Eric Carle

Last week we read a few books by Eric Carle. We loved his books so Mrs. Lowe and Ms. Armstrong found us a whole bunch more. Now all of the books on our book shelf are written and illustrated by Eric Carle.

After we read "The Tiny Seed," we painted big pretty papers. Then we cut and glued to make beautiful spring flowers.

Discovering that red and yellow make orange!

Red and blue make purple!

Adding white to red creates pink!

Blue and yellow makes green!

My favourite part was making the flowers - Annabelle
My favourite thing was making was making lots of flowers - Aaliyah
The painting was so cool - Jessica
My favourite part was reading an Eric Carle book in the library - Mercedez
I love Eric Carle's books, they are the best - Kyran
I like The Hungry Caterpillar - Piper

Happy Spring!

What's your favourite season?

Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring!

Even though it still looks like winter here, we are excited to say goodbye to winter and hello to spring! We worked together to write a poem. After we wrote the poem, we re-read it and decided to make some changes. We tried to add some juicy words so that our readers could get a picture in their minds.

The words in pink are the changes we made.

When we were finished, we were so proud that we decided to make our poem into a movie. Enjoy!

Mission Impossible

This week the fantastic Phys. Ed. team at our school turned our gym into a gigantic obstacle course. The theme was "Mission Impossible."

Students participated in various secret spy missions. Once they completed the entire course, they got to ring the gong!

I went down to the gym while the students were working on their spy skills. It sure looked like they were having fun!


Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

Lucky Charms Challenge

In celebration of St. Patrick's Day we participated in a Lucky Charms Challenge! The challenge was to sort, count and graph the marshmallows in a box of Lucky Charms cereal.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Lowe gave each child a small bag with 1 cup of cereal in it. The students had to first sort the cereal from the marshmallows.  Then they separated the marshmallows into groups of moons, stars, rainbows, etc.

Next, the students counted each group of marshmallows and coloured in their graphs. Finally, we all sat together to tally how many of each shape we had in total.  Most shapes had about 40-50 marshmallows but we found over 200 moons! We practiced counting the tally marks by fives.

Our Linoit, a document that can be added to and revised by multiple groups at the same time!

On Thursday we used Skype to meet with 4 other classes from all over Canada to read a St. Patrick's Day story and discuss our results. This was everyone's first time using Skype Groups (where you can chat with multiple people at the same time). Unfortunately we had a lot of technical difficulties and the chat didn't go as well as we had hoped.

In the afternoon we got to Skype with Mrs. Liernman's class in Surrey, BC. We asked them some of our questions and they asked us some great questions too.  We discovered that both classes have "Wonder Walls" and we compared things that we are wondering about.

Skype is a great way to connect students in classrooms all over the world. We are so thankful that we are able to use such fun technology (even though it is sometimes uncooperative). One student wrote in his T.W.A.S. "This was the best day of my life because we Skyped!"

Eating our Lucky Charms and drinking festive green juice.

French Performance

This afternoon we went to the gym and there was a French performer named Damien Lussier. He also spoke in English. He played the guitar and sang. We thought he was very funny!

Classroom Tour

Way back in January we were reading Mrs. Cassidy's class' blog and came across a tour of their classroom. The students noticed many things that were the same as our classroom and some things that were different. We had a great discussion where students made a lot of connections and many "I wonder..." statements.

You can find their blog post here.

The students in room 8 immediately suggested that we make our own video to share our classroom with other students and our families.

The students decided which things in our classroom were important to share. They developed a script and practiced their parts.

After we filmed our video the students watched it and decided it was not ready to show. They realized there was way too much background noise and it was hard to hear their speaking parts. It was interesting to see them beginning to reflect on their work and find ways to improve it.

With a little more practice and some minor changes, they are now ready to share their work.



We would love to see your classroom or read your comments!

Regie Routman Part 4

I promise this the the last post from Mrs. Lowe for a while. I'm sure you're missing reading about the happenings in Room 8.

Thursday was our last morning with Regie. She spent a lot of time answering questions and reviewing what she had taught earlier in the week.

One question that came up was regarding handwriting/printing. Teachers were curious if and how this should be taught in a play-based setting. Regie made it clear that she believes this is a huge issue in schools. She believes that, students are not taught how to form their letters correctly and they are not required to print/handwrite neatly. This causes huge issues later in school and life as it slows students down and makes their writing difficult to read.

Again, she emphasized the importance of giving our students the skills to become independent. They need tools and strategies to access so that they are not relying on the teacher to be able to read and write. 

"What am I doing today to help my students become independent readers and writers?"

I believe this is an area of my teaching where I can improve. I think I have been too easy on my students.  I have not set the bar high enough and I've made it too easy for them to rely on me to sound out their words, write for them and let them copy or tell them where they can find the words in the classroom.

These are things my students should be doing for themselves and I need to put the responsibility back on them.

Source

On Thursday afternoon Deidre came back and we continued on with our writing from the previous day.

Step 1. Re-read the shared writing piece from the day before. We practiced it as a class and had students come up and point to each of the words.

Step 2. Begin word work. We pointed out the words /we/ and /play/. We had students come up and circle these words in our writing, sound them out, spell them orally, and add them to our word wall.

Step 3. Word work on whiteboards. We gave each student a whiteboard, covered up the words and had them test themselves to see if they remembered how to spell /we/ and /play/. After they all showed their writing, we uncovered the words and had them check to see how they did. Most students were very happy to see that they were able to spell both words correctly.

Deidre and I then held public conferences with three students. We had them read their writing to the class and we celebrated all of the good things they had done. Again, the students were beaming with pride. The goal is that these students will be proud of what they've done so far and ready to continue on. We also hope that other students can learn from these conferences and inspired to incorporate what they learn into their own writing.

Finally, we sent the class to finish their stories so that they could be published. Many students who Deidre and I thought were finished asked to write more. In fact, almost all students wrote more than they had the day before. Many students went to the word wall or included the words from the word work in their writing. In only 2 sessions, Deidre and I were already noticing the students becoming more independent.

Because we really wanted the students to feel the pride of having their work published we may have rushed the writing process on this project. However, we both felt that it was important to maintain a sense of urgency and completion so that students would be excited and inspired to begin a new piece of writing. We wanted to avoid anyone getting frustrated or bored. As the students become more independent in this process the writing will go faster and I will again be able to raise my expectations.

In the end, the students each created their own published book. They will be sharing them with each other on Monday. They are really looking forward to adding illustrations and sharing them with their reading buddies and families in the next few weeks.

Deidre's Reflection:

It was a privilege to be back in Room 8 today.  Again, it was an amazing afternoon.  As we continued the Optimal Learning Model, and gradually released responsibility to the kids in their writing, they blew us away.  I actually got chills as the children read their writing during our celebration conferences.  The proud looks on their precious faces made it all worth it.

I really want to thank Deidre for her willingness to take the time to work with us and stretch her own understanding of the writing process. The professional conversations and learning we had together this week were among the best I've experienced.  I feel very lucky to work in a division with such great people and opportunities for professional development.