Random Acts of Kindness

In case you are not aware, this week (Feb. 10-16) is Random Acts of Kindness Week. So, this morning, we made a list of random acts of kindness we had done for others, or someone else had done for us, and talked about how good it made us feel to both give and receive a random act of kindness. After that, the students wrote in their journals about a random act of kindness they could do for someone this week. This is an activating activity for a number of things we are going to be doing this week - stay tuned!

Perimeter and Area paper slide videos: brainstorming

We got ideas of things we should do for our paper slide videos. The paper slide videos are on perimeter and area. - Zoey

In order for the students to show their understanding of what they have learned over the past few weeks about perimeter and area in Math, they will be making paper slide videos on these topics, and posting them to our blog. Today, we talked about what a paper slide video is, and watched some other paper slide videos made by my students last year, in order to make a list of what they thought makes for a good paper slide video. After that, they brainstormed about what they would need to include in the videos, to show others what they had learned about perimeter and area (and maybe, to teach some others, too!). Here are the ideas that they came up with:

Zoey takes over our blog!

Today's classroom reporter for the blog was Zoey. Here are a few of her observations of the day:

In Math, we did number of the day. The number was 755. We also checked our perimeter and area sheets.
In the afternoon, we read the Three Little Pigs in French, and in Music, we learned a new welcome song and played drums. At the end of the day, we did Social Studies in the computer lab. The grade 3's were doing their trading cards about Canadian citizens, and the grade 4's wrote their facts about the different Canadian regions on a paper, to make trivia game questions. - Zoey

Great job reporting on our day, Zoey!

Classroom reporters - making our notes into a post

Today, I conferred with Emily and Nolan about what went on in our day - here are the notes I transcribed from them:

Here is what they decided to post, based on our notes:

"This morning in Science, the Grade 4s were working with Ms. Bell on Light and Sound in Science. We were doing experiments on reflection with flashlights, mirrors, and people. I learned that when you shine a light on a mirror, it bounces off the mirror that you're shining it on toward the object, and it goes back and forth. The Grade 3s were working with Mr. H. in Science, on friction. We did an experiment for friction. We used an elastic band and paper clips for pulling a sled. We tried it on its own first, and then we put wheels under it, and then we put salt under it, to see what happened. It made less friction with the wheels and with the salt." - Emily and Nolan

I thought they did a really good job of talking about what they did in Science today, adding detail and description to the notes we made together. I'm looking forward to having the students report on our day on a regular basis, starting next week.

Classroom reporters

As you can see, it's been a long time since our last post... much too long (sorry, folks)! In order to address this, we're going to start having classroom reporters in Room 18, in order to make sure that we keep our readers up to date (regularly!) on what's going on in our classroom. The reporter(s) will then take those notes, and write a blog post based on them. The classroom reporter job will be a rotating one, and all students will get a chance to take part in the job. I've made up a note-making template, in order for them to keep track of what goes on in our day - today, we worked together as a class to come up with some notes of what went on in our day. Here's what we came up with:

 

 

 

We will do the same tomorrow, but we'll take it one step further, and talk about how to take some of our notes, and use them to write an interesting blog post. Stay tuned!

Watercolour painting: birch trees on snow

The students created some amazing watercolour paintings right before the holiday break, and I've just finished uploading them to our Artsonia page - scroll down and click on the Artsonia link on the right-hand side of the page to check them out. Here's a sneak preview:

Social Studies projects: brainstorming

Happy New Year, everybody! Hopefully, you had a fun and restful holiday break. Here in Room 18, we are right back into the thick of things! Today in Social Studies, we began brainstorming for the different projects that the students will be working on. The Grade 3 students will be selecting a famous Canadian, and creating a trading card based on that person, and how he/she has shown that they were/are a good citizen of our country. The Grade 4 students will be creating a board game based on the six natural geographic regions of Canada (Arctic and Taiga, Pacific and Western Mountains, Central Plains, Boreal Shield, Mixedwood Plains, Atlantic Region). In their grade groups, the students started brainstorming today on what information they thought they'd like others to know about their topics, and I was very impressed with the ideas that both groups came up with, which you can see in the images below (we'll keep you posted on the progress they make with these projects, over the next few weeks)...