Happy Halloween!

Today in Gym, we had Operation: Halloween. My brother was helping out, and he tried to scare me. He didn't scare me, though. - Jenna

We had a Halloween party, and Jade, Joey, and Mr. H. all brought treats for us. - Michael

Happy Halloween! - Erika

Today we watched Charlie Brown and we had colouring papers and word searches. - Lexi

At Operation: Halloween, I was so scared at first. I said Logan "Go check the maze if anything is there to scare me!". I was really good at the jump and roll, and I jumped over 2 soft bricks. - Alexandra

We had a great day in Room 18 today! The students worked really hard during Daily 5 and blogging in the morning, and then got to take part in Operation: Halloween (where our Phys. Ed. teacher, Ms. Hanna, turns the gym into an amazing haunted house every year at Halloween!), before ending the day with a Halloween party where they worked on fun Halloween activities while watching the classic Halloween special 'It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown'. I hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween - don't eat all of your candy tonight!

Thanks to Joey and Jade for bringing treats for the class!

Snoopy as the World War I ace...

We Day!

The students of Room 18 spent part of the morning today watching We Day Winnipeg, via an internet live stream. We Day is an educational event and the movement of our time (put on by Free The Children, an international charity to help children around the world, started by Canadians Craig and Marc Kielburger) - a movement of young people leading local and global change. At numerous We Day events across Canada, well-known musicians, actors, and public figures, along with local activists, inspire children to ‘be the change’ that can truly end the worst forms of poverty, embrace we thinking and we acting and remove the barriers to youth being agents of social change. Children and youth are beginning to realize that every single day we all have the opportunity to make this world a better place. And everyone has a role to play. It’s a worldwide movement that proves anyone can change the world—and revolutionizes how we make that change.

As a result, the students have embraced the idea of participating in the 'We Scare Hunger' campaign. We Scare Hunger is Free The Children’s annual campaign to mobilize youth around local hunger issues. Every October 31st, thousands of young people take action to scare local hunger and poverty. By trick-or-treating for non-perishable food items instead of just candy, or collecting canned goods at school and in their community, they help support their local food bank and raise awareness about this very important issue. They not only make a tangible contribution to their communities, but also become knowledgeable advocates for change. In 2011 alone, over 290,000 people participated in the We Scare Hunger campaign. They donated a total of 833,648 pounds of food— enough to feed 164 families of four for a whole year!

So, tomorrow night, when the students of Room 18 go trick-or-treating, not only are they going to be looking to collect candy for themselves (yum!), they'll be asking for donations of non-perishable food items to help others. We're really excited to see how much we can collect!

Graphing

Over the past week or so, we have been talking about graphing, and how to make effective graphs that easily convey information to others. We started to work together at this be taking a survey on Monday of how many movies the students of Room 18 watched over their long weekend (not a long weekend for me - I was at SAGE on Friday, along with all of the other teachers in the province!). The students were each given a post-it note, and asked to put the total of movies watched on the weekend. The first thing we did was make a very crude, but effective graph on the board, using the actual post-it notes:

Then, I used the information to make a graph of the survey results in Excel:

Finally, I used the results of the survey to make a very basic infographic (it was my first, so don't laugh!), which are becoming increasingly popular way to share information in magazines, the newspaper, and on the web:

easel.ly

I asked the students which one they preferred (and found easier to read) - which one do you think they chose?!

In the next few weeks, the plan is for Room 18 to start having a weekly graph, in which the survey and graphing will be conducted by pairs of students (with the responsibility rotating to different students every week). The students are quite excited to share their work with the other students in our school (on our bulletin board), as well as with the whole world (via our blog), as am I!

BTW... we did another survey yesterday, and today, as a class, the students directed me on how they wanted to make their first infographic - here is what they came up with:

easel.ly

Flag Football Tournament

Today, some of the Grade 4 and 5 students from Radisson participated in our school division's annual Guy Fawkes flag football tournament, with Ms. Hanna (our Phys. Ed. teacher) and I acting as coaches. We were divided up into three teams: the Vikings (yay!), the Bengals (the favourite team of Ms. Hanna!), and the Colts (unfortunately, none of our teams were named the Buccaneers, which is MY favourite NFL team!). Although it was cold and windy, we had a fabulous time. All of the preparation of the last few weeks showed, as our Radisson teams played hard, and showed fantastic sportsmanship - it is a privilege to go to events like this with such a great group of students! Below is a picture of the pre-tournament meeting, where all of the rules are explained to the students.

Stop, Drop, and Read

Today we did a stop, drop, and read thing. We had it in Health, and we got to read for ten minutes, and it was awesome. - Evan
In Health we had stop, drop, and read and some of us enjoyed it. I read a Mary Kate and Ashley book where they work at a dog camp for the summer. - Jenna
Today in Music we were singing a song with instruments, and Mrs. Evans, our Music teacher, gave me the bongos because I was sitting really quietly. - Michael
In Social Studies, we couldn't work in the Library because Ms. Bell was working with some other teachers there. So, we had to go in the computer lab to work on our Social Studies, to work on our provinces. Some were done and some were not. - Joey
When stop, drop, and read started, I felt like it was two or three hours, but it was only ten minutes. When it was over, we started doing our crossword again. Hailey K. and me were trying to find handlebars and helmet, but helmet was spelled wrong on the crossword. - Alexandra

Artsonia

The students have been creating some really good art this year (they've done some work focusing on line and colour), and they'd really like to share it with the world. So, we're once again using Artsonia to do this. For those of you who don't know what Artsonia is, it bills itself as "The world's largest kids' art museum". It currently has over 17 million pieces of art created by children that have been uploaded from around the world! You can view our work at the Radisson School Artsonia page, located here (note: the artwork can take up to 24 hours to appear, as Artsonia checks all artwork submitted before posting it, to ensure that it is appropriate in nature). We hope you enjoy it!

Room 18's Cardboard Arcade videos

OK... as promised in yesterday's post, here are the videos showing the different games in our Cardboard Arcade - enjoy!

Kurt and Mikayla's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Logan and Jade's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Evan and Marie's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Kyra, Hailey K., and Erika's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Joey and Michael's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Cameron and Jacell's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Alexandra and Dylan's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Jodi and Braylin's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Hailey M. and Jenna's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Gal and Ava's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

Lexi and Denisse's Cardboard Challenge math arcade game

Room 18's Cardboard Arcade is open for business!

Today we got our customers for our arcade. Two classes came, and they were really polite. - Jenna

We finally had some people play in our arcade. Lots of people came. - Evan

Today was the most awesome day! Two classes came and they said our game was awesome - it was called Mathbot. The thing that I would want to add to it is more boxes, and write points on the side. - Gal

When we were doing the cardboard arcade, Dylan and me were trying to put our arcade box through the door. It didn't fit, so it broke apart, so we had to fix it all over again! - Alexandra

Our bowling game, me and Erika were running the stand. We had some trouble putting the cups for the tickets up because the cups kept on falling on Erika, so people had to go on the other side. - Kyra

A lot of people came to my game becdause they didn't need to pay any tickets. - Jacell

All the games were very fun. They took two days to build, and people came to play them today. - Erika

A lot of people came to my and Jenna's game because it was easy and you could get lots of tickets. - Hailey M.

Today was the big day - the day we had 'customers' for our Carboard Challenge math arcade. We were lucky enough to have Ms. Mott's Grade 2 class and Mrs. Hildebrand's Grade 3 class come and play the games. It was a lot of fun, and great to see the students in my class working together, and using their mental math skills to give the 'customers' their final point tally. Check out the photos below, which show some of the fun we had learning today! I'll post the videos of everyone's games tomorrow!

Cardboard Challenge: from design to construction

Yesterday, the students worked in pairs to design their cardboard arcade games. Today, they began building the games. Here are some photos of the great progress they've made in just a short time (the students are really excited about the project!):

Room 18's Cardboard Challenge

When we saw the video of Caine's arcade, we are going to start bringing in boxes and making our own games. - Alexandra
On Thursday we're going to be able to make our own arcade games, and I'm also thinking of bringing a crane that I might make. - Dylan
The Caine's Arcade got $200 000 because there was one person who got there, tried out the games, and wrote about his arcade, and everybody in the Facebook looked at it. The ones who looked at it told other people, and other people, and other people. - Gal
Today we watched a video about a kid who builds this little arcade, and he has a whole bunch of games. It started off when he won this basketball net and then he kept building and building. - Jenna
In the video, when he was in the car, his face was just straight. But when they pulled up and saw all the people at his arcade, he had a big smile on his face. - Logan

We are beginning the process of creating a cardboard math arcade in Room 18 (parents/guardians: please see today's note in your child's agenda about the supplies we are trying to collect). What is this, you ask? Well... I could tell you, but the videos below do a much better job of explaining what it is, and where the inspiration came from. I strongly encourage you to watch them - I guarantee you'll be glad you did!

This first video is the amazing story of a boy named Caine, the cardboard arcade he created, and the incredible chain of events that took place when one person, by chance, stumbled onto his creation, and made a short film about it.



The second video shows what happened after the world begain to see and be inspired by Caine's story, both in his life and in the lives of others.

Snow!

So... on Sunday, I was wearing shorts as I walked down to the BDI (Bridge Drive-In, for those of you not from here) to have ice cream. Four days later, I'll have to brush snow off of my car as I head home from work - love that Winnipeg weather! Here are a couple of shots from this morning, as we headed out for our fall bus evacuation practice (P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!):

Cross Country Meet

It was a fun race and some of us ran with partners. - Jenna

When we were about to start the race, I told Mr. Hoeppner he wasn't a Grade 4 girl, and he said "SHHH! Don't tell anyone!". - Erika

When I was running, I tripped on the sand and I still went running. My old record was 86th place, and this time I got 48th place. - Joey

At the cross country run, I got in 64th place, and on the race Logan lost his shoe and I almost hit him. - Michael

Last time we went to the cross country run, I got a 2nd place, and this time I got in 2nd place again! - Hailey M.

In the race, there were lots and lots of holes, and there was a lot of people and a lot of poo. My shoe came off because I got pushed, but I still got a good place! After the race, I went down on my knees, then I went down on my face, and it felt like I didn't have any legs. - Logan

When we got to the cross country run, I was so excited and once I started to race, I started off jogging, and then I started to run a little faster. Once I got to the finish line I was pretty happy because I got a good place. - Dylan

When we got to the race, I picked a bouquet of flowers. I got to run and I couldn't even have a breath because I was running too hard, and I forgot that I have to jog first and then run. - Alexandra

After we ran, I went to go play soccer with my dad and he booted it really, really high, and you could barely see the soccer ball - it looked really, really tiny. - Braylin

After we had the Grade 4 boys run, I ate all my food and went playing frisbee. There was a really hard wind, and I threw the frisbee and it went super-duper high. - Gal

Today we went to our divisional Grade 3-6 cross-country meet (always one of my favourite days of the year!), which took place at Bird's Hill Park. It was an unseasonably warm day, but with a hurricane-like wind! The Grade 4's ran 1000m, and I had the pleasure of running with the girls (see Erika's comment above). I've included a few pictures of our run - enjoy!

(As a side note, I am very proud of the students of Room 18, as well as the rest of the Grade 3-5 students of Radisson - they were very well-behaved, and were excellent representatives of our school! Bravo!)

Walking to the starting line...

Waiting for the race to start...

...and they're off!

Running hard to the hill, and then turning right...

Under the bridge...

...and there's the finish line!

Learning about Terry Fox

We watched Terry Fox, and it was awesome. - Kurt
Today we had an SLC after lunch. If we raise a lot of money, five teachers will dye their hair for a day green and blue. - Jenna
Today was awesome because we were watching a video about Terry Fox. - Kyra
It was just going to be the teachers dying their hair green, because of the school colours. But then they thought about Blue Bombers and now they're doing it half blue and half green. - Logan
We're going to raise money for Terry Fox. If we raise enough money for cancer, we will have a Crazy Hat Day and if we raise even more, Mr. H. and four more teachers will have blue and green hair. - Alexandra
We had an SLC today, and we heard a letter read from Terry Fox's dad. - Jade

We had our Terry Fox fundraising campaign kick-off at school today. Terry has always been a big hero of mine - I was a young elementary school student during his Marathon of Hope, way back in 1980. I followed his run every night on the news (way before the Internet was around!), and dreamed of seeing him run through Manitoba. I remember being absolutely crushed when he had to stop his run near Thunder Bay when his cancer returned, and crying the day that he died. Watching those videos, all these years later, still brings tears to my eyes.

The school has been challenged to raise $1000 - if they reach this goal, the school will have a Crazy Hat Day. If they raise $1500, Ms. Hanna will colour her hair blue and green for a day. After that, for every additional $500 the students raise, another teacher will have their hair coloured - my 'magic number' is $2000. So come on, Radisson - I know you can do it!