Gotta love it

You know, Fridays are a special kind of day at school. Yes, the children and the staff are looking forward to the weekend. And, yes, there are academic endeavors throughout the day. We still platoon for our math, we still do reading and writing, but it seems a lot more art and lower key curriculum is covered.

Plus, I get to teach two classes of Kindergarten and Grade one children on the computers... talk about active, engaged learners.

These are a couple of photos of the grade fours doing math related games.

I know a lot of you play games with your children and they are so great for basic math skills as well as problem solving.

I love the game Yahtzee and was happy when some of the students allowed me to play with them today. I wasn't the winner of the game by any means, but it was good to teach them how to play and to strategize.

It is funny that I cooked some turkey at home and today brought my lunch to school for the first time in a while. I was setting up the computers in the library for working with the classes after lunch, when in walked one of my good buddies from the Sunshine programme who offered me some of the sushi they had made in class.

Let me say it was delicious! Thanks to Ms. Wiltse for the work she does with these students.

I don't know if you can read the caption on this photo.


Okay, I kind of goofed up.

There is a display of Snowy Owls up on a display in one of the hallways and when I was looking at this one with one of the grade 7s he said, "Look at this owl, kind of an angry bird."

Friday art - Snowy Owls by the students in Division 3

Have a great weekend and I'll see you Monday...

Writing and Numbers

It was fun watching some of the kindergarten children "playing" with numbers today. They were using some modeling clay to make the digits and some were combining the digits together to make larger numbers. As I talked with them I noticed that some had the numbers written backwards, as often happens when learning the letters and numbers, so it was interesting to see them make comparisons of the shapes with their number lines. Here is a little movie I made of one of the students constructing a number for me to see:

Later, I had a chance to sit in on a lesson being taught in Mrs. Chambers class by one of our district staff members, Bev Craig. Bev is the Literacy support teacher for the district and she does sample lessons, gathers data through assessments, collects and shares and offers us the opportunity to purchase good language arts materials.

And it was off to the library where our librarian, Ms. Corbo also works with classes on the writing process which is one of our school goals this year.

Is tomorrow already Friday?

Busy Day

Mrs. Chambers sent me a copy of her January newsletter home and amongst all the good information in it was the identification of some of the topics she plans to cover with the class over the next while.

Families is one that she is working on with the grade ones and when I visited the class today, the students were working alone and in small groups - depending on the task - to collect information and write about some of the things a family needs. Students used different print resources to look for ideas and, in some cases, to cut out images they could use to go with their "written" work.

Students were actively engaged in their projects and it was a pleasure to see.

The snow was coming down today and the grade sevens wanted to follow up on a discussion I had with some of them on Tuesday about throwing snowballs. I had talked to them about my concerns about safety and also about modeling good behaviour for the younger students. They took my concerns politely on Monday and today presented some arguments to Mrs. Andersen. Using the "teachable moment", Mrs. Andersen gave them an assignment consistent one of their learning outcomes in Language Arts ... to write a persuasive argument. And they presented me with their arguments, ones which I will consider and then take into a class discussion, probably on Friday. It might be a good debate.

Later this afternoon I was in the grade seven class again and saw two different group presentations. One was a rap (which I had videoed the first draft of a couple of weeks ago) as a "public service message" on what a student can do if they are not comfortable at school and included some advice to victims of bullies.

The second group presentation I listened to was from three students who had gathered data and talked about peer pressure, both from a positive perspective and from a negative perspective. They had done a good job and were well prepared to answer some very good questions from their classmates.

Today was the kind of day that has me walking home with a smile. Good teaching and good quality work from grade one through to grade seven.

Now to think about my counter points for the upcoming snowball meeting...

In the classroom

Of course I am in the classroom(s) as much as practically possible, but this afternoon was a bit different. The school district ran short of substitute teachers and Ms. McAllister was off on a medical leave with no substitutes available to replace her for the afternoon. So... over to me. I had a pretty enjoyable afternoon with the students, but as you might imagine with a class of grade twos and threes, I didn't take the time to take photos.

I do have a little project in mind for this class that involves photos and a video, but that will be later.

In the morning I was in another class and one of the students had a small lunch baggie with some snow she had collected outside. I asked the question, what is the temperature of the snow? I didn't know the answer myself and after thinking could it be warmer or colder than the ground temperature outside we decided to find out. Actually, I thought the snow would be 0*, but I was wrong.

Using the thermometer outside Mr. Williams room it was determined that the temperature was -3*. Measuring the temperature of the snow in the baggie, it was -4*. Is the data accurate? Is a degree difference significant? Were our eyes correct in noting the temperatures? What can we find at Wikipedia about the temperature of snow? Nothing it seems. What other places could we look for the data? Is this part of the curriculum, or simply inquiry based learning? Are there similar things you could do at home after school or on the weekends to support this kind of questioning... just a few thoughts.

The news is out... well, posted in the hallway at school.

The Campbell's Promotion collected 1559 eligible labels.

Mrs Chambers class collected the most and will receive their free pizza day this

Thursday.

Children will be encouraged to watch for the new collection bags to arrive in the classes for our next contest which will end on May 15th.

Thank you, Susan Goddard - Label Counter Extraordinaire :)

Basketball practice kicks off the morning tomorrow. 

Energy Cycle

I observed the grade 7 class today doing some science work flow charting the energy cycle. There was some good information being shared and some good questions from the students. Here the students are modeling how energy starts at the sun and flows through ecosystems.

One of the students is putting her notes together. The students had an opportunity to make their flow charts either in written form (within the chart) or as graphical icons in the chart.

And, outside? Here are some student putting their energy into use...


Back at it tomorrow!

Oh yes, I do know which class won the Campbell Soup label contest for the first part of the year, but I'm not telling right now. Watch this space for details later in the week.

First years

I got to spend some good time with our two Kindergarten classes today. It is wonderful watching them develop over the 3 plus months I have been here. Today, the classes had their "Friday" teachers in the classroom, Mrs. Perry and Mrs. Reid.

Although I did see lots of literacy and play, I also enjoyed watching some math related activities - greater than/less than in one class and measurement in another.

I also have started working directly with these classes on the computers this month. The two lessons so far have focused on how to use the keypad and clicker to select options, drag and drop and today making dot drawings. We also delved into some exploring of other options within the KidPix program. We'll do this for another week or two, and then extend ourselves into something else to add new skills.

Friday art ... the beginnings of paper mache construction

Have a great weekend!

Positive day all round

I guess if I had to be away from school today, I couldn't have asked for a much nicer day to be on the ferry to Vancouver.

Checking my email while I was gone gave me the kind of information I expected. Mr. Williams had nothing of importance to tell me about issues with students. Just what I thought would be the case. I managed to get some reading done on the ferry and looked at some interesting education websites I can share in the next while.

Tomorrow, I get to teach the Ks again and follow on with our introduction to movement on the laptops. It should be fun!

Until tomorrow...