Concours and POW!

Happy Monday everyone!

Today in Français, we started talking about "concours d'art oratoire." By this point in your child's French Immersion careers, you are likely familiar with what "concours" is and what it entails.
We will start off our concours experience this year by writing a short concours speech together as a class before starting the process individually. Writing a concours together as a class will allow us to review and model how to organize a speech, how to effectively transition from one idea to the next, how to hook our audience with an introduction and sum up our thoughts in a conclusion. We will also use this writing model as a way to learn "CHAPO" which is the editing system we use when correcting a written text.
Students are encouraged to start thinking about what topic they may want to present to the class and are challenged to choose a topic that is both interesting to them and to their prospective audience as well as age-appropriate (I believe that by Grade 6 we are beyond talking beyond an annoying sibling or a family pet, unless of course there is an incredible story to be shared within that topic).
Although we will be incorporating other mini-lessons from time to time, planning, writing, editing, re-writing, editing, re-writing, memorizing, practicing and presenting our concours speeches will be the main focus of our français classes for the next month and a half or so. Students will be assessed on their written text, their oral presentation of their text, how they are able to respond to questions about their speech as well as their interaction with the other students' presentations.
The concours-planning booklets were handed out in class today. A more detailed time-line of our concours journey will be posted once we, as a class, have created a plan. Stay tuned for more info! :)

Today in Science, we reviewed the steps of a scientific experiment in preparation for our first experiment which we will be completing this week. We worked with a partner to match the correct term with its definition. Also in Science (because we were missing Math due to Mass Band), Mme Careen reminded us to check out the new POW. This week's problem is about Minecraft.
What can be more Math-tastic than that?!
(For more information on POW, please click on the MATHÉMATIQUES page link
found on the righthand side of our blog).

Have a great week everyone!