Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

I just want to take this opportunity to wish a Merry Christmas and happy Holidays to everyone out there - I hope you find time to relax with those who are important to you over the next two weeks. See you in January!

Graph of the Week: Santa edition

Here's our graph of the week. As we posted earlier this week, the students had been writing about whether they believed that Santa Claus is real or not - here are the results!

easel.ly

Bonhommes de neige

Today we had French for three periods in Mrs. Steinhoff's class, and we got to make snowmen. - Jade

In French, we made snowmen. We had to write the colours in French and we had to write in French things that our snowmen had, and make backgrounds. - Jenna

Today we had French, and we went to Mrs. Steinhoff's class. We made snowmen and we had to write in French what the snowmen were wearing. - Erika

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing, French, and Science - oh, my!

We had an absolutely action-packed day today! The students did a fantastic job in Writers' Workshop this morning, where they had to state whether or not they agreed with the statement 'Santa Claus is real', and then back up their opinion with their reasons (look for our 'Graph of the Week' in the upcoming days - it'll tell you the results of this!). Later on, we finished off the morning by having French class (again) with Mrs. Steinhoff's Grade 4/5 class. The students have been working in pairs to design a snowman, and describe it using only French. We'll continue working with Mrs. Steinhoff's class on this tomorrow. In the afternoon, we worked on Science, where we did some experiments for our unit on Light (ask your child to explain to you how light travels - that's what we worked on today). Thanks for working so hard today, Room 18!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas writing

Today in writers' workshop, we wrote Christmas stories, and when most of the people were done, we shared our stories. Logan made a story about me coming out of my room in Hello Kitty pajamas, and getting V8 and broccoli and giving it to Santa, stuck in the chimney. - Lexi

 

Today we got to write stories about Christmas, and then we got to share them with the class. We had three options - one was waking up on Christmas morning with Santa stuck in the chimney, another one was an ornament from your Christmas tree falls off and comes to life, and the other one was if you could buy anything, what would you buy for your family. - Evan

 

Today we had Library in the morning, and we watched Charlie Brown Christmas for Music class - it was awesome! - Alexandra

 

 

Concert Day!

Attention parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, neighbours, well-wishers, etc. - the Christmas concert starts tonight at 6:30 PM, and the doors open at 6:00 PM. Come and enjoy the show - the students did a great job at the morning performance today! See you there!

 

 

Almost ready for the Christmas concert!

We spent part of the morning listening to the K-2/3 classes rehearsing for their portion of the Christmas concert, and then the rest of the morning rehearsing for the 3-5 portion of the concert. It is tomorrow, and the students are ready and raring to go! Performances tomorrow are at 9:30 AM and 6:30 PM - make sure you stop by to see the students in action!

 

Photography and poetry field trip

On the bus on the way back from the zoo, I was bus partners with Dylan. We hit a huge bump, and I almost hit my head on the ceiling of the bus! - Michael

At the zoo before we ate lunch, we took some pictures of the animals who weren't hibernating and my favourite zoo animal was the tiger. - Jenna

At the zoo, we took some photos about bird's view, worm's view, and we had to take a picture where it looks like you're holding the sun. My favourite animal that I took a picture of was the bald eagle. - Joey

Today we went to the zoo, and Marie and I were bus partners and we were almost laughing the whole time. Marie took pictures with the camera, and I took a picture of her holding a buffalo. - Kyra

When we went to the zoo, my partner was Cameron. When we saw there was the eagles, and then one was sitting on that branch, and the other was far away. The one that was far away flew to the other eagle, and they started fighting, and it made a creepy sound. - Gal

On the field trip, we were looking at the camels, and there was one camel that had its bumps hanging to the side. - Hailey M.

Today we went to the zoo, and we got to take pictures. My favourite picture that I took was of the bathroom sign. After that we had lunch, and then we did poems where we had to have silence for a long time - it was awesome! - Evan

After lunch, we went to the English Garden and we sat on a mat. Bran, the instructor, would play a drum. The first drumbeat would be for silence, and the second one would be to close your eyes, and the third one was to line up. - Lexi

At lunch, I sat in a group of four with Evan, Michael, and Kurt. Evan and Michael had a hot dog, I had a burger, and Kurt had chicken nuggets. Evan did want all of his fries, so he passed them to Kurt, and they kept passing them around until Evan accidentally dropped them. - Logan

On Monday, we took part in a Photography/Poetry Art In The Park field trip at the Assiniboine Park. It's a pilot project they are running, and our class (along with Mrs. Steinhoff's Grade 4/5 class) was lucky enough to be one of the classes chosen to participate. The first part of the day was dedicated to photography. Our guide, Bran, talked to us about some of the principles of photography, such as the Rule of Thirds, focus, perspective, and so on (as a photography buff, I was very excited by this part of the day). After this, the students were partnered up to share a camera, and were given about an hour to explore the zoo with their lenses. They were very excited to do so, and it was fantastic to watch the students discover the joy of photography.

After lunch (provided by the Park - the kids were beyond excited to get french fries!), the focus was poetry. After a bit of direction from Bran, the students went into the English Garden, spread out, and spent about 10 minutes in silence, with about half of that time spent with their eyes closed as well. After, they created poetry based on what they experienced with their senses. It was hard for the students to stay still/quiet for that long, but they did a great job, and were surprised by what they could 'capture' with their senses. It was a really neat writing exercise, and it's one I'll likely use in the future. It was a great field trip - if they pilot program is successful, and the Park decides to offer this program in the future, I can't recommend it enough!

(BTW... sorry for the lateness of the post. Monday was a crazy day, and I was away sick yesterday...)

 

French work with partners; Space art

Today in French, we got pieces of paper and we had to have a partner. My partner was Kyra, and Kyra had to do French actions, and I had to guess what they were. Then, I had to do the actions, and she had to guess. It was awesome! - Lexi

 

This afternoon in Art, we made pictures with pastels and we had to make the picture about if we lived, travelled, or explored in space. Mr. H. is going to put them on Artsonia and enter them the space draw. - Ava

 

This morning, for the first time in French class, the students got to work on their vocabulary and gestures in partners. The class did a really good job, and their French has been coming along nicely, with almost everyone now being able to say "J'ai parlé seulement en français aujourd'hui!" at the end of every class (ask your child if you're not sure what that means!). Here are some pictures of the students working on this, with their partners:

 

 

 

 

This afternoon, in Art class, the students were challenged to create an 11" x 17" image, using oil pastels. Once finished, I will upload the images to our Artsonia gallery (as usual). However, this time, we will also be submitting the artwork to the Space Foundation International Student Art Contest. The foundation "invites pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students from around the world to submit original artwork based on a space-oriented theme. The 2013 contest theme, "If I were going...", challenges students to imagine how they would personally experience space travel, exploration or settlement - and then interpret that idea into an original work of visual art...". Here are some of the works in progress:

 

 

 

More time work

After the great group work the class did yesterday with telling time, they had a chance to 'show their skills' individually in the computer lab today - here are some of the activities the students were working on:

 

 

 

 

The students also had a chance to do some time paper and pencil work. When we started marking the assignment together as a class, I got the chance to break out the new IPEVO document camera that we have recently acquired for the classroom. The document camera allows me to have a paper (or demonstration, science experiment, etc.) on my desk, and then project it onto our SMART Board, making it much easier for the whole class to see. The class loves this new addition to the technology we have available in our room, and it made it much easier to talk about each of the questions on the paper, as I could show the class what I was talking about, instead of just talking about it - this allows visual and aural learners to easily follow along. I'm very happy we have this in the classroom, and look forward to making great use of it with the students!

 

 

 

Telling Time and Social Studies

This morning in Math, the students reviewed their time-telling skills, as they prepare for learning about 24-hour time. The class really impressed me as they played the 'Stop The Clock' game (if you're interested in playing, check it out here) - every group was able to finish multiple challenges on their own, and most were able to do so on the first try. Bravo!

 

 

In the afternoon, we began talking about government in Social Studies. We were discussing what would happen if there were no laws - as an activator, before we started talking about this, I had the class play Monopoly. I told them I didn't care who played, how many of them played, or how they played - it was complete chaos (as you can see in the picture below!)... and a good example of why we need rules and laws!