5grade

We are bringing our study of the Middle Ages to a close this week after an intense study of cathedrals and then, integrating this study with the study of our fairy tales and fables of French origin, we created stained glass windows showing these stories. Click here for more details. We are soon going to prepare for our dégustation de fromage; we will be discussing how to talk about cheese. It is not simply an eat and swallow activity--we will learn how to judge a cheese based on its texture, appearance, aroma and taste. Click below to see the criterai we will use!

The date for our dégustation de fromage has been set--vendredi, le six mai. 4$ pour Mlle avant mardi, le 3 juin. Click below to see the letter sent home.

Fifth grade French students have penpals! With the help of Alison Caughey we have established a connection with a school near Versailles (close to Paris). We have received our first round of letters from France and are sending our introductory letters. We are impressed with their level of English!

In class we have completed another unit of study with Alex et Zoé: months and family. We had a review of large numbers (we can now say up to 999,999!) and we are now in the midst of our last cultural study for this year: the Middle Ages in France. Our main focus of this unit is cathedrals; we are discussing the different characteristics of gothic and Romanesque architecture and will be looking at different kinds of stained glass. In addition we will examine some famous buildings in France from the Middle Ages, from the cathedrals of Chartres and Vézelay to medieval fortress castles in the region of Brittany.

We have begun our unit of study around the family and the months of the year. In class students have been making simple family trees; we have also begun practicing with the months of the year. We will soon be playing speed games and other activities to help us learn these new words.

These past few weeks have been very busy for us in fifth grade! We have just completed our unit on school subjects. During this unit we discussed likes and dislikes, playing several games to review expressions of preference. We took a poll in class to see how different students felt about different subjects and graphed our results--every class is very different! Tied in with this unit is a discussion of the 24-hour clock, using numbers larger than 12 to express time in the afternoon.