Leap Day!

As it was Leap Day today, and it only happens every 4 years, I decided to do something different with the class. I told them that, working in partners, I wanted them to research and present to the class something that had to do with the word 'leap'. After a little confusion (students are not used to having such 'free reign'!), the students began to settle on ideas of what they were going to study. They only had 1 hour to create their presentations, and it was fabulous to see the range of topics selected - there were presentations on dolphins, wolves, frogs, rabbits, leaps that people can do, and so on. The students (and I!) had a lot of fun, and learned some interesting facts from these presentations - here are some photos of the class researching, creating, and presenting:

Oscar winner!

In case you missed it, Room 18 favourite The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore won the 2012 Academy Award for Animated Short Film last night! The students were quite excited when I told them today (some of them even knew, beforehand!), and rightly so - I can't say that I saw the other nominees, but it was great to see this wonderful film about books and the place they have in our lives win in this category. You can read about the Academy Award win here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/02/oscars-2012-animated-short-film.html

In case you missed seeing it on our blog the first time, here is an encore performance of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore - enjoy!

Glad To Be Rad

Today at Gym, we got to do circus things like spinning plates on your fingers and sticks, and we also go to learn how to juggle with Ms. Beach. We also got to juggle sticks called juggling sticks. It was really fun! - Dylan and Tyler
In an SLC, we were talking about how to care, how to share, and how to play fair, and tried to earn Glad to be Rad tickets. There's this board, and whenever you earn a glad to be Rad, you get to pick a number. Then there's this board and you get to put your smiley face up on that number. - Marie
In the SLC, Tyler and Mikayla got a Glad to be Rad for helping and supporting others. - Lexi

In the SLC, Shaylene kicked Nick with the soccer ball because they were asked to do this thing for the SLC where they were showing us how to get Glad to be Rads and how not to get Glad to be Rads. - Braylin

This morning, all the students of the school came together for the re-launch of our 'Glad To Be Rad' program. This is where staff hand out tickets to students who are 'caught' exhibiting one of the four Radisson school rules:

1) Keep hands, feet, and unkind words to yourself.

2) Respect your belongings and the belongings of others.

3) Help and support others.

4) Listen to all staff the first time.

The students show their tickets at the office, and pull a number. The number determines where on the 'Glad To Be Rad' board their smiley face is placed. Once there is a row of smiley faces, those students are called to the office to receive a small prize... and it's always big excitement when Mrs. Cross comes on the announcements to tell us that a row has been filled! As part of the re-launch, the students had a chance to participate in some cooperative games, where students were 'ticketed' for following one of the 4 rules. It was a great way to start the day!

Writers' Workshop in the computer lab

Making our story maps was fun because we were learning how to write stories. - Dasia

My story map was fun because I got to write about the story that I wanted to pick, called The House on Maple Street. - Dylan

We had to talk about our characters, like describe them if they had glasses. After we were done, we got to print the story maps. - Lexi

The story map was good because we got our first choices of what story we wanted. - Braylin

Our story maps had a button on the screen where you click on it and it goes to settings, character, and the conflict, and the resolution. When we get to write our guys, we get to make names for them and we get to write how they solve the problem, and how they act, and how other people act around them. - Cam H.

After choosing which one of the amazing pictures from Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick they wanted to base their stories around, I brought the students into the computer lab, so they could begin using the interactive story mapping tool (which I wrote about a few days ago - http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/storymap/) to create the 'bones' of their tales. We didn't get finished today, but the students worked hard, and I was very impressed by some of the ideas they were coming up with. Coming up with the structure of a piece of fiction can be difficult for some students (often times, they find it easier to write about the experiences in their lives), but it was exciting to see them follow the prompts from the planner to create their characters, the setting, a conflict, and a resolution. I'm looking forward to seeing what our own 'Van Allsburgs' come up with!

Testing the strength of materials

We had a blast in Science today, as we were testing the strength of different materials as part of our Structures and Materials unit. I did a whole class demonstration first, where we were testing how much weight one or more straws could hold before they would break (we tested the strength by hanging a small container from the straws, and then increasing the amount of weight we placed into the container). The students quickly realized that by bundling straws together, they can support a lot more weight than by using only one or two straws.
Next, the students worked in groups to see what kind of paper was stronger (by shaping the paper into cylinders and placing books on top): looseleaf, printer paper, or cardstock. There was a lot of hooting and hollering as the kids were blown away by just how much weight the cardstock could hold up - check out the picture below!

Van Allsburg writing

After a (much-needed!) long weekend, it was back to work today. We got a lot accomplished, as the students worked on their Number of the Day activities in the computer lab, and we had a session of Daily 5 (where I noticed some excellent writing taking place!). Right after lunch, we had Writers' Workshop, and we read The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. This is the last of Van Allsburg's books that we will read, as we are getting ready to wrap up our author study. The premise of the book is that there are 14 unrelated black-and-white drawings, each accompanied by a title and a caption. The readers are enticed to make up his or her own story, and this is a very popular activity to wrap up Van Allsburg author studies. I have done this activity with my students almost every year, and it's almost always one of the students' favourite activities. We usually do some story mapping (i.e. character, setting, conflict, resolution), first as a class and then individually, to assist the students in coming up with great stories. In the past, I've had the students do this activity on paper, before beginning to write their stories. However, I've recently found a great interactive story mapping website (which asks them questions to get them thinking about the basic structure of the story they will write), which we used as a whole-class activity today. We chose a picture from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick that none of the students chose as a picture that they wanted to write about, and then used the interactive story planner to come up with the 'bones' of the story. After this, it would just be a matter of adding more description and details, along with the author's voice, and you'd have the makings of a great tale! Later this week, we will head into the lab, where the students will each begin to craft the elements of their stories. I'm very interested to see whether or not the interactive story planner makes it easier for them to do this task than it has in the past - we'll keep you posted. Here's the link to the story planner: http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/storymap/

A great Friday

After a day away at PD, it was great to get back into the classroom today. It was an action-packed day (when isn't it, though?!), and we started off with Math. The students have been learning all about multiplication, and today they were showing some of their learning in front of the class. Students worked on the SmartBoard to solve a series of picture problems, using multiplication. I'm very impressed with how quickly the students are 'catching on' to multiplication this year - even Mr. Pudsey (who was the substitute teacher in our class yesterday) commented to me on how he was 'blown away' by how quickly the students were picking it up. Here are a couple of pictures of the students showing off their multiplication skills: 

It was also an exciting day today because the students received their Mystery Motivator today for earning their 20th marble the other day. This Mystery Motivator was that the students could bring a stuffy to school with them for the day, and that they got some choice time at the end of the day. These were a few students who chose a nice quiet activity to do during choice time:

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

I was fortunate enough to have attended a PD (professional development) session today, put on by ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) Manitoba. The guest speaker was a woman named Heidi Hayes Jacobs, who is an internationally renowned author and education leader, specializing in developing 21st century approaches to teaching and learning. The topic today was 'Curriculum 21: Upgrading Curriculum and Assessment', and the day just flew by! There were a lot of really deep and meaningful questions asked of those in attendance, such as "What year are you preparing your learners for?". It was argued that if we continue to do things as we've been doing them over the decades, we will not be preparing students properly for their future (i.e. this year's preschool children will be the Class of 2029!). She really asked some tough questions that made me think... but she also provided a lot of examples of tools we can use to better prepare our students for their future, where they take more ownership of their own learning. I came away from the day with my head swimming (and almost overloaded!) with ideas on how to do this, but something she really stressed was that we can't revamp everything at the drop of the hat - we need to pick one or two things, and start from there. Having said that, I know of one tool for sure that I will begin to use in the coming months with the class, and I'm excited (and a little nervous!) to try it - it can be scary getting out of your comfort zone of how you've done things in the past, but the payoff can be huge. The video she showed us to end her presentation with (the link is included below), is a good illustration of how by thinking differently, we can help to change things for the better - enjoy!

Structures

Today is early dismissal. We get to go home early! - Jacell

We got our 20th marble for following our classroom expectations. - Jett

Tomorrow is the 100th day of school, and tomorrow is Jett's birthday. - Joey

Today we had Phys. Ed, and in Phys. Ed. we started something new instead of skipping. We were practicing juggling with balls and spinning sticks with other sticks. - Gal

We had Math, and we were learning about the 2x table. Tyler, Hailey, Gal, Alexandra, and Kaynen were drawing pictures to solve 2 groups of 6 and 6 groups of 2. Alexandra and Kaynen used a number line, and Hailey M., Tyler, and Gal all made pictures to solve 2 groups of 6. They drew them on the SmartBoard. - Cam H.

We've started working on the Structures and Materials cluster in Science. Today, we were talking about structures, what they're used for, and what they're made of. After looking at a few examples in the classroom, the class was divided up into two groups. Ms. Sokoliuk and Ms. Wiebe led one group, while I went with the other group. Each group walked around the school on a 'Structure Hunt' - their job was to identify different structures, determine their function, and list the materials that they were constructed of. The groups did a fabulous job of moving around the school stealthily, and finding many different structures in the building (way too many to write all of them down, in fact!). After each group was finished, everybody came back into class to share their findings. Items such as recycling bins, bulletin boards, doors, water fountains, and shoe racks were identified. It was fantastic to see how engaged the students were, and for them to realize a structure can be made of different materials, depending on where/how it is used (i.e. one group identified a classroom door, made primarily of wood, while the other group listed an exterior door, made primarily of glass and metal).

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day rocks! - Joey
Happy Valentine's Day! - Sydney
Taylor, if you're looking at our blog, have a Happy Valentine's Day! - Kaynen
Happy Valentine's Day! - Jacell
Today in Gym, we played Valentine's games, like dodgeball and the Hershey hug game. In the Hershey Hug game, people walk around with pool noodles and try to tag people. - Cam H.
Jacell brought cookies for the class, and I brought cupcakes, and got icing all over my face! - Dasia
Markus and I brought the same Valentines for the class. They have these weird pink and green dudes on them. - Tyler
My hands are full of icing, so I need to rinse them off. - Lexi
"You make me feel like dancing" was on a Valentine that I got. - Alexandra

As I'm sure most of you know, today is Valentine's Day. This day (like Halloween), has the potential to get a little crazy. However, we kept it pretty low-key in room 18 today. The students worked on their Number of the Day (98), did some mapping of the world in Social Studies, and worked hard during Daily 5 (you could have heard a pin drop!). At the end of the day, we had a small party, where the students exchanged treats and Valentines, and worked on a booklet of colouring pages, crosswords, and word searches that I made up for them. I have to say that I'm really proud of all of the students of Room 18 - even though it was a special day, they worked hard all day, up until the party. During the party, I heard a lot of "Please" and "Thank you" being uttered as the goodies were doled out - I'm so lucky to work with such a great group of students! Thanks for a great Valentine's Day, Room 18. Now... Go, Jets, Go!

Geographic terms

Today we were working on learning geographic and mapping terms, such as compass rose (if you don't know, ask your child!), legend, cardinal directions, continent, ocean, hemisphere, equator, etc. Afterward, the students had a word scramble - they has to decide if a term was a continent, ocean, cardinal direction, or a hemisphere. We didn't quite finish, but the students were doing a great job! Here's one student who was working hard on her sort:

Daily 5 conferences

I'm sure many of you have heard your children talking about Daily 5 in our classroom (and I've posted about it a number of times). What I am doing while your child is reading to someone else, reading on their own, writing, or working on word work? When I posed this question to my students at the beginning of the year, when we were talking about what Daily 5 is, and how it would work, one of my students said that he thought I'd stay at my computer and watch YouTube videos while they wre working (I had a good laugh, too!)! No, I am definitely not watching YouTube videos during this time! I get to spend most of my Daily 5 time meeting one-on-one with students, whether it's helping them with their word work, listening to them read and giving them strategies to help them improve, or having them share their latest writing with me, so that I can offer suggestions to them that will help them to become better writers. I'm pretty much glued to my iPad2 during this time, using it to make notes and keep track of how the students are improving (this is my first year with an iPad - I don't know how I functioned in the classroom before I had one!). This week, I've been meeting with a lot of students to talk about their writing - here's an action shot of one such meeting (I have to say... conferencing on the Jets carpet is a little more comfortable that plopping my frame on one of those little chairs!):

Bad Day At Riverbend

This morning, I read Bad Day at Riverbend by Chris Van Allsburg. It's a story where the people in a town in the old West, where everything is black and white, are preplexed and horrified when all of a sudden, "...thick stripes" of coloured "...greasy slime" starts showing up on people, animals, buildings, and the landscape. It turns out that the people are characters in a colouring book, and that a stripes of greasy slime are the result of a child colouring on the pages. Van Allsburg got the idea one day when he was cleaning up his daughter's room. She had been colouring, and a character with a terrified look on her face had been coloured green and purple. Van Allsburg thought that it looked like the character was terrified that she had been coloured, and began to think about how characters who live in colouring books might feel when their page is opened up and coloured on (the man is a brilliant writer!). After we read the story, I told the students that I wanted them to draw a western-themed picture (with the title Bad Day at Radissonbend), write a description of their scene on the back, and then scribble on their drawing with crayons... which perplexed them at first, but then they dove right in! The pictures are not all done yet, but when they are, I'll upload them to our Artsonia page, and put the link on the blog. Here are some of the comments I got in response to our activity - I couldn't stop smiling while they were doing this activity!

I haven't scribbled like this since I was four years old! - Robyn
But you never want us to scribble outside the lines! - Logan
It's like we're in Kindergarten! - Jenna
It feels like I'm five again! - Tyler
It's back to Kindergarten scribbling again! - Joey
Scribbling day is awesome! - Gal
I haven't scribbled like this since I was 2! - Ava
I haven't coloured like this since I was 1! I coloured all over the couch and wall, and got in trouble. - Dasia
I scribbled so much on this paper! - Lexi
Scribbling is AWESOME!!! - Braylin
I haven't doodled like this since I was born. - Jett
I was 2 the last time I scribbled like this. - Marie
I haven't scribbled since I was 2. - Kaynen
It feels bad to scribble in grade 3! - Sydney
Today we were scribbling like it was the wild, wild west, like in the book. It was pretty fun I made the sheriff say "What in tarnation is that?!" - Dylan
It is so awesome to scribble. - Jacell
I've never scribbled like this since I was three. - Hailey M.
I stopped scribbling when I was 7 or 6! - Cameron W.
I haven't scribbled like this since I was 2! - Mikayla

We were also lucky enough to have some members of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO) visit Radisson to perform for us, and to talk about some of the music they were playing, along with their instruments. It was a pretty good day!

Guest reader!

With February being 'I Love To Read Month', there are often special activities around reading that take place in the school. One of them is that we sometimes get guest readers into our classrooms. Today, we had the pleasure of having our principal, Mrs. Cross, come into our classroom to read to us. She brought two books with her: Zomo the Rabbit and Just One Goal (you'll find both of those books displayed on our classroom's Shelfari, at the bottom of our blog). The students really enjoyed hearing Mrs. Cross read, and talk about how important books are to her, and it was a nice chance for Mrs. Cross to spend some time in our classroom reading to us... instead of having to answer her phone, check her e-mail, or sit in a meeting :)

MeMoves!

While the students of Radisson School were enjoying a day off from school on Friday (lucky!), my colleagues and I were having a PD (professional development) day. In the morning, our Resource teacher, Mrs. Sokoloff, lead a session that, amongst other things, dealt with different tools we could use in our classrooms to make them a calmer place (which will, in turn, provide all of our students be more successful as learners). One of these tools was called MeMoves. MeMoves is a DVD in which the students perform a series of movements, mimicking those shown on the screen. The movements are set to soft music, and can be used to promote 'Joy', 'Calm', or 'Focus'. Today, began using MeMoves. The students really loved it! We went through some of the 'Calm' movements after morning recess, and had a great transition into our Writers' Workshop time! We are borrowing the DVD for the week and trying it out with our students, to see how well it works. I am excited to continue experimenting with it, to see the effect is has on our transitions! If you're interested in what MeMoves is, you can check it out here: http://www.thinkingmoves.com/

As a side note, I was not in the classroom this afternoon, as I was required to attend a Workplace Safety and Health meeting. "How did he get his blog post in?", you are probably wondering. Well, I was able to do so from my iPhone, using the Blogger app for iPhone - I love technology!!

We learned more multiplication

In Gym, we played floor hockey and there was a purple team, an orange team, a yellow team, a green team, and that was all. I was on the yellow team. There was not that much players on the yellow team, so Cam H. and Jenna joined our team, and Cam went in net and got a shutout. - Lexi

At Math time, when we were doing our Number of the Day, the time on the SmartBoard was a big bomb. When time ran out, it was a big explosion! - Logan

We continued to work on multiplication today, and concentrated on four different methods that you can use solve mulitplication questions: drawing a picture, repeated addition, making an array, or skip-counting on a number line. Here are some photos of students showing their learning on the SmartBoard - in order, they are showing repeated addition, making an array, and skip-counting:

BTW, when Logan refers to the "bomb" on the SmartBoard during Number of the Day, he's referring to a timer I use on the computer, to let the students know how much time they have remaining to complete their work. You can choose to have the timer as a variety of shapes - I usually choose an egg timer, but today I decided to try the bomb (the old-style 'canonball' ones with the wick that are often used in old cartoons). As the time runs down, the 'sands' in the egg timer run down as well (in the case of the bomb, the wick burns shorter as time runs down). When the timer hit zero, there was the sound of an explosion (instead of the calming sound of wind chimes, which I usually use) - this proved to cause way too much commotion in the classroom, so I don't believe I'll be using it again. Live and learn!

Number of the Day in the computer lab

It was Day 5 on the school calendar today, and (usually) on Day 5, I bring the class into the computer lab to work on their Number of the Day exercises. Many of the exercises are similar to what they do most other days in their Number of the Day books. However, I really enjoying bringing them into the lab to do this, because (with a little help from Mr. Rod Epp, one of our division's K-12 Technology Integration consultants, and Mrs. Kroeker's husband, Clinton), I've designed a tool where the students receive feedback on whether their work is correct or not. The tool (created in MS Excel) does not tell the students the right answer - only whether they are correct or not (via a 'thumbs-up' or a 'thumbs-down'). Also, for creating their number sentences, it will tell them 'TRUE' if the sentence is correct or 'FALSE' if it is incorrect. The beauty of this is that it forces the student to go back and double-check their work, and see where they need to 'fix it up'. While the classs was working on their increasing and decreasing number patterns, one student had decided that he wanted to create a decreasing number pattern of -20, starting at 91 (today's Number of the Day). He was quite confident that he had everything correct up until the last number (as he had double-checked everything else), when he went into negative numbers (which we really haven't worked on much to this point). He had everything that you see in the first picture, except that the last number in his pattern was -11. As a result, there was a 'thumbs-down' beside the pattern. So, on the white board in the lab, we worked on a number line. When I asked him if he was starting at 11, how many would it take him to get to zero, he quickly and correctly answered '11'. When I asked him how many were left to take away, if he had to take away 20, and had already taken away 11, he quickly and correctly answered '9'. I then asked him that, if we started at 0 and took away 9, what number would we arrive at. After a little bit of thought, he smiled and said '-9'. I told him that if he was confident that was the correct number, that he should put it in the last box for his decreasing pattern. Of course, when he did so, he received the 'thumbs-up' from the computer. I love the self-checking that goes on when we do that, and I love how this is creeping into their work when they do their Number of the Day in class with paper and pencil. It's helping my students to realize, on a more frequent basis, that it's not just whether you have an answer that counts... it's whether it's a correct one!



Just A Dream

Today, as part of our Chris Van Allsburg author study, we read Just A Dream. It's the story of a boy named Walter, who litters, doesn't recycle, and thinks that trees are "dumb". One night, he has a dream that shows him what the future consequences of these actions could be (as is the case with all of Chris Van Allsburg's books, the writing is wonderful and the illustrations are magnificent!). As a response, the students were asked to write about two or three actions they could take at home to help the environment - here are some of their responses:

 

I will clean up after my dog. - Hailey M.

I will look for garbage on the streets and pick it up. - Jenna

Put garbage in the garbage, and recycling in the recycling. - Joey

I won't litter. - Logan

I want to plant more trees. - Cam H.

I can organize the recycling and garbage by putting the recycling in one bin and the garbage in another. - Jett

I will clean garbage off the ground. - Cameron W.

I do not littler. - Marie

I clean up after my pet. - Dasia

I can reuse bags by not getting more plastic bags. - Ava

I will not cut down trees. - Dylan

I can recycle. - Lexi

I will clean up my dog's doodoo. I will take care of my pet. - Tyler

I won't use as much electricity. - Robyn

I will make sure my brother won't litter. - Sydney

I can start planing some more trees. - Kaynen

I also can get a box and recycle it. - Mikayla

I could recycle way more. - Markus

Another thing I can do is take out the recycling. - Jacell

I'm going to help the environment by throwing away garbage in the right bins. - Gal