#eduphotoadayjune

If you've been following our classroom Instagram feed or reading the students' Kidblogs this month, you know that we've had a blast working on #eduphotoadaymay, connecting with other classrooms from across the city, the province, and the world! Well, while May is drawing to a close, it doesn't mean that the fun has to end... because #eduphotoadayjune is starting up this weekend! If you have an Instagram account, come on and join the fun!

French paper slide videos almost done!

After weeks of preparation, the students finally recorded their paper slide video plays of 'Les trois petits cochons' in French class. I have started uploading the videos to the web, so they will be ready for their debuts later this week - stay tuned!

We Create Change: final tally

After a couple of weeks of planning, preparing, and then carrying it out, Room 18 has finished the We Create Change campaign at Radisson School, the aim of which was to collect pennies (which are being phased out of circulation) to provide clean drinking water for people in the developing world. The students divided themselves up into four groups: posters (they made posters about the campaign, and plastered the school with them), classroom visits (prepared and delivered presentations about the campaign for each class in the school), announcements (they wrote and then delivered daily announcements over the school's PA system), and the coin group (they prepared containers to collect coins for each of the classrooms, and then collected, sorted, and counted the coins every day for a week). It was exciting to see the students organizing themselves with a minimal amount of guidance from me. Today we arrived at the final tally: 16 bags of pennnies (each worth $25), and another $60 of other change - altogether, this is more than enough money to provide 18 people with clean drinking water for life! I am so proud of the Radisson community for opening up their hearts (and 'dusty old jars', as one of my students wrote in the announcements!) to help others - way to go. As for my class, I couldn't be prouder of them - they worked hard and had fun doing this, and set a great example for the rest of the school on how to help others... and they did so with a great degree of independence. Bravo, Room 18... bravo!

Learning from old-time radio plays in Science

As I wrote last week, we are working on our wrap-up to our Sound unit in Science, which is going to be where the students (in groups) record a Reader's Theatre performance, and design and create their own sound effects for the performance. Today, we talked about how 'in the days before TV' (their were many gasps!), people were entertained by listening to radio plays, and how sound effects played a big part in creating images of the story in the listeners' minds. Below is a short film from 1938 featuring a radio play, which shows how they made some of the sound effects in the studio. The class first listened to the video (without seeing the images), and then guessed/discussed how they thought the sound effects were made. After, I played it for them again (this time also showing them the images), so they could see the difference. It was very interesting - some of their guesses were right on, and some were way off. Watch it for yourself, and see if you can guess in the first part of the video (where they don't show you how they made the sound effects) how they created the soundscape for the radio play - enjoy!

Thank you, Commander Hadfield, and good luck!

We watched a video about a song you sang, and you're going to land today. We sang one of your songs in Music - it was the ISS song. - Joey

There was a video that we watched, and Braylin and I almost cried because you're our Number 1 favourite astronaut, and we always watch your videos on YouTube. One of my favourites is the video where you were having lunch because it looked really good. I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. - Kyra

Commander Hadfield, how do you feel about getting back home, where everyone's not in space? I think you feel really happy to get back on Earth. I think you're also sad that you have to leave space, because it's a wonderful and beautiful space out there. - Alexandra

Commander Hadfield, how was your last day in space? I hope you had fun! I liked watching all of the things you were doing in space. My favourite video was the song called 'Space Oddity'. - Gal

Was it fun being able to fly around in the space station, Commander Hadfield? I tried flying down here - it hasn't worked! - Hailey M.

I would really like to go into space one day. It must be fun to be floating in mid-air, and seeing all of your stuff floating. - Dylan

You're my favourite astronaut, Chris Hadfield. My favourite video you made is 'Space Oddity'. I would really want to go into space one day. - Marie

It has been absolutely wonderful to share the exploits of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with the class over the past few months. Ever since I was a young boy, I have been fascinated by space and the idea of working/travelling in space, and it has been great to share that passion with my students (and to see some of them become totally enamoured with the idea as well!). Yesterday, Cmdr. Hadfield posted a wonderful version of himself singing a version of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity', with the lyrics amended slightly to reflect his time on the ISS - you can watch it below. Also, you can watch him return live to Earth tonight, by watching the webcast, which I've also embedded below in the blog below. Good luck, Cmdr. Hadfield, and thanks for showing the world what Canadians can do - we're proud of you!

Live video from your iPhone using Ustream

Recess Activity Day

Today was Recess Activity Day. We went outside, and there was a whole bunch of stations. There was soccer, football, switch, 4-square, Pepsi balls, Frisbee, and baseball, and it was really fun! - Cameron

After lunch, we had a special event, and it was RAD Day. Cameron and me were playing football, which was my favourite thing to play, and Evan was playing with us after. Then, after 10 minutes, Cameron and me went to play soccer. - Gal

Today at RAD Day, we had tether-ball, and we played basketball, and Cameron, Gal, Jacell, Dylan, and me were playing at the little basketball nets, and it kept falling down. - Alexandra

When we were playing soccer, Kurt kicked the ball and it went straight into the goal. Then, we kept playing, and then they got close to our net, and then I got hit in the face with the ball. I went to the office and got ice on my face. I couldn't feel my face, but now I'm alright. - Hailey M.

This afternoon, we had RAD (Recess Activity Day) at school. Ms. Hanna and the Grade 5 Leadership students set up stations for all of the students in the school, so that they could play with the equipment in the rotating recess activity bins, in order to learn the rules, practice the principles of fair play, and... to have fun! It was a great day to be outside - thanks to Ms. Hanna and the Leadership students for organizing the great afternoon for us!

May the sound be with you!

As we get ready to start the last activity for our Sound unit in Science, we watched part of the 'Empire of Dreams' documentary on the making of the original 'Star Wars' trilogy of movies (when I showed them the DVD cover, there was a lot of excitement in the room!). Specifically, I wanted the students to see some of the work that went into creating the sound effects used in the movies, to get them thinking as they get ready to design some of their own sound effects for a Readers' Theatre performance they will be working on in the near future - stay tuned for more details...

Also, in case you didn't know, Saturday was 'Star Wars Day', which always falls on May 4th, because then you can say to people "May the 4th be with you!" ;)

Bravo, Mr. Oertel!

Earlier this week, we were fortunate enough to have Andreas Oertel, author of 'The Archeaolojesters' series of books we've been reading, respond to the email we wrote to him. He mentioned that he would be sending us some bookmarks. Well, they came today! The students were excited when I told them that they had arrived, and showed them the envelope... and we were even more excited when we opened up the envelope and saw that he signed each one, as well as adding a caricature of himself and a unique message on each one. Wow! I can't say enough about Mr. Oertel - he answered our email in under two hours, and we received personalized bookmarks from him in the mail only a few days later... not to mention, he's a really great writer! Thank you so much, Mr. Oertel - you have really gone above and beyond for our students!

#eduphotoadaymay

As posted last month, my friend Ms. Malkoske and I applied for and received a technology grant for our classrooms, which we used to purchase some iPod Touch devices... which should be here any day now! The main reason for wanting to get these devices into our classroom was to participate in an Instagram project that we came up with called #eduphotoaday (if you missed our post about Instagram, you can read it here). The project works like this: for each day during the month of May there is a word or a phrase. The students in the participating classes will take Instagram photos that represent that word or phrase. They will hashtag it with #eduphotoadaymay and with the word or phrase of the day. They next day, the students can look at all of the Instagrams from the previous day and use them as writing inspiration. The participating classes can then share their writing with each other, and leave comments under the photos that inspired them. We have classes from Kindergarten to Senior Years participating... and it's only been one day, so we're really excited to see where this goes, and how many classes end up participating! If you want to find out more about our project, check out the blog at http://eduphotoaday.blogspot.ca/.