So much fun

I posted a note on my Twitter feed this morning asking the world out there that if any of them were substitute teachers looking for employment, move to the Sunshine Coast and apply for a job. I wasn't being facetious, as today was another day the District ran short of subs and I had the responsibility to step in for Mrs. Corbo to do her classes for the day. But, what fun it was as I got to work with most of the primary students, Mr. Pond's grade 4s and Ms. Thompson's grade 5s.

I feel a bit sorry for Ms. Corbo because as techy as I am, I could not figure out the password for our wonderful library computer, so had to take back books without signing them in and sign out books the old fashion manual way. I'll see if I can get that addressed before she returns next week.

Maybe the good thing is that I was the kind of substitute that didn't follow the day plan - and she had an excellent plan - so hopefully she won't have to prepare as much for her next class. One thing I did with some of the students was to have them work on a blog I have created called CGEWriting. I have actually worked with Ms. McAllister's class on that blog site last week and while we had some technical difficulties with their initial posts not working, some students took another go at it with me last week and got it working fine. The concept behind the blog is that I provide an image and a question and the students brainstorm some ideas and do some writing. Now, these are pretty young students so the volume of writing isn't there and though there is a lot of questioning about spelling, their entries are a bit rough... but not bad for grade 2 through 4. I plan to take this idea forward to some of the upper intermediates by having them look at the comments made by the students and find a reading buddy to reply to. We'll see how things go with that. Of course you parents might like to find a student comment to reply to as well. Just click on this link, and you are there.

Mrs. Sammartino had a visitor in her classroom between recess and lunch. Dianne Sanford brought along some salmon eggs and did a talk for the students, one which captivated their attention.

This is one of the photos she sent me and more of her photos will be a part of my January slideshow for the students at our assembly on January 31 at 1:00 pm. Of course all parents are invited to attend that event and the band will be playing as well.

Now, if this photo looks a bit staged, it was. But I must tell you it was based on reality. As I was coming in from the playground I happened to notice these grade 6 girls walking hand in hand with some younger ones. Of course they were having a fun time of lifting the children off the ground. I had my camera (of course) and asked if they might restage their coming in party.

Just another example of what a large group of delightfully kind students we have here at the school.

Tomorrow I get another chance to work with the K and K/1 class introducing them to the laptops. I made a comment last night to some folks about what a difference there is in totally finger controlled work that is done with an iPad (or other tablet) and how much more complex it is to work with a keypad one the laptops. Oh to have the funds in place to acquire some iPads for the primary students...

Camel days and goodbyes

When you think of the school year, you think of a long period with a number of days. But in every year there is a camel analogy ... hump day, and for at least one class in our school today was that day.

Can you tell why from the photo? I was in this class on Monday this week and noticed during the calendar session that the students had been in session for 69 days and had 73 days to go. The counting of these days with place-value grouping and recording told me that this Wednesday was going to be a very special day and here is the proof.

This week our school says good-bye to a teacher who has been with us since the beginning of the year. On Monday, Mr. Thorburn will join the staff of Kinnikinnick school to continue his work on the FastForword programme with students there. From my observations of the work the students have done with the programme it is of exceptional value and we were fortunate to have a significant number of students work with him. Many parents who have met with Mr. Thorburn understand the value for their children in the area of reading both from a comprehension perspective and also from an oral reading perspective.

 And although not a final good-bye by any means, those in attendance at tonight's PAC meeting were given the news that our co-chairs, Heidi Riggs and Angela Sears are stepping down. The PAC is looking for a new chairperson(s) and there will be information on the PAC board near the office. People at the meeting thanked the ladies for the time they have devoted to lead our many volunteers with great enthusiasm. The ladies did say that they were not "out of PAC" but felt this was a good time for a leadership change over as things are running along smoothly and they would be here for some time (Angela has a child in grade 6, and Heidi one in 7 and two in 4) to help mentor those who wish to step forward. From my perspective, though I will miss my interactions with them in the PAC sense, I think they are doing this a good way, rather than wait for the end of the year, leaving the new leaders to try to learn over the summer. I encourage any of you reading this and thinking you might be the one to get involved in this way to connect with Angela or Heidi. And, I add my thanks to the way they have kept things on track this year.

Off to relax a bit ... see you tomorrow.

Numeracy and Arts

I just got home from the DPAC meeting and I'll try to give as much information from it as I can at our PAC meeting tomorrow night. There was an excellent presentation from Kirsten Deasy about the early learning programmes in our school district and some statistics that show over the years how much the programme has meant to the readiness of our children, district wide, for kindergarten.

Which leads me to today's numeracy observations in Mrs. Morris' class as I did both observations and did some teaching with a group of kindergarten children making number sentences.

Here you see some pipe cleaners and coloured beads which the children threaded onto the pipe cleaners.

And here is a short video of one minute of the time I worked with my group:


As you can see they came up with a number of different stories for 8. One student even did a number story for 8 and 0 is 8. Imagine that!

In the afternoon I visited Mrs. Leander's class and sat in on both the band classes ... grade 7 and grade 6.

Now, for the audio portion of this blog entry, a little snippet from the grade 6s. You can hear the whole band at our upcoming assembly.

See you in the am... 

Wildlife

There aren't too many places within 50km of us where there are schools that can say they have a lot of wildlife within the arm throw of a good second baseman.

And, no, these students did not see a cougar near by the school. We did get a report of one having been seen about 30 minutes before the recess break, so we gave a call to the conservation officer to see what, if anything, they had heard. The report was news - at the time - to them and so I went to look around the area where the cougar had been reported.  The sighting was across the street from the school at the bus stop. I could see nothing at that time, so made the decision not to have the students go out for recess.
A bit later, I went to look again and met up with an RCMP officer who had been called by the conservation officer and who came to take a look himself. We had a good conversation about the wildlife sightings in the area, including cougars further up the coast and out Port Mellon way. At lunch there had been no further reports of sightings, so I opened up the play area for the students to enjoy the fresh air along with a reminder to remain in bounds and in sight.
You should also have received an email from me with a two page document regarding being cougar aware from the conservation officer.

Today I watched Mr. Pond's class work with fractions. Most of the students were breaking printed shapes into quarters, halves, and eighths, colouring in the required fraction. One student was working with a computer based math program for which we purchased a license this year. He was doing his work with the software on the laptop. Off to the grade seven class where Ms. Krannenburg was working with the students on an introduction to circle graphs, breaking the circle into percent areas ... a clear extension of the work done years earlier as they were introduced to fractions. Nice to see the progression in learning.

I'll leave you tonight with a bit of humour... not mine, but one of the students. You can double click on the image to get it in a larger size to see what I saw this morning in the sign-in book.

Until tomorrow...

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...