les 6 Cs) ; creativity - créativité, critical thinking - pensée critique, communication, citizenship - citoyenneté, character - caractère and collaboration. With every C comes a learning progression or a way of evaluating where the students and educator are in their learning journey. My goal this year is to unpack some of the learning progressions with the students. As a class, we are discussing what they mean in order simplify the progression to student friendly language. Students should be able to evaluate where they are on the progression, set goals and find ways to improve. 

This week we went over the character progression which is all about deep learning, self-regulation, and taking responsibility for your own learning. It was a great way to launch our biodiversité research projects! Here's our student-friendly version of Caractère.

la biodiversité

We are starting our biodiversité unit today by exploring our padlet and defining what is biodiversity. Students will get their first taste of a really open project when they get to inquire about a topic  within biodiversity that interest them. I find that the first project is always anxiety producing because by grade 6 students are really used to being told what and how they are going to learn about a subject. However, once they discover how much more motivating and enriching it is making their own way  they obviously love it. This week we will also be discussing our first C: character/ caractère (post to follow with more info on this).

Meet the teacher

If you happened to miss Meet the Teacher Night here are the cliff notes.

un polyglotte sommeille en vous

Like many people, I am fascinated by Ted talks at the moment. I stumbled on a really great one about learning multiple languages and...it's in French!!!Next week we are going to watch the video and discuss why one should learn one or more languages (obviously focusing on French). We will also discuss some of the strategies we use to support our language learning. We will even look at the FSL curriculum! Below is the link to a padlet with the video, some guiding questions and additional resources (great homework!). Un polyglotte sommeille en vous

première semaine

This week our learning goals are typical back to school goals. We are working on getting to know each other as well as the routines and procedures of the class. We have started preparing very short oral presentations to show the class a bit about who we are and what makes us tick. 

Yup...already...but it should be fun this week. 

Students are encouraged to bring two or three pictures or artifacts to help them tell me, and the class, a little bit about who they are. I would like at least one of the pictures to stay at school to decorate our lovely classroom (it will go back home with the student eventually or I can photocopy it if you don't want to risk damaging or loosing it)

Bring in as soon as possible but any time within the next weeks is fine.

Also, check out our September Newsletter