Tag Archives: see saw

Sunday Funday!

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Hello Everyone!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I’m sure the beautiful weather got many of you outdoors! It’s hard to believe that it has been so hot already and it’s still only May!

Here’s a little recap of last week at school

-Outdoor Classroom Day! We spent day outside doing mostly what we do inside, with the exception of technology! Some of the kids loved it, some liked it and some would rather spend a shorter time outside (like we are doing for our 30 for 30). It. Was. Hot! Which was part of the reason some kids didn’t love it (and why some did)! It’s important for us to get outside regardless of the weather. We can’t spend 5 months inside because it’s too cold…or 3 months in br sure it’s too hot! We just need to adjust to the weather! On Tuesday we moved around to find shade, took a break inside for lunch and choir and made sure to drink plenty of fluids. The community clean up and seed planting seemed to be on the list of favourite activities. Thank you to the 3/4 team for taking on this outdoor adventure. A big thank you to the students who are self proclaimed “not outdoorsy people” for not only participating, but making the most of their day

-Our seeds are starting to sprout! Stay tuned via Seesaw to watch the growth process! As the kids notice changes they will snap a photo and label it with any important information and add it to their Seesaw portfolio. This is a great way to talk about this experiment at home!

-We have another growing experiment happening at school! This is also your Ask Me question for the weekend! Together we brainstormed different places to  grow plants in the room where the amount of sunlight would vary and provide different watering options for our pumpkin seeds. We have settled on 6 different ideas and now you need to make a prediction and comment what seeds you think will have the best growth (via the Seesaw post). We have charts up around the room to track the watering schedule and growth. This should be fun!!

-Our Book Clubs are almost over!! We will finish reading/making this week and then share our experiences and recommendations with the other groups. Groups that are making iMovie trailers will have their video posted to Seesaw as they are finished. What a fantastic app! The kids are doing a great job creating the trailers and making the connection that it’s actually the technology version of writing a book recommendation!

-Divide and Conquer! We are working through division, fractions and decimals right now! These are often the concepts that students “fear” the most…until we get going. Then they realize that we use these skills in our everyday lives and that knowing how to add/subtract/multiply and understanding place value all really help! However, some students are realizing that not having recall for the multiplication facts is affecting their speed for learning the basic facts for division. By now we should be able to recall the facts for 2 to 20, 5 to 50, 10 to 100, 3 to 30 and 4 to 40. The students may still be developing the answers for the remaining facts, but they should be able to determine them using a strategy they know. Take a few minutes each day to listen to your child skip count or do flashcards. It’s will help with their confidence 😊

What’s happening this week?!

-Family Life is starting! You all should have received a note to give you the heads up. Helen is working with the grade 4s and I will be working with the grade 3s. In grade 3 we will talk about personal safety and families. The grade 4s will learn about growth and development in changing bodies.

-We Belong Vertical Groups #3! Our final session will happen on Tuesday! The students will rotate to whichever activity they haven’t done yet. I believe our cluster will be going to the treaty activity.

-We will continue our daily edits, listen to Wishtree and post our May reading and writing samples. It will also be days 23-27 of our 30 for 30 challenge!!

-The 30 day environmental pledges should be completed by now. We will be checking in with the school and community to ask if they’ve completed their pledge and then take our posters down. We generated a lot of interest and many important conversations. Well done 123!!

That covers it for this week! I’m sad not to be ending this post with a #GoJetsGo but our team has a great season and we will be ready for a new run to the cup for 2019!

Until next time,

Danielle

March Madness!

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Hi Everyone!

Happy weekend! Today I am going to share a quick overview of our week and give you some details about next week at school! Next week might feel a little like “March Madness” as we prepare for Student LED Conferences BUT we will have lots of great learning to share with you come Thursday and Friday…we promise not to disappoint!

Recap!

-Our Literacy Circles with Room 122 have come to an end. We had a lot of fun learning about different ecosystems and are ready to share what we know with each other and with members of the school community. Each group has made a poster that will be put up just before conferences! The art piece that the students have created are very neat as well…but you’ll have to wait to see those too!

-We are still reading The Magic Misfits and will finish by Spring Break for sure!

-March is Nutrition Month! I know that many of the kids enjoyed tracking what they ate last weekend. Feel free to continue this activity. I can print off more copies of the tracking sheet for those students who are interested! During these lessons about nutrition we need to remember that it is our goal to educate and to make positive changes in our health, but not to shame or judge others for what they are eating.

-Multiplication is going well…I woke up singing the ‘Multiplication Mash Up’ the other morning!! On Friday we used games, flashcards, decks of cards, whiteboards and manipulatives to practice basic facts. The kids chose a partner and worked on addition, subtraction or multiplication to try and develop recall for facts. They had a choice of partner and activity. Some kids even invented their own games. I always like math sessions like this because the kids learn so much from each other as well as put their math skills into practice. Next week we will use LEGO as a manipulative and see what the class can come up with! Hint: Think arrays!

-We are always trying to use proper mathematical language so I post a changing “Math Word Wall” to help remind students of the proper terminology. Our newest terms are factor and product. Check with your child to see if they can tell you what that means!

-We have finished talking about contributions from Canada’s North (for now at least). It was fun to see what kinds of things we have or use today that originated from Indigenous cultures!

-The book order has been submitted and the books should arrive sometime next week!

-The Ask Me question this weekend is about writing about what you have read this weekend (in the Home Reading folder). I’m always so interested to see what the students are reading at home. From the Home Reading folders I can help make suggestions of reading material based on interests of the kids (to help other students choose books to read). Reading a series is great. It’s also great to take a break and read books that are not challenging. We do however, need to strike a balance of what we read and learn to love a variety of reading material.

We didn’t make our goal of keeping reading logs up to date in February and March isn’t looking much better. There are students who are always logging and I appreciate that so much! For some other students when I don’t see anything written it makes me wonder if you’re reading at all. It’s so important to develop regular reading habits, despite how busy we are with activities and special events. Fostering a love of reading now can last forever 🙂

I found this Tweet from the National Council of the Teachers of English and thought that it was fitting to share. I really encourage families to have a Read Aloud time with stories as we all as chapter books. It’s such a great way to develop literacy skills!

-Our animal research is complete!! We will take the notes we’ve made from doing research and organize them into sentences and paragraphs in our own words. We will also give credit to where the information came from. These informational writing pieces should be ready for you to read at conferences!

Next week!

Speaking of conferences…I have a checklist for each student to keep track of things that need to be ready to share with parents. This will help to keep each student organized as we continue to work on time management and accountability. Also-since we will be seeing you soon there might be a lull in Seesaw posts (to make sure some of our learning is something we haven’t shared with you yet). As always…thank you for your Seesaw comments. We really love the “likes” and hearing what you have to say about our learning. Guess what?! You will have a Seesaw task to do with your child at conferences! It’s a reflection piece! We are going to post some “talking points” for you to think about before conferences begin and then families will create and post a video to Seesaw during the conference that will become part of the students’ online portfolios!!

-We are borrowing some new technology from the WSD! On Monday we are getting Spheros…which are like “coding balls”. Our goal is to learn to use them and create a game that families can play together during conferences!

-We will continue to use Twitter as a way to learn more about animals, their habitats, adaptations for survival and the impact humans have on the environment. There are so many great examples on Twitter about the things we are learning about. The kids LOVE looking through what I’ve “liked”. I was against Twitter a few years ago. I guess it’s because I didn’t understand it or how it could benefit me as a teacher. I’m so glad that I developed an open mindset! There is junk to sift through of course, but the conversations based on the ‘good tweets’ we’ve had and the questions that have come up are so valuable. When I find something “cool” or “unusual” or “surprising” I actually can’t wait to share it with the class!!

-WTW Test Update: All students from Ms Solomon’s groups and Helen’s group have a test on Monday. Students were all reminded (more than once) to transfer their words over to their Home Reading folders. I hope you were all showing great responsibility and are ready for Monday!

Enjoy your weekend! Have fun reading!! I’m headed out to pick up a new book that might just become our next Read Aloud choice!! (Any guesses on what it might be about?!)

P.S.- Report cards go home on Monday. You will also receive your conference time. It is written on the pink sheet that you wrote your preferred time on. Only one copy of the pink sheet is sent home, so if it isn’t with your child’s report card then it has been sent home with a sibling!

-Time change is happening this weekend…don’t forget to  “Spring” your clocks forward an hour!

Until next time,

Danielle

January or July?!?

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Well, well, well…isn’t this mild temperature a nice break? How long can it last? I am hoping until Thursday, January 25 at least (to allow for a great day at the Zoo!).

This week’s Ask Me question was posted on See Saw and is to be answered in the Home Reading folders. The reason I started posting the Ask Me question on See Saw is because I can go into more detail than before when the kids were writing one sentence. It is also convenient for you to contact me with any questions. It’s too bad that we cannot post an activity and have you answer using See Saw…but this is the best we can do…for now at least!

The Ask Me question is about students naming their “Top 3 moments of last week”. I’d also like the students to go into some detail as to why those are their top moments and what they have learned.

Here is a recap of last week!

-We read a lot of Pax! I know that it is kind of a heavy book, with content that is allowing for a lot of conversation, but the class is doing great with it! It is really helping to spark some questions, wonderings and thoughts about habitats and the impact of humans and natural disasters have on animals.

-I’ve been finding some great material on Twitter about nature and animals. Each day we’ve been looking at these tweets, reading the articles and watching video clips that go along with them. Why have we never done this before?! The sharing we have during and after this time of day is very impressive. If you find anything worth sharing while you read the paper, surf the net or peruse Twitter please let me know. It’s teaching us about things that are happening on our planet RIGHT now!

Discovery of Canada’s Deepest Cave Found in B.C.

Caribou Rescue

Octopus Colour Change

4Ocean

We also looked at areas such as the oil spill of the coast of China and the impacts on the environment, animals and the world and a new underwater cave found in Mexico that is believed to be the biggest flooded cave ever that might link back to the Maya Civilization AND Helen shared a video about the most disgusting pile of garbage that is just lying in the ocean.

This is powerful stuff and a great conversation starter for home too!

-We did some more research on the White-tailed Deer. This is our starting point for our next inquiry. We are going through some of the research together to help learn the process of how to take notes, scanning websites to make sure they are credible and what we are looking for and taking down the website names to give credit to those who wrote the material that we are borrowing from

Facts about deer

Facts about deer

-We are pretty much done with addition and have started subtraction. Over the past weeks we have been meeting in Grade groups and really focussing on math concepts. We are slowing things down, using lots of manipulatives, playing games, doing mental math to build recall of basic facts, etc. Back in Room 123 we will do one more day of addition practice and send that work home! I will keep families informed of students who can benefit with more practice with 3 and 4 digit addition and basic facts. If you have flashcards at home…use them, even just a few minutes per day. *See last week’s post for some of the ideas we came up with as a class to practice math at home.

-We did all 3 writing samples that we said we would be doing last week! Narrative, Informational and Persuasive! Check out what the very persuasive writers of Room 123 convinced me to do…

Global School Play Day

After reading through everyone’s work it is clear that we have great ideas and have been working hard on choosing exciting words instead of always using common words. Some of the students are really able to demonstrate a sense of voice and their writing really sounds like ‘them’. There was a lot of evidence of titles and an attempt at opening and closing sentences. This is something we will continue to work on. Editing skills are going to be a real focus. It seems that the students can tell me all the ‘rules’ but are not always transferring these skills into their everyday writing.

-Circle of Life choir: we’ve been practicing all of the songs for the divisional musical! Ms V says a note will be sent home early next week.

-Zoo field trip! The kids have ranked the 3 choices for the programs we have set up for the zoo (field trip on Thursday, January 25).

ARCTIC ECOLOGY

Discover what it means to be an Arctic ecologist. Students will discover the growing field of Arctic ecology through an active exploration of the Journey to Churchill exhibit.

AWESOME ADAPTATIONS

How do animals survive the heat and rain of the tropics or the cold winters in the Arctic tundra? Students will learn how animals survive in their habitat and study specific characteristics of animals here at the Zoo through age appropriate activities! Choose from Arctic or Tropical Adaptations.

RAINFORESTS

Tropical rainforests are considered the lungs of the planet. Through a variety of activities, you will discover how rain forests provide valuable resources like medicine, habitat, and oxygen. Their location, geography and climate provide an essential support system to an immense variety of animals, plants, and people.

The 3/4 classes will be mixed and put into groups based on interest. We will do our best to give everyone their first choice of program BUT the group size has a maximum and each teacher should be bringing the same amount of students.

After the programs we will have lunch and explore the zoo. I’m able to take one volunteer. If you are interested…please let me know!

-AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) Awareness Day on Wednesday, January 17. If you saw our Instagram post you would’ve seen the name of each of the 6 stations. It was a great day to educate the students about different methods of communication. Lori (from Room 113) came to talk to us yesterday about her job in the Autism Centre. She showed us this amazing video which helped us to learn more about Autism.

Amazing Things Happen

 

I hope that helps give you some ideas to write about!

As for next week…

-No school on Monday, January 22

-The book order has been sent in! Books should arrive next week 🙂

-I am still missing a few field trip notes. If you haven’t signed and returned the note please do so right away

-Tuesday is Outdoor Education day. Let’s cross our fingers the weather cooperates and we can get outside and play!

-My goal is to read another 50-60 pages of Pax. I think we will finish by the end of the month!

-I’m going to try and create an editing activity for See Saw that the kids can do from the computer lab. No idea if it will work, but if it does I think it can really help with editing practice and show you, as parents, where your child can benefit from more practice

-We are going to be learning about Canada’s North in the next few weeks. We are going to look at our North through the Arts

-I’m hoping by the end of the week the students will have an idea of what animal they would like to learn more about. They will be studying their habitat and the impact things like weather, natural disasters, human activity, etc. have on that animal and their habitat.

Have a great weekend. Enjoy the weather!

Until next time,

Danielle

Learn As We Go!

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Hi!!

We only have 2 more weeks until the Winter break! That’s so unbelievably crazy! I’ll keep today’s post more about things we need to know to make sure we all know what to expect for the last two weeks of school!

-Ask Me… this week’s question had us trying something new! I posted the question as an activity in See Saw in hopes you’d be able to do it from home. We talked about how that might not work, but that we wouldn’t know if we didn’t try! Well…it didn’t work as planned! On my class app there is a spot for activities but that doesn’t appear to be on the family version. To fix the problem I have resent the question as a note that was put into everyone’s journal. I hope you see it…if not we will see if anyone remembers the question (about our experience with coding with Jon from the STEAM program). I think we will try this again next week so I can write more details for parents. Any thoughts?

-The Santa to a Senior program was a huge success! I was able to pick up 4 pairs of fuzzy socks with grips, 4 boxes of soft cookies, 2 types of body wash AND together with Room 122 we bought 6 boxes of Boost to help supplement the diet of seniors in this program. You were so generous! Thanks so, so, so much. Sarah is going to love our gift and the kind words from the children. I’ll be delivering all the gifts with Cathy after school on Monday 🙂

-We are currently writing in a “Gratitude Journal” as part of our mindfulness practice. We come in right after lunch and sit and write until 1:15. This is a time to reflect on what we have and how we show our gratitude. It’s a time to write. Not to focus on having perfect spelling and grammar. We haven’t decided if I will even read them yet. Sometimes it’s nice to write for ourselves and not worry about someone else being the audience. Thanks to Tamara for the idea!!

-The concert song is really coming together! The We Belong winter concert is going to be lovely!! I hope you’ve read the email about clothing and are able to wear the requested clothing for the concert. Please remember-if you do not have a tie (boys only) let me know and we will find one for you! Notes about tickets went home on Friday. If you did not receive a note please check your child’s backpack and/or ask for an extra at the office

-A second “yellow” note was sent home on Friday as well. It is about a bake sale happening and asks for volunteers for baking and possibly helping out. A student in 126 is doing this as part of her genius Hour project. Please let us know if you are able to bake or volunteer on that day!

-We are carolling!! If you’d like to join us with the next sing alongs…please do! Sing along dates are: December 11 @1:00 and December 21 @1:00

-Thanks again for all your support with See Saw. The kids love it when we post something and parents like and comment right away! We hope you enjoy the “Public Service Announcements” as much as we like sending them!

Until next time,

Danielle

Take time to stop and smell the roses…or tree this holiday season!!

Feeling Special!!

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Happy Weekend!

What?!?!? It feels like it was just Monday!! They do say that time flies when you’re having fun…and Life in Room 123 is no exception 😀

I came home to this scene on Friday…I just had to share!

How many deer do you see?!
P.S. I have a regular Buck that hangs out in the yard…I’ve named him Hela …short for Hellebuyck 😉 #GoJetsGo

What. A. Week! (Let’s recap!)

– We told you our plans to contact Esta Spalding AND things couldn’t have been more exciting for us! I loved getting your responses about our news via See Saw! It was so great to hear that the kids came home and wanted to talk about how Esta actually wrote back to us (and promptly I might add!). It was also pretty cool to share what we wrote to Esta (through See Saw) before I sent away our letters. Can you believe that she’s going to send us a sneak peek of her newest…not yet published book?!!! She has made a believer out of us! Next up…writing to Jon Scieszka since we have finished Frank Einstein and the Anti Matter Motor?!?! Maybe!!!

-Now that you know we are done reading our latest read aloud you should know that we’ve already started another! It’s called The Unicorn in the Barn. At first there were a few skeptics, but it has started out in a pretty interesting way!

-This leads into this week’s Ask me question! The question reads “Ask me about read alouds in 123.” The goal is for the students to talk to their families about what we are reading (or have read) and why we read together. What learning happens during read aloud time? We had a chat about this and some great answers came up, such as:

-to talk about different types of books, to be introduced to new authors and series, to expand our vocabulary, to practice comprehension skills such as making inferences and checking for understanding, to make connections to other books and experiences and to hear how fluency, accuracy and expression is modelled. I love, love, love this time with the kids. I feel like we learn so much from each other during this time of day. Have a conversation and have the students write down some of the things you’ve talked about together about the read alouds of 123!

-Math! This week we made connections between place value and addition and subtraction. Below are some photos to show what we’ve done at school and suggestions for  you to do at home for those students who could benefit from extra practice 🙂 *Tip: Pay close attention to the + or – (that is one area the students are working on for sure. Makes a big difference if you are adding when you are supposed to be subtracting!)

Let’s review some math language for addition and subtraction!

Try doing some examples at home 🙂

What’s Happening Next Week?!

-No School on Monday! (Day 5)

-Tuesday we have our extra choir time for the Circle of Life performance in February. Day 6 is our most musical day! It is also Outdoor Education day, so please dress for the weather!

-We have 2 days with Murray next week. Our time with him is coming to an end 🙁 We will continue reading through our research and will put what we’ve learned into our own words. So far we are learning lots!!!

-Book orders are due on December 1!

-Genius Hour will happen again on Day 2 (Thursday). Everyone has an idea submitted. Some kids who had similar ideas have decided to join forces. Some kids have already changed their ideas. This is totally okay! Our interests may shift, the research that we were hoping for may not be out there, we may decide that the initial idea doesn’t work for the timeline we have…there are many reasons why our ideas could change. That’s part of the process. Has anyone come home and talked about Genius Hour at home yet?!

-We will try to post more math learning via See Saw. I really enjoyed having the kids find a skill they wanted to share with parents and have me film as they explained their learning, played a game they invented or worked through problems. This “choose your own math” time is a hit!

The Number Talks we’ve been doing are also a great way for the students to share their strategies, learn from each other and practice mental math.

Ask what the kids notice. Try to listen vs tell. We are more interested in the strategies used than the answer at this point

In the above example (which we did last week). We talked about how 39+16 seems challenging, but if we think of it as 40+15 instead, we feel more confident in answering the question “in our heads” vs working it out on paper! 39+16=40+15 and the actual sum is 55!

28+39=27+40

59+13=60+12

23+49=22+50

We can think of this as making “Landmark” or “Friendly” Numbers!

Before I go…Hudson has a message she wants to share with you!

Have a great weekend!

Until Next Time,

Danielle

Lest We Forget

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What a great Remembrance Day service today. If you were able to attend, I’m sure you would agree that the 1/2s did a great job putting on the assembly and ALL the kids sounded lovely. A special thank you to Ms V for always having the kids ready to perform. She truly has a gift 🙂

We talked a lot about Peace, Kindness, Poppies and Remembrance Day this week. It is so important to honour and respect those who gave their lives and have allowed us to live our lives freely. We want to spread the message of kindness and to give everyone a “piece of peace”.

*The Ask Me question this week says: “Ask me about Remembrance Day”. Write/draw about the conversations you had as a family 🙂

Let’s recap other parts of our week:

-Our plastic bag research/ideas for a positive change was a great activity. We had some fantastic discussions and possible solutions to the plastic bag problem. What really stuck out to the students was how many plastic bags are used each second around the world (160 000) and how many animals die each year from eating or being caught in the bags (1 million birds and 100 000 sea turtles and other animals). We talked about plastic bags being “evil”-but why were plastic bag invented? We learned that plastic bags were produced in 1977 as an effort to stop paper bags from being used. The number of trees being cut was becoming a problem. People then did not know that there was a big problem with their solution! Another thing to note is that the intent of plastic bags was for them to be multi-use, not single-use. We have some options! You use plastic bags? Ok…now reuse them! Use them for groceries on another day, to pick up dog waste, as a trash can liner, or donate them to a second hand store. If you can’t do any of those suggestions, recycle them at your grocery store (they cannot be recycled in your recycling bin at home). Don’t use plastic bags? Keep using your reusable cloth bags, bins or boxes…Keep practicing environmental stewardship!

We can link this to our 6Rs of Room 123! Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Respect, Repeat! Let’s make a positive change!

-Choose your own math time! We opened up some new math manipulatives and let me tell you…it sure was exciting! Most of the resources are magnets or dice and deal with place value, time and money. We also have some fraction magnets (for later on). The challenge is to create some sort of game or activity using the new resources that reflects a math skill we’ve been working on. This is something we will be doing regularly. It is a fun way to model and communicate our math thinking

-Frank Einstein: Well we are about 60 pages into our new book. This new series has definitely sparked an interest in some of our young readers! Frank Einstein is a scientist who has ‘invented’ robots who can actually think for themselves! There is a lot of scientific language, diagrams of inventions and characters with names resembling actual scientists! We left off with someone coming to the door of Frank’s lab…who will it be?!!?

-Happy Birthday Winnipeg! Many of us didn’t realize that it was Winnipeg’s birthday on November 8! Winnipeg became a city in 1873…making our great city 144 years old!

Looking forward!

-The book order should arrive early next week. The December order is due on December 1 to make sure we get them before the holidays!

-Turkey Toonie Tuesdays are back! Please send in a toonie if you can!

-See Saw: We are getting more familiar with See Saw and will be ready to invite parents when you come in for conferences next week. I think you are going to love this tool as much as the kids do! Thanks for your patience as we tackle learning something new together!

-Report cards go home on Monday! You will also receive your appointment time for your child’s conference. If the appointment time does not work, please call the office or come see me to make an alternate arrangement 🙂 *Reminder: There is no school on Friday

I look forward to seeing you all next week!

Until next time,

Danielle