Hour of Code

Yesterday, the class started working on activities related to the 'Hour Of Code' challenge, where students learn the basic concepts of Computer Science by writing lines of programming code (you can find out more at http://code.org/). The students were working in groups, where one student was the 'robot', and the other students in the group had to write code to command the 'robot' to stack cups in a certain pattern. This would help to get them ready for today's activity, which you can read about after these first pictures, which show the 'robot' activity...

In today's activity, the students actually 'wrote' code on the computer, to help program an Angry Birds game. It was so neat to see the students figuring out how to program the game to make it do what they needed to, in order to complete all the tasks... and to see how excited they were to successfully complete all the tasks. Here are some photos of them working on this activity...

Christmas concert tomorrow!

Over the past few weeks, the students have been working really hard on their poems and songs for the Radisson Christmas concert. The whole school had its dress rehearsal today, and the students sounded great! If you're interested in coming to see it, the big shows are tomorrow in the afternoon (1:30 pm) and in the evening (6:30 pm). We hope to see you there!

Battery recycling drive - planning

As part of talking about Habitats and Plants in Science, we've been discussing the effects that pollutants can have on the environment. One of the issues that we touched on is the different heavy metals (such as mercury) that can leak out of batteries when they are disposed of in the landfill. We've been a drop-off site for battery recycling (through Call2Recycle) for the past few years (so far, Radisson School staff/families have recycled approx. 150 lbs. of batteries!), but the class has begun planning a battery drive. We want to collect as many used batteries from families as Radisson as we can, in order to have them recycled, and diverted from the landfill. The class has divided themselves up into 3 groups: students who will write and make announcements on the PA system in the morning, students who will write and make presentations to individual classrooms, and students who will design and put up posters around the school to publicize our campaign. The groups started planning today - here are some shots of them in action:

Criteria the class came up with for the different jobs.

Sketching out a poster.

Writing a script for the morning announcements.

Writing a script to present the information about the campaign to individual classrooms.

The awesomeness that happens when Math and Art collide!

I love it when Math and Art collide. I'm the kind of person who loves order and organization (although, if you've seen my desk at times, you might question me on that!), and I find that while often some amazing pieces come out of chaotic, frenetic energy, order and organization can combine to create some really beautiful works of art. We were talking about different shapes and symmetry in Math, and after seeing Ms. Clarke's class create some beautiful images using pattern blocks, I challenged my students to create their own. My criteria were that (a) they had to start with a hexagon in the middle, and (b) they had to be symmetrical. As for the results... wow! I've found myself staring at some of these, and being 'pulled in' to the images. I will be posting them on Artsonia soon - until then, enjoy these collages of their work...

Book bonanza!

If you've been following our Instagram feed over the past few weeks, you've seen that we've been fortunate enough to have had some new books coming into our classroom the last few weeks, which have been slotted to go into our classroom library. After having the students organize our classroom library, we took note of what categories of books we thought needed 'beefing up'. Between the $500 each classroom in the school received to buy new books, $250 of Scholastic book club bonus coupons I cashed in, and some very generous donations to our classroom library from Ms. Hannah, our Phys. Ed. teacher, we have added approximately 130 new books to what we already had in our room! The students are very excited, as am I - check out the pictures below to see all of the new books!

 

Diorama-rama!

Today, our class combined forces with Mrs. Steinhoff's Grade 4/5 class for Diorama-rama! Both classes had been working on creating dioramas in Science (Mrs. Steinhoff's class created dioramas for Habitats and Healthy Communities, while our class created Plants and Habitats dioramas), and wanted to show them off to the other classes in the school, so we decided to show them off together. We set up in the empty classroom, right next door to Mrs. Steinhoff's room, so the students of Radisson had a one-stop shop for all of their Science diorama viewing pleasure! Here are a few shots of some of the sharing that went on today...

SLC - Traditions and Sharing

This afternoon, we had an SLC (school-wide learning community) that revolved around traditions and sharing. We talked about different traditions that people had, and some of the teachers talked about traditions that they have with their families around the holidays. After that, the students got to share what some of their holiday traditions are, and then we talked about how one of our traditions at this time of year is sharing what we have (because at Radisson, our school motto is "We Care, We Share, and We Play Fair"!) with those who don't have as much - that tradition is our food drive for Winnipeg Harvest. It's a way for us to help others who are less fortunate to have a good holiday. The students then decorated hampers which we'll use to collect the food in each of the classes. Look for the letter that went home today for more information, and let's see how much food we can bring in!

Plants and Habitats dioramas - construction!

After finishing their research on plants and habitats, the students planned and began constructing dioramas, based on that research. They worked on them in Science yesterday and today, and they are looking really good! They're not quite ready to be fully revealed (we'll do that when they're finished), but here's a sneak preview...

More on Kidblog

I have a couple of things I'd like to add to yesterday's post about Room 18's Kidblogs. First, I apologize, but after giving all of the students a generic password to log on, I had them create their own individualized password... but then I forgot to activate the new password in the settings - oops! I have done that now, so everyone's password that was sent home with them should work. Second, I had a couple of students ask me today about using Kidblog on their iPad or iPod touch - if you have an iOS device, you can download the Kidblog app from the Apple App Store (you can find out more about the app here). When you open the app for the first time, click on the 'Login to Kidblog' button (first screenshot below). Then, where is asks for the class URL, type in "mrhoeppnersclass". Next, have your child select their username and type in their unique password. Then click on 'Login', and you're all set to go - your child will be able to post to their Kidblog using their/your wireless device. Isn't technology great?!

 

Kidblog!

I’m so excited that the students of Room 18 got to start working on their own Kidblogs today! Their Kidblogs are a place for them to share their thoughts and ideas with THE WHOLE WORLD!!!! It’s a safe place for them to share, because any posts or comments need to be approved by me before they get published. Before they started working on their own blogs today, we discussed how all of their posts need to meet the following criteria:

1) At least 4 sentences
2) All sentences start with an uppercase letter, and end with punctuation
3) Keep your posts appropriate
4) Add a descriptive title
5) No video
6) Keep your posts safe (no personal information such as your full name, home address, phone number, etc.)

Any posts that don’t follow these criteria will not be published until the students get a chance to change them, in order to meet these criteria. I am looking forward to seeing what the students have to say on their blogs! Make sure you check them out, too - you can find them by clicking on the Kidblog tab on the right-hand side of our blog.

Lest We Forget

As today was the last day of classes before Remembrance Day, the Radisson School held its Remembrance Day ceremony this morning. Many of the classes contributed to help put on the ceremony, including Room 18. The students from our class took what they had learned about writing haiku poems for Halloween, and wrote some haikus around the Remembrance Day learning they have been doing lately. Some of the students chose to share theirs at the ceremony this morning, but all worked really hard to craft really thoughtful poems, which you can see below. Lest we forget...