January 10, 2012

Dear Parents/Guardians,

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday. As you have probably heard General Lake experienced a tremendous loss at the sudden death of our Core French teacher Mrs. Grant. We will be holding a memorial service in the coming weeks to celebrate her life and the great impact she had through the work she did at General Lake. The date for the service is tentatively set for January 20.

Mme Haddad's French classes will be going ahead this week on Wednesday, as planned. If you are still interested in registering please do not hesitate to call the school and leave a message for Mme Haddad. This is an excellent opportunity for our parents to gain skills in speaking French.

Finally our November/December character assembly for initiative and caring has been rescheduled for this Friday, January 13th at 2:40. January's habit of Mind is respect.

In the kindergarten: Jk's and Sk's continue to use the jolly phonics action to recognize the letters s a t i p n c/k e h r m d g o u l f. Sk's have begun using the chalk and sock strategy to develop sight word recognition as well as to explore word families. We have begun reading together the predictable book Brown Bear, Brown Bear and we will be creating our own version to be sent home for the students to read with their families. We also had a shared reading of the following poem:

Grade 2:

Students in the grade 2 have begun a retelling of the story of Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock. Students are completing story boards to accompany their retelling. We are using this book in anticipation for the Public Speaking event that occurs every year at General Lake. I will post this story and students will have a copy in their English folders. I will choose several students from the class to participate in the school-wide storytelling/speech contest. Students will be judged and one student from each level will be chosen to represent our school at the Legion in their Public Speaking event. I will send a rubric in the next newsletter to outline my expectations for the oral storytelling activity.

As you are probably aware I have divided the class into 2 groups to better focus on their needs. One group is focusing on word families and sight words. The following is a list of the word families we are covering: AT, AP, AM. AN. AG, IG, IP, ID, IM, IB.THe following is the sight words the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, he, it, was. The other group is focusing on spelling. Here are the words that we are covering: because, when, like, they, went, too, said, there, house, know, with, have, very, friend, my, would, are, want, friends,were, people, about,

play, was

Grade 7/8

Students in Grade 7/8 continue to work on their novel study of Craig Keilburgers Free The Children. We have begun focusing on grammar activities, as well as writing a speech on a topic of interest. All students will be expected to create a speech. I will choose several students from the class to participate in the school-wide speech contest. Students will be judged and one student from each level will be chosen to represent our school at the Legion in their Public Speaking event. I will send a rubric in the next newsletter to outline my expectations for the Speech.