Fractions/Paper Slide Videos

We continued our learning on fractions today, by reviewing some activities we have been working on over the last week or two. After this, the students started working in their (new!) table groups on putting their learning about fractions into their own words and pictures. I challenged them to describe the two parts of a fraction, to describe fractions that show part of an object, and to describe fractions that show part of a set. We only had about 10-15 minutes to start these discussions, so we'll continue working on them tomorrow. Here are a few preliminary thoughts that some of the students recorded:

Once the students have finished putting their thoughts around fractions into their own words and pictures, they will be asked to create a paper slide video about their learning. What is a paper slide video, you ask? Well... it's something I learned about at the Riding The Wave converence I went to a few weeks ago in Gimli. It's something I'm really excited to try with the students - this video explains what it is perfectly:

Grade 1s/Mystery Motivator

The students of Room 18 had Music class first thing this morning. However, our classroom was not empty, as Ms. Klassen brought her Grade 1 students into Room 18 to use the SMARTBoard for a learning activity. Ms. Klassen has experience using a SMARTBoard, as she had one in her classroom in a school she previously taught in. She has been bringing her students into Room 18, on occasion, during periods when our students are in Phys. Ed., Library, or Music. It's great to see her doing this, and utilizing this excellent piece of technology to enhance her students' learning. I look forward to having the Grade 1 students come and visit our class again in the remaining weeks of the school year!

Meanwhile, at the end of the day, our students got to have their Mystery Motivator. They earned their 20th marble yesterday, and earned two periods of board games to finish off the last Wednesday of May (they were encouraged to bring in a board game from home). Apparently, Monopoly was a popular choice!

Spring Fling/New trees

On Friday evening, the tri-campus of Radisson School, John W. Gunn Middle School, and Transcona Collegiate hosted their annual Spring Fling carnival. It was scheduled to be held outside, but was moved indoors, due to the weather. Regardless, it was still a great event, with many local students and their parents attending to take in events such as bands playing, bouncers and carnival games, food, and even a petting zoo! The three schools hold this event every year, in order to raise funds to improve the large campus the three schools are located on - here are some shots of this year's festivities...

One of the large purchases that has been made as a result of funds raised from events like the Spring Fling is trees for the school grounds. As you've probably noticed, other than some trees on the boulevard, the campus is virtually barren of any plant life, other than the grass. Well, this has now changed, as landscapers planted many trees on our school yard last week. These will (finally!) provide some shade in the spring and summer months, not to mention helping to make our campus so much more attractive. Here are a few shots of the newly-planted trees that I took today:

Planning our dioramas

For the past few months, we have been studying Mexico in Social Studies. As a final project for the unit, the students are working in groups of 2-3 to create a diorama that represents part of a Mexican village. Over the past few classes, we've been looking at many different images of Mexican villages, and discussing what types of buildings are in the villages, and what the landscape and vegetation around the villages is like. Today, the students, as a class, made their choices of what was going to be on their dioramas (we had to make sure we didn't have 12 Mayan temples, and no houses, for example!). Once this was all sorted out, the students were given their piece of foam-board, and began to sketch out a rough plan for what they were going to put on it. There were so many great ideas - I can hardly wait to see how these turn out!

(Don't worry... all cutting of foam-board was done by me, before students came into the class!)

Take the night off!

Today we continued to finish off our AWESOME! writing, and some of us even finished our second draft. We had a fun time doing Math today. We got to learn how to do fractions today. - Dylan

In gym we had some free gym, and it was really fun. I chose to play soccer. We had choir, and we practised the song for the Grade 5 farewell. - Tyler

The students have been working really hard, as of late, on finishing up their AWESOME! writing, learning new things in Math (this morning, they were doing some online activities in the computer lab on fractions). As a result, I've decided not to assign any reading or blogging for homework tonight. The students are still free to do so if they choose, but they don't have to (Logan wanted me to put this on the blog, because he said that his parents wouldn't believe him!). Enjoy!

Dancing In The Park

Today, we went to Dancing In The Park. It was so fun! We did lot of dances, like the Macarena, Sing, Sing, Sing, and the Hokey Pokey. The grass was wet, and it was really sunny. There was lots of people wearing green shirts because that's the colour of our school shirts. - Tyler

Today at Dancing In The Park, we did a dance called the Maya Maya - it means 'water water'. It was a really good dance. Everybody got to play tag, except when they were dancing, and everyone had fun. Everybody started to sweat because everybody was dancing and the weather was really hot. - Dylan

Today was Dancing In The Park. Every year in Phys Ed., the students in Grades 1-3 spend a few weeks learning different dances. After they learn the dances, the students get to perform the dances with many other schools in our school division at Dancing In The Park (we joined a number of schools at Centennial Park, while other schools in our division go to the park at Bunn's Creek to dance). Each grade got to do four dances, and all the grades danced together for another ten dances. It's one of our favourite days of the year... especially if the weather holds up and there are no mosquitoes! It wasn't looking good yesterday, but the weather cooperated and gave us a warm, humid, and breezy day with some (awesome!) cloud cover to help keep us from getting too hot. Here are a few shots of us, as well as Ms. Hanna, our fearless leader (and Phys. Ed. instructor) - she always does a great job of teaching the dances to the students, and organizing all of the students (and teachers!) in Grades 1-3 to get us there and back! Thank you, Ms. Hanna!

(Getting last-minute instructions from Ms. Hanna.)

(We're on our way!)

(Ms. Hanna... all smiles, all the time!)

(Mass dance - all grades.)

(Mass dance - all grades.)

(Some students of Room 18, struttin' their stuff!)

Room 18 is still here!

Contrary to the fact that there's been no new posts on our classroom blog over the last week or so (and believe me... I've been hearing it from some of the students!), Room 18 is still alive and kicking! It's been a super-busy time in the class (and away from the class, for their teacher!), and so I haven't had a chance to update the blog for a while (I've been feeling very guilty about it, if that's any consolation). Work and personal commitments have not left me with the time needed to contribute to the blog, but I've finally got a few spare minutes, so here we go...

Part of the reason that I have been so busy, and unable to contribute to our classroom blog lately, is that I was fortunate enough to attend a 2-day PD session in Gimli last week Thursday and Friday, called Riding The Wave Of Change (http://www.esd.mb.ca/wave/). It is a great conference that revolves around technology and education - I've been wanting to attend for a few years, and I was not disappointed! I learned something from every session that I attended, and was able to connect with many talented teachers doing really interesting things with technology in their classrooms - I cannot wait to start putting some of my new-found knowledge to work in the final part of this school year, and into the next as well!

We've been doing some fun stuff in class lately - we've been studying Mexico in Social Studies, and we've just begun to start talking about our wrap-up project for the unit: we're going to be working with Ms. Bell, our Teacher Librarian, and making dioramas! This is something that I haven't undertaken much in the past, but a few of my colleagues went to an excellent PD (professional development) session on how to make really cool dioramas, using items found almost exclusively at Dollarama (that store is a teacher's best friend!). We've looked at a lot of pictures of Mexico lately (primarily, focusing on Mexican villages), and Ms. Bell and I showed them the supplies that they'll be using to create their dioramas. The students were really excited, and were brainstorming about how they could use the different supplies to create different parts of these villages. Here is a shot of some of the supplies the students will be using:

We've been continuing our Plants and Soils unit in Science, and have been running a number of different experiments, to see the effects of light, water, and fertilizer on plant growth. Check out some of our work:

My little plant scientists at work - I'm so proud!

The white plants are pea plants that have been in the dark for two weeks. The green plants were placed under grow lamps for two weeks - what a difference!

Recording observations on what happens to the plants grown in the light and in the dark.

This is what happens when pea plants received no fertilizer (cup on the left), the recommended amount of fertilizer (cup in the middle - excellent growth), and way more than the recommended amount of fertilizer (poor germination and limited growth).

One of the experiments looked at how different amounts of water affected seed germination. Pea seeds either were placed into a cup, on top of a paper towel that was stuffed at the bottom. Seeds were submerged in water ("lots of water"), slightly dampened ("some water"), of left dry ("no water"). Here are the results:

Lots of water: yuck!

No water: no growth.

Some water: excellent initial growth!

More AWESOME! writing!

We continued with our study of writing about all things AWESOME! today. The students picked the two most AWESOME! things from the list of ten they had compiled earlier, and began compiling a list of details and adjectives to describe each of the two, in order to prepare two write about how AWESOME! those two things are to them. Before that, however, we wrote about another AWESOME! thing as a class - they chose to write about when they get the last marble to earn a Mystery Motivator. Here's what they came up with:

Getting Our Twentieth Marble

Have you ever experienced getting a twentieth marble in the classroom?

In our classroom, we get marbles if we are quiet when we are doing Math or our Daily 5, when another teacher gives our class a compliment in the hallway if we are being really quiet, or if we come into the classroom really quietly and get right to work. Once we get our twentieth marble, we get a surprise called the Mystery Motivator. The Mystery Motivator could be free time, a movie, extra recess, pajama day, and other fun things. When the class has 19 marbles, everyone feels excited because we think we might get that twentieth marble today! Your heart is pounding like crazy when you see the Marblekeeper go into his desk, because that's where he keeps the marbles! Then, you see he gets something else out of his desk, like a pencil - you feel disappointed. The next thing you know, he goes back into his desk for something. He grabs a giant marble - it's a bigger one than all of the others, and it's one he only puts into the marble cup for the twentieth marble. You see that giant marble fall into the cup, as he drops it, and you hear a loud kerplunk! You start to cheer with the rest of your classmates because you know that you're going to get a Mystery Motivator, and you know it will be...

AWESOME!

Cinco de Mayo!

Saturday was May 5th, or as they call it in Mexico, Cinco de Mayo. We've been studying Mexico in Social Studies, so today we had our own Cinco de Mayo celebration. We talked about how Cinco de Mayo commemorates a famous battle from when Mexico was trying to become its own country. After that, the students got their chance to hit the piñata (no injuries!), and collect the candy that fell out of it. We had a variety of Mexican foods to sample, including tortilla chips with salsa verde (green salsa) or chipotle sauce (my favourite!), pickled cactus, and cinnamon cookies. The students also had time to work on some Cinco de Mayo colouring pages, while we listened to Mexican music. Here are a few shots of our fun celebration...

Collecting candy after the piñata opened up

Being brave and trying cactus!

Some of the Mexican delicacies that we tried

I guess somebody liked the chipotle sauce!

Budding plant scientists

Over the past week, the students have been setting up a number if experiments to test whether some of the different things they think plants need to survive are needed by plants. One experiment is examining whether plants need light - to test this, pea seeds were planted, with some being placed under grow bulbs, and others being kept in a dark closet. Another experiment is looking at the effect of different amounts of water on seed germination - to test this, pea seeds were placed in cups, and got either no water, a little bit of water, or a lot of water. The third experiment is looking at the effect of fertilizer on plant growth - to test this, pea seeds were planted in cups, and are being cared for using either only distilled water, distilled water with the recommended amount of fertilizer, or distilled water with a much higher than recommended amount of fertilizer. While the third experiment was being set up this morning, the students took turns looking at seed sample of different Canadian crops. Here are some photos of their hard work and investigating:

Working on AWESOME!

In Writers' Workshop today, we continued to talk about all things AWESOME! We read some more entries from 1000awesomethings.com, including such things as popping bubble wrap, snow-stepping, bakery air, and the Universal Fry-Sharing Policy. After we all had a good laugh over these, the students were challenged, as the first part of their AWESOME! writing, to come up with their own list of 10 (and only 10!) AWESOME! things. Some wanted to make a longer list, but I felt that limiting it to 10 meant that they would really have to weigh out the awesomeness of all the things they were considering - perhaps, if they had to narrow it down to a list of only 10, some of the things they thought were AWESOME! were merely great, cool, or fun. There were some good lists that came about - the next step is to refine/define some of them a little more. This is such a fun project - I can hardly wait for them to get down to writing about their AWESOME!