We have arrived at the final week of school before March Break. I can’t believe how fast this year is flying by! I first want to thank everyone for coming out to our conferences last week. It is always such a joy to see your children articulate their goals for the coming term and all their success and growth thus far. I appreciate your continued support in your child’s learning for the rest of the year and I know your children appreciate it as well 🙂

As this is the last week before our extended March/Easter Break, it will definitely be jammed packed. This week is also French week, and as immersion classes, we will be celebrating with exciting activities each day both in class and at lunch time. Mme Cynthia, our French monitor, has lots of great things planned for us, including a movie called “La guerre des tuques” on Thursday afternoon for all immersion classes, complete with popcorn 🙂

Tomorrow will also be a very special day here at Gulf Shore, as we get to present our Science Fair projects to judges from our community. The Fair will take place from 9:00am-12:00pm in the Multipurpose Room and Science Lab. When students arrive tomorrow morning they should: check in with me, buy their tokens and place their orders for pizza and milk, grab a book to keep them occupied while waiting to be judged, head to the Multipurpose Room to find their project number, and then set up their project in the designated area. Parents are welcome to come see the projects, but we’d ask that they hold off until 11am, allowing time for judging to take place. The Science Fair is a true celebration of all of the hard work and discovery that has taken place over the past few weeks and I’m excited to see all of the projects on display 🙂 We will have a few projects that will be selected to move on to the Provincial Science Fair that will take place during the first week of April. If your child has been selected to continue on, a note will be sent home with them later on this week outlining all the details for this event.

Now let’s take a look at the other learning happening in our classes over the next few days…

Dictée- We will continue to explore verbs in the present tense. After the break, we will move on to the passé composé. Everyone should continue to review their verbs nightly and practice conjugating them using their Bescherelle.

French-This week we will finish our author study of Gilles Tibo, as we wrap up our book clubs and our read aloud novel “Ti-Prout.” We will then spend some time reading independently, getting the chance to work on our reading goals and to respond the books we’ve read in our “Carnet de lecture.”

During our Writer’s Workshop this week, we will finish up the rough drafts of our persuasive letters and start the revising and editing process. Many students have set goals relating to revision and editing in their conferences and this will be the perfect chance to practice working towards meeting them. We have yet to hear back from Ms. Ready, but we continue to wait to see if we were convincing enough in our quest to stay in for big recess 🙂

Math-This week in math we will finish up our outcomes on area, perimeter, and measurement, and will start our next outcome on patterns. We will also continue to review our “flashback” concepts. Students are reminded to spend some time at home practicing these concepts in order to further solidify their knowledge, using the practice booklets I provided during their conferences.

Grade 7 Science
This week we will present our Science projects and will have our assessment on the particle theory and how it relates to temperature.

Grade 8 Science
This week we will prepare for and write our assessment on the parts of the cell and their functions and we will work in groups to explore different systems of the human body.

I wish you all a wonderful March Break and a safe and very happy Easter!

Mme MacNevin