Beauty and the Beast

Yesterday, we were lucky enough to go and watch the TCI drama production of Beauty and the Beast. The students really enjoyed it, and did a great job of being a respectful and appreciative audience. Here are some of their comments on the play:

It was romantic because of all the kissing at the end. - Brady

It was really long - about two hours... but it was awesome. - Matthew

There was a lot of action in the play, and it was really awesome. - Avery

It was just like the real movie. - Faith

Some parts were scary, and some parts were cool, and some parts were singing. - Wesley

Belle's dress was beautiful because it was all pink - I expected it to be yellow, because in the movie, her dress was yellow. - Kayleigh

The wolves were funny when they chased Belle's dad behind the audience. - Braedon

All of the sound effects were very realistic. My favourite was when Belle's father's machine wouldn't work, and it exploded. - Connor

They did a really good job of acting, and they were bang-on with the sound effect - they did the action right when the sound effects happened. - Tyrell

They made it amazing when the Beast came back to life - they used a strobe light and a smoke machine. - Robert

I really liked it when Gaston and the Beast were fighting, because it was funny when Gaston tried to stab the Beast. - Eric S.

(waiting for the play to start)

1SE: 1 Second Everyday (October 2014)

Here is our 1SE video from October - again, I've struggled over the last couple of weeks to get this working with the sound properly synced - I suppose I should've just posted it as is, instead of spending so much time trying to get it 'perfect' (I guess that's my 'Type A'-ness coming through!). So, here it is - I hope you enjoy it (despite the A/V issues)!

Room 18's 1SE - October 2014 from Jeff Hoeppner on Vimeo.

More new books for our classroom library

Over the past few weeks, I've done some more book shopping. Back near the beginning of the year, the students helped to re-organize our classroom library and helped me to figure out what kinds of books we needed more of. That way, when I was ordering books online, or out at McNally Robinson, I knew what I needed to buy - namely, more books on poetry, space, holidays, nature, science, fairy tales, Math, as well as graphic novels.

After getting the books ready to put in the library over the past couple of weeks, today was the day the students could start reading them - here is what we had for new books:

I then randomly chose students, one at a time, to come up and choose a book to start reading (to avoid a stampede!). Once the 24 students each picked a book, I put the rest into our library, which is now nicely stocked! In my nine years of teaching, this is easily the best classroom library that I've ever had - it's so exciting to see something interesting available for all of the students on a given day, no matter what genre they might feel like reading!