Friday 30 January 2015

Friday's News



Happy Friday!!!!!!!

This week has been a bit rough.  Our family is down and out with cold, cough and Strep throat.  ugh!  Of course all this hits right around report card time.  Does anyone else's seem to get sick right around report card season?  Anyway, we have meds and Benylin and are focused on getting better.  

Here's what's happening in our school world.  My grade 3's just finished their good copies of their "Snowmen Story".  I read the book a snowman story to the class.  Then we brainstormed what we thought snowmen might do at night while we were sleeping.  We wrote three paragraphs based on each idea, then used the snowman template to make our good copies on. 
I think they turned out pretty cute.  



Next week we will be gearing up for the big V-day.  Since I teach various grades in the afternoon (shout out to my planning teacher friends) I plan to bring this activity along with me for my younger students.  We will make Valentine's headbands to wear for Valentine's Day. 

Along with these headbands we will be making booklets as well. 


Student's will pick people they feel love them (e.g., mom, dad, brother, sister, friends) and explain how they know each person loves them. I can't wait to see what ideas our kiddo's come up with. 



And last, but not least, we are trying something new for our grade ones at our school.  I have been asked to create this cute story in French and in English.  It is our hope that if they learn the story in English first, that this will help them when they review it in french.  The students are able to colour in the booklets and take them home when they have successfully read them to the teacher.  Stay tuned, as there will be more to come like this:)



Friday 23 January 2015

Friday's News


One of our students using the process of writing posters to edit her persuasive letter 
Q-tip hockey. I nice little stress reliever from the daily work of school
a student's diorama of the jungle
teaching our Kindergarten buddies how to use a computer and mouse
More instruction on the computer
It's been a busy week like always. Does anyone else find that the third week back after the holidays feels like the longest one? Maybe its just feeling long because we are in the midst of writing those dreaded report cards. Luckily, we had some fun things in our classrooms this past week to help make the week flow.

Friday 16 January 2015

Friday's News

Happy Friday everyone!




I love when students are reading in class. I've been pretty fortunate this year that my current class loves to read. However, sometimes I feel they are reading without purpose. I am noticing this because it comes out in their writing. I know weird eh! Reading can play a role in a students writing. Yet, it is true and I think most of you would agree. The more a student reads the better their writing level tends to be.

Talking to some of my peers in the staffroom we all felt we wanted to see our students write with more descriptive words. You can only say a "fuzzy dog" so many times in your writing. As well you can only mark that so many times before you want to take a pen to your eyeball.

Starting next week I am going to be putting up a series of papers in my classroom that replica waves from an ocean. One reason, is I am hoping that it will make my room feel summer like cause here in Canada we are stuck in the drab snowy weather. Secondly, I am going to use the wave for kids to place descriptive words from their reading. I will have a series of surfboards on my desk. When a student finds a descriptive word they will get a surfboard and write the word on the surfboard then we will place it on the waves.

Will this work? I hope so! I am hoping that we will see more descriptive words and that it will help establish some exciting written responses. I will keep you posted.

Friday 9 January 2015

Friday's News


Happy Friday!

Hope everyone has had a great week.  It's sure been a busy one for us.  

First of all I (Libby) am involved in a fitness online group.  It's been a great start and they have helped motivate me to run no matter what....even when the weather isn't the best. 

This week we have started cursive writing.  I use the document camera to show the students how to write each letter. We are doing one letter a day. 

Then, students go to their desk to practice the letter of the day. 


Next, Jeff has been working hard to put out a new social studies unit.  
His Ancient Civilization Unit is huge... It's got everything....

-20 lessons with extended activities to build upon student learning
-3 forms of assessments including rubrics 
-1 PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation project
-Extension activities 
-1 Quiz

As well as one set of extension activities that can be used cross curricular for Art, Language, Media, and Oral participation.


Ok, time to share your news...


Wednesday 7 January 2015

Ancient Civilizations

In all my teaching so far my absolute favourite unit to teach is grade 4 ancient civilizations. In Ontario, the curriculum changed last year however you where allowed to teach the old curriculum. My teaching partners and I, last year elected to take on the new curriculum of comparing ancient civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome and compared them to present day Canada. At first we thought we might have bitten off a little more than we can handle amongst our three classes. However, it proved to be really awesome. We did some mini-lessons and then allowed the kids to become experts and then make a media presentation about an ancient civilization and compare it to present day Canada. We also took the liberties of recreating some of the Ancient Civilizations in our portables. Here are some pictures of my portable as Ancient Rome.
The sign welcoming all visitors to Ancient Rome
The Colosseum

The great Aquaducts bringing water down to the city from the moutains


The statue of Fortuna

A chariot before it gets ready to enter the Colosseum and compete in Gladitor events


With this being the inspiration I spent some time creating a full unit adding to some of the ideas of things that we covered and also adding a bunch more. In our store you can find our new package of "Ancient Civilizations" which includes 20 lessons, 3 assessments, rubrics, extension activities, and explanation pages. Hopefully, you will enjoy this unit as much as I have in the past.

Wordless Wednesday

A big thanks to Miss Decarbo at Sugar and Spice for hosting this linky.



What is your new years resolution? 

I plan on running.  No excuses. 




Friday 2 January 2015

Friday's News


It's been a crazy two weeks between Christmas and  New Years.  We hope all of you have been enjoying your time with your families. It's hard to believe that in just a few days we will be back in the swing of things.  It seems there's two types of teachers out there, those that go in over the break to get things done, and those like to enjoy their holiday's without thinking about school.  Jeff and I have done our best to stay clear of our schools, but with just one weekend left of our holidays, it's time to face reality. 


To celebrate New Years, I created these crowns along with a retell booklet for students to use.  I plan to use this activity to help get my students back into the swing of things come Monday. 

Here are some examples of the booklet and crowns (there are six crowns in total)

Jeff on the other hand has been hard at working marking these Charlie and the Chocolate Factory novel study assignments. Below are the outside and inside pictures of the project.  


Check out his post on how he created centres for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  

We hope you enjoy your last few days of the break.  If you have a post or a product you would like to share please link up with us below.

Cheers!






Thursday 1 January 2015

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Recently my class and I finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a class book. This Roald Dahl classic is a personal favourite of mine and it quickly became a favourite of the students as well. As we read the book we had centres that corresponded with events going on in the book. It was sort of telling me what the students where comprehending and also allowing them to apply their own creative touches to it.

Well the results where stunning. We had a total of 10 centres that each students participated in. Anywhere from creating their own Golden Ticket,

to creating a newspaper story of Charlie winning his ticket,



 and making warning signs for the guests of the factory to follow.

The one centre the students loved the most was the "Wonka Mystery". In this particular centre the students had to tell me a story of what Willy Wonka was really doing when no one had heard from him all those years. We got responses such as creating Minecraft under an alias name to being a stage hand for Taylor Swift. It was amazing to watch and hear.

I guess you could say they where using their pure imagination like Gene Wilder sang about in the original movie.



When the students finished all of the centres they created their own Chocolate factory. I have them a piece of bristol board and they folded the paper to give you the illusion of the gates that Wonka had out front. Inside of their factory they glued in all of the great activities they completed in the centre. Below you can see some of the many great ones that the students did. When they handed in their factories we celebrated with watching the original movie and of course a chocolate party. In all it took about a month to complete everything. If your interested in having your own party and factory building session then head over to our store and purchase the novel study with the centres and rubric attached. 


Enjoy!