Procedural Writing: How to eat lunch in the classroom

As you've seen in some of our earlier posts, the class has been working hard on learning how to do procedural writing. Last week, the students worked in small groups to write a procedure on how to eat lunch in the classroom at Radisson School. After they finished working in their groups, we came together and used ideas from all of the groups to write the procedure as a whole class. I've included the finished product below. What do you think of it? Did we make it clear enough? Let us know in the comments section - thanks!

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How to eat lunch in the classroom

Supplies
- lunch (food & drink)
- quiet activity (drawing, reading, writing, etc.)

Steps
1) If the teacher has chosen you to do so, wash the desks/tables in the room.
2) Line up to wash your hands, when the adult in the room tells you to do so.
3) Wash your hands with soap and water, and then dry them.
4) Go to your backpack to get your lunch, and then bring it to your desk in the classroom.
5) Wait until the lunch bell rings to start eating.
6) Eat your lunch. While you are eating, you may talk to your neighbours quietly.
6a) If you finish eating before the adult in charge dismisses you, you can do your quiet activity at your desk.
7) When the adult in charge dismisses you, put your garbage in the garbage can (and make sure you put recyclable items in the blue box), and go out into the hall and put any containers or leftover food back in your backpack.
8) If it is outdoor recess, get ready to go outside for lunch recess (make sure you are dressed properly for the weather). If it is indoor recess, come back into the classroom, and find an appropriate activity on your own or with friends (check the indoor recess activity list for ideas).
9) Line up at the doors your classroom normally uses to go outside. Wait for the supervisor to tell you to go outside. When he/she does, the person at the front of the line holds the door open, so that the rest of the students can go outside safely.
10) Have fun!

Field trip: Bannock Point Petroforms

Today, we were lucky enough to take a field trip to the Whiteshell Provincial Park to see the Bannock Point Petroforms. The petroforms are stone representations created by First Nations people of different animals, people and abstract structures, and are believed to be approx. 1500 years old. We had talked about these yesterday in class (the students did some writing around them), and one of the things we had discussed was how we needed to show respect to the petroforms and the surrounding area when visiting there. I was so impressed by not only how respectful the students were at the site, but also in the very thoughtful and insightful questions and answers they provided to our (most excellent) interpreter Adam, a Parks Manitoba guide who took us on a tour of the site. Also, upon arriving back at the school, after the kids had departed the bus, the bus driver told me how impressed he was with the students' behaviour, and that they were one of the best-behaved groups he'd ever had the pleasure of transporting - wow! All of that, when combined with the amazing weather we had today (mostly sunny, with a slight breeze, and temperature of approx. 25C), made it easily one of the best days Room 18 has had this year! Check out the photos below for further proof...

Dancing in the park

It was awesome and fun! - Sara

I got to see a few of my friends from different school - it was fabulous! - Jaida

For the Grade 3s, we danced to four songs on our own, and five or six with all the other grades. - Kayleigh

Although I don't really like dancing, it was still really fun because we got to play football and soccer when we weren't dancing. - Nolan

I got to see one of my friends from swimming - he goes to a different school. - Braedon

Every year, the Grade 1-3 students learn dances in Phys. Ed. class. We then meet up with other schools from our school division, and everyone dances together - it's called 'Dancing in the Park'. It was a little cold and blustery today, but the rain held off, so we were able to get our dancing in. The students had a blast and worked hard (as evidenced by a few of them falling asleep on the bus on the way back to school!). Here are a few pictures of the students (and some of the teachers) in action!

Adding fractions for pizza: planning

The students have been learning about fractions in math the past few weeks, and lately have been working on adding and subtracting fractions. I had told the students last week that they would need to use their fraction addition/subtraction skills to achieve a classroom goal, but I didn't tell them what it was. The following day, I told them that they were going to have to use those skills to help plan a pizza party - needless to say, the room crackled with excitement! They broke off into groups of 4 and 5, and then figured out how many fractions of pizza they wanted, and the variety of pizza as well.

Today, we took the next step, and as a class, we added up all of those fractions to figure out what exactly we need to order. It took some work, and a couple of people (thanks to those volunteers!) had to shift their choices around a little bit, in order for us to get our final totals as close to whole pizzas as we could, but we did it! What a fun way to have the class working with adding and subtracting fractions, converting fractions to whole numbers, and rounding - it'll be even more fun when we order the pizza, and eat the 'fruits of their labour'!

Procedural writing: yum!

As you saw in an earlier post, we've been working on procedural writing lately. The other day, the students were tasked with writing a procedure to make a peanut butter sandwich (aka a recipe, of course!). They were unaware that once they were finished, I was going to take their recipes and attempt to make peanut butter sandwiches (using peanut-free soy nut butter, of course - we are in a school, after all!) using their recipes. As you can see from the pictures below, some of them weren't detailed enough, and if I'd never made a peanut butter sandwich before, and didn't previously know how, the results of following some of these recipes would have been (and were!) hilarious. It was a great example to the students of how, when you're writing a procedure for someone else to follow, you have to be sure to include a lot of detail and description (and some students did do a great job of that in their recipes).

Of course, after we all finished laughing, I made sandwiches for the class - having all of those supplies in front of them, and then NOT making sandwiches, would've have been downright cruel, right?!

April 2014 Book Reviews

Check out the Haiku Deck below - it has the latest book reviews (up to the end of April) from some of the students of Room 18.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

#eduphotoaday and #mathphotoaday

In Room 18, we LOVE Instagram photo challenges. Photo challenges are where someone will create a challenge to others (in these cases, challenges involving other classrooms), where there is a different topic every day that they are to try and take a photograph of, and then post to Instagram. Last year, my friend Ms. Clarke (a Grade 1/2 teacher in our division - you can check out the awesome stuff her classroom does at 200awesomedays.blogspot.ca) and I created #eduphotoaday as a way to combine art and writing. Our students came up with the different challenge topics, and we're back again doing the same thing this year. Ms. Clarke's students came up with the topics (all related to the Spring season) for this month, and our class will be coming up with the topics for next month. You can find out more about it at eduphotoaday.blogspot.ca.

Another photo challenge we are going to participate in is #mathphotoaday. This photo challenge revolves around different Math concepts, and trying to find them in our everyday lives. It's a new challenge (this is the first month), and I'm really excited to see the students looks at these Math concepts in a whole new light... and even learn some new ones along the way! Below you can find photos of the different photo challenges - follow us on Instagram (@mrhoeppnersclass), and see what the students come up with!