Bus evacuation

We had our second bus evacuation of the year today (the first one was in the fall). This is important information to know - even though almost none of the students at Radisson School take the bus to/from school, all of the classes go on field trips, or to divisional events (sports, the arts, etc.), where we travel on buses. Hopefully, it's information we never need to use. However, our class did such an amazing job of listening to Bev, our (AWESOME!) bus driver, I'm confident that if we ever do need to evacuate a bus, the students of Room 18 will do a fantastic job of doing so in a safe and calm manner! Way to go, Room 18!

AWESOME!

This summer, a friend of mine who's a teacher introduced me to The Book Of Awesome by Neil Pasricha, published in 2010. It's a great book, based on his blog 1000awesomethings.com (he has since written The Book Of Even More Awesome and The Book Of (Holiday) Awesome). The idea of the book is to look all around you and see that, even if things are not going so well, there are many, little awesome things in your life. Some examples of things he describes as being AWESOME! are: the last day of school, sweatpants, going through the car wash with little kids, fixing electronics by smacking them, bedhead all day long, dangling your feet in water, the smell of freshly cut grass, and so on. You may have heard of Mr. Pasricha and his blog, as his countdown from #1000 to #1 concluded last week, and he was featured on a number of newscasts.

Towards the latter part of the school year, I often lead the class through a unit on persuasive writing in Writers' Workshop. I was talking about how much I loved The Book Of Awesome to another friend of mine who's also teacher, and that I was sad that the blog was going to be ending, now that Mr. Pasricha had reached #1 on his AWESOME! list. I was also mentioning to my friend how Mr. Pasricha had said that one of his favourite parts of doing the blog and the books was that he often got AWESOME! books from schools, where students had picked their own awesome things to write about. My friend said "You could do that with your class for your persuasive writing unit."

"Brilliant!" I said.

So, this week, we have begun talking about AWESOME! things. We read a bunch of the AWESOME! things together earlier in the week, and then today as well. I wanted to write one together as a class, to give them a taste what they will eventually be expected to do on their own. The structure is fairly simple:

- A title

- A hook/lead

- A paragraph (or more) describing the thought

- A closing (which is always 'AWESOME!')

My plan, after reading a few more entries from the book, was to brainstorm a list of AWESOME! things with the students. We were just beginning this, when the secretary buzzed in to let one of the students in our class know that he was being signed out of school early (lucky!). Right after he left, one of the students said "Being signed out of school early on a Friday would be is pretty awesome - we could write about that!"... so we did! Check out our first AWESOME! thing that we wrote together as a class - enjoy!

Leaving school early on a Friday

Have you ever gotten to leave school early on a Friday, while the rest of your classmates had to stay behind?
It's the day before the weekend, and you're sitting in class, watching the clock tick, wondering if the end of the day will ever come. The next thing you know, you hear the PA in your room bing. It's the voice of the school's secretary, asking if the teacher can send you down to the office, because you're being signed out early. You're surprised! You can't believe it! "I get to leave early?!", you think to yourself. You're too polite to say "WOOHOO!" in front of your classmates, but they can all see the excitement on your face. You try not to smile too much as you walk out, and everybody tells you to have a good weekend. You feel so excited as you pack up your backpack, and walk to meet your mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa at the office. When you get out of the school, you say "Free at last!", and you feel...

AWESOME!

Plants!

We started the day with a bang this morning, as we continued our exploration of plants and soils in Science. After working with seeds yesterday, the students got to (literally!) get their hands dirty investigating plants, as they learned about leaves, roots, stems, leaves, fruits, and seeds by handling (and dismantling!) some plants that their groups had been given. The room was bubbling with excitement, with comments ranging from "Eww... my hands are dirty!" to "This is so cool! I'm going to blog about it when I get home from school!" (here's hoping!). Here is some photographic evidence of their investigation:

Seeds!

We did some more work in Science today, as we continue to learn about plants and soils. Today, we focused on seeds. The students got to dissect Lima bean seeds (that I had soaked overnight), and separate out the seed coat, cotyledons, and the embryo (or baby plant). The students had a great time doing this, and were surprised to learn that seeds have little, mini-plants inside of them...

A good day!

We got our 20th marble yesterday for our Mystery Motivator, and we got to get free time in the afternoon today. We were playing Cops, but it got out of control. So then I drawed with a paper and some markers. - Mikayla
Today we went outside for our SLC and cleaned up garbage, and I went into the gym to get gloves. When I got out, they were done cleaning up! - Jett
In Gym, we played with balls and passed them to a partner. Then we played a game that we had a line with partners, and we were bouncing the balls back and forth. It was fun. - Mikayla
In Social Studies, we talked about cenotes. Cenotes are big holes in the ground and when it rains, the cenotes fill up with water, so people can swim and get water for drinking. It's important in Mexico, because they don't have a lot of rivers and lakes there. - Jett

My class rocks Division!

In Math class today, we continued our work on Division. We talked about how you can always make at least two Division number sentences (or 'equations') for a group of objects. We worked through a few examples on the board...

After our review, today's Division 'challenge' was for the students to see how many division number sentences they could come up with to describe the amount of Lego blocks their group was given (each table group was given a different amount). We ran out of time to share with each other (we'll do that tomorrow), but here's a peak at what the groups came up with. They totally rocked Division today!

Division

Today we continued learning about division in Math, or 'sharing into', as we often refer to it. I must say that I am quite impressed with how well the class is grasping this skill - it's amazing how when you talk about sharing to make equal groups, as opposed to simply talking about 'dividing', it seems to really come together for most 8- and 9-year olds. The students got to show off their division knowledge as they worked on a SMART Board activity this morning - here is some of their handy work!

'The Lorax' and Mexico

Today we had an SLC. We talked about Earth Day, and we watched a little short clip of The Lorax. We talked about not littering on the playground, because some of the Grade 2's saw dog poop on the playground. - Logan
In the SLC, Ms. Bell and Ms. Koth-Bull said we were going to plant trees all around our playground. She said they were going to be big. The Lorax video was kind of sad because the animals were going away, and that made me really sad because I love animals. - Kaynen
Today in Social Studies, we did a thing about countries. If you were right on the equator, then your country would be hot, and if you weren't, then your country would be kind of cold. - Logan
In Social Studies, we are starting to learn about Mexico. We were naming different places in Mexico on a map, and we saw that Canada was bigger and Mexico was closer to the equator. - Kaynen

Kidblogs

It's been great to see all of the blogging that has been going on at home during this past week. Whether it's writing posts on their own blogs, or commenting on others, there has been a lot of writing going on. It's been exciting for me to see the students not only increase their opportunities for writing, but to also learn more about them than I knew before. I highly suggest you check them out, if you have not done so already! Remember, you can find the students' blogs at http://kidblog.org/MrHoeppnersClass/. Have a great weekend, and enjoy the blogs!

A RAD Day!

It was an exciting morning at school today, as we had our spring Recess Activity Day (or RAD). RAD is where the students get a chance to become familiar with the rules and skills needed for the the different springtime outdoor activities made available to them at recess, and then practice them. Some of these different activities include basketball, skipping, ladderball, magnetic rockets (the new, safer alternative to the old-fashioned lawn darts so many of us used growing up), baseball gloves, lacrosse, 4-square, and so on. My compliments to the students of Room 18, who were, as usual, exceptionally well-behaved - bravo! Here are some photos of a fabulous morning spent outside:

Adding pictures to our blogs

I'm really impressed with how the students have started adding pictures to their blogs (remember, if you haven't checked them out, the blogs can be found at http://kidblog.org/MrHoeppnersClass/). I haven't given them any instruction on how to do this, but they seem to be figuring it out on their own (it is amazing at how quickly kids seem to pick up on technology these days!). I'm also impressed at how they are only choosing pictures that are related to what they are writing about in their posts. Whether uploading a family photo from their computer at home, or adding an image they found on the internet, they really help to add to their blog posts...

This afternoon, the students also started typing up the good copies of their Mysteries of Harris Burdick stories (see previous posts for more on the stories). Here's a shot of them hard at work (although why some of them stand to type kind of boggles me!):

Cup Crazy!

Today, we started working on formally learning division in Math. A lot of the students had been including some minor division facts in the Number of the Day number sentences, but today was the first time we really 'tackled' this math skill head-on. We did a lot of hands-on learning together on the SMART Board, and had fun doing it. Most of the students, after just a day, have a really good grasp on the concept of division (or "sharing into", as we often call it) - I'm really looking forward to see them show their learning to me, themselves, and the rest of the class over the next while. Here are a few shots of some of the learning the students did this morning: 

After we finished learning about division for the day, the students were very excited when I announced that we were going to be having an NHL playoff bracket draft. All of the students were provided with a bracket sheet of the teams matched up in the first round, and then proceeded to pick the teams they think will win. We are going to have a fun time in Math keeping track of how all the students do, with students getting 1 point for a first-round series win, 2 points for a second-round win, 3 points for a third-round win, and 5 points for picking the Stanley Cup winner. The playoffs start tomorrow... and so will the fun!

A busy Monday

It was another busy day today, as we 'got back at it' after the long weekend (which some of you are still enjoying - lucky!). We had spring picture day...

...we watched If The World Were A Village for Social Studies, as we have been, and will continue to, talk about what it's like for people who live elsewhere in the world...

  

...and we had time to work on our blogs!

Speaking of working on our blogs, today we talked about criteria for commenting on other blog posts.

I’m excited to see how many of the students are commenting on each other’s blogs – it shows that they’re not only interested in what they’re writing about, but what their classmates are writing about, too! However, we talked about how just simply making a comment like “Cool!” or “You’re awesome!” doesn’t make for interesting blogging, and won’t help the students to become better writers. When students write a comment, they need to:

1. Give a compliment about the post
2. Make a connection between the post and something that you like, or something that has happened to you
3. Ask the blogger a question about their post

It was so exciting this weekend to see all the blogging that was going on - I already started to see an improvement in the quality of comments being made after our discussion, and just like the blog posts themselves, I'm really looking forward to seeing how they continue to improve, as the students of Room 18 become better writers!