New carpet!

As I was out at a meeting for the last part of the day, I was unable to get the students to contribute to our blog today. However, we had some pretty big news in Room 18 today: we got a carpet for our meeting area. Now, I've never had a meeting area carpet before, but I thought we needed one - if the students are going to be sitting on the floor for extended periods of time while they take part in a lesson, it's going to be a lot more comfortable for them if they are sitting on a carpet vs. a hard tile floor. Since I've never had one before, I thought I should get a really good one. So here it is: pretty sweet, if you ask me... and the students, who were super-pumped to see it when they walked into the room this morning :)

Cross Country Run!

We had cross-country today. We had lots of fun! - Sydney
For most of the day, we didn't have to do any work. - Joey
We went to Bird's Hill Park for cross-country. Some of us made tonnes of new friends. - Dylan
On the way back, we saw a long train. There was a big line up. - Jenna
Some of us saw Mr. L's little brother. Mr. L is a lunch supervisor at Radisson school. - Robyn
My dad came to cross-country, and I rode with him on the bus. - Braylin

No Pens Day Wednesday!

Today we had our Terry Rox run. - Jenna
Today we had 'No Pens Day Wednesday'. - Cam H
Today we figured out tricky questions in Math. - Hailey M.
We we were working in groups of 4 at our table. We were talking about different math problems. - Joey
We used cubes, popsicle sticks, straws, and money to solve a question. - Taylor
We read for 23 minutes for Daily 5. - Marcus
For the second time, we didn't do Number of the Day. - Dylan

Sometimes, as a teacher, you can have the whole day planned out, only to change some/all of it up on a whim, upon getting a great idea - that happened today. This morning at breakfast, while I was catching up on all the Twitter posts I had missed while I was asleep, my eye caught a tweet that mentioned 'No Pens Wednesday'. It's a movement in the UK, where teachers make a concerted effort to have the students do all of their work without writing - they do a lot of talking (which most of them are used to) and a lot of listening (which is not quite as easy for many students!) in class. It was no problem to go without pens/pencils during The Daily 5 (we are up to 23 minutes of read-to-self - I'm so impressed with the class!). However, it was a lot more challenging in Math. Initially, the students were completely unsure of how to keep track of their ideas in their own heads, as well as trying to share their thinking with their classmates. However, once we had a discussion, The students worked in their table groups to try and solve some problems they were assigned. This photo shows the manipulatives they had to choose from:

There were a couple of groups working on a money problem:

The groups weren't able to solve the money problems on their own, but once we worked together as a whole class, the students were quickly able to figure out the answer.

Another problem was: Some Tripods and Bipods few from planet Zeno. There were at least two of each of them. Tripods have 3 legs. Bipods have 2 legs. There were 23 legs altogether. How many Bipods and Tripods were there? Here is one group's solution:The third problem was: The toy shop stocks tricycles and go-cars. The tricycles have 3 wheels, and the go-carts have 5 wheels. There were 37 wheels altogether. How many tricylces and go-carts were there? Here is one group's solution:

It was a great experience for the students and myself - as a result, I'm thinking of implimenting 'No Pens Day Wednesday' on a more frequent basis!

Another great Art class!

On Thursday is the cross-country run at Bird's Hill Park. - Logan
Everyone is going to bring a quarter tomorrow for Terry Fox. - Alexandra
We had Gym today. - Gal
Tomorrow we're having our Terry Fox run in the last two periods. - Cam H.
Today we had Art class. - Hailey M.

We did some more writing in Art class today, inspired by the image we started working with last week - B.J.O. Nordfeldt's Green Woods (1950). The students were asked to make a list of details (shapes, colours, things, etc.) that they noticed about the image. Then, they chose their two favourite details and wrote about them, as if they were those very details in the image. They wrote about what they were noticing, feeling, etc. in the painting. We didn't have time for everybody to share, but it was amazing to hear and see the different ideas the students were coming up with - I can hardly wait until the next class, when the students will be able to create their own piece of art, inspired by Green Woods!

Shelfari!

We had fun on the new play structure. - Taylor
We had our first time at the Library. - Marie
We have seven marbles. We earned four today. - Gal
We got bookmarks when we went to the Library. - Braylin
We wrote in our journals. - Hailey M.
We got new books at the Library. It was really cool because in Grade 2 we never got to read the big, humongous books. - Dylan
We learned about the power of nine on the SMARTBoard. - Jenna
We wrote for seven minutes in Daily 5. - Cam H.
We played the Power of Nine card game. - Lexi

Today, we added Shelfari to our classroom blog! If you scroll down to the bottom of our blog, you will find a virtual bookshelf, that contains the books we have read together as a class, so far - that is Shelfari. As we read more books, we will put them on our Shelfari, so that you can keep up with all of the awesome things were are reading in class! Who knows... you might even want to read some of those books yourself!

We had a fun day!

We had our Mystery Motivator today. I built my name in squares. - Joey
Today was a Terry Fox SLC. On Wednesday, September 28th we're having the Terry Fox run. - Jenna (Thank you to Jenna for also coming up with the title of today's post!)
We had choice time today, because we earned all of our 20 marbles! - Braylin
We are starting to earn 20 marbles again. Right now we already have three. - Gal
When we went to the SLC, we thought we were supposed to wear our family shirts, but Ms. Cross changed her mind, so we had to take them off and put them back. - Robyn
At the SLC, they said if we earned $3000 for Terry Fox, we get to watch a movie and wear pajamas! - Hailey M.
We talked about Terry Fox. - Taylor

The big news in our class today was that the the students had their first Mystery Motivator. To get the Mystery Motivator, the class has to earn 20 marbles - they can earn the marbles for things like being really quiet out in the hall for their bathroom/water break, working quietly in class, or when another teacher compliments the class on what a great job they're doing. The class has no idea what the Mystery Motivator is until the 20th marble is earned, at which time the envelope is opened, and the surprise is revealed. The first Mystery Motivator was that the class could have 'choice time' for the last two periods of the day - the photos are of some of the activities the students chose. What a great way to end the day - way to go, room 18! Only 17 more marbles to earn before the next Mystery Motivator is revealed :)

The Daily 5 - building stamina!

We read with a partner for Daily 5 for 9 minutes. - Sydney and Ava
I had fun reading with Gal because it was super-fun. He brought his 3D shark book to look at. - Dylan
We played Secret Agent dodgeball in Gym. - Jenna
We have Health for the third time this month with Ms. Beach. - Robyn
We put two reading strategies on the CAFE board today. - Tyler
Ms. Cross and Ms. Derkson went down the glider on the new play structure! - Braylin
When we had Daily 5, Logan read a really funny book to me. It was called 'Feed Me'. - Cam H.
We got to be in the gym two times today because we had Phys. Ed. and Health. - Logan
We had Social Studies today. - Lexi
We did Number of the Day. Today's number was 12. - Cameron W.
We did writing in Daily 5 today. - Hailey K.

It's been a year of trying new things in the classroom from me; one of these things is The Daily 5. 'The Daily 5' is a book written by two teachers (Joan Moser and Gail Boushey), and is all about helping students to develop the daily habits of reading and writing independently, as well as working with their classmates. The '5' in the Daily 5 are:

1. Read to self


2. Read to someone


3. Listen to reading


4. Work on writing


5. Word work

Eventually, when the students are done building stamina in all of these areas, I will be able to meet and conference with students on a one-on-one basis, or in small groups, while they are independently working on one of the '5'. So far, we've been practicing read to self (we're up to 19 minutes), read to someone/listen to reading (9 minutes), and work on writing (5 minutes). I am so impressed with how hard the students have been working at this - I know with what I have seen so far that it will be way easier for me to work with individuals and small groups in the classroom than it ever has before! Below are a few photos from this afternoon of the students while they were building their stamina in read to someone/listen to reading and work on writing.