Class Community

We have been working on this display since September. We have worked on several SmartLearning lessons with the following books:

Courage of the Blue Boy: The author's message is everyone in a community is special in their own way and is part of what makes the community so wonderful!  Each student made hand prints and cut them out to make our wonderful rainbow!

 

Have you filled a Bucket Today?  The author's message is that everyone carries around an invisible bucket and when you are happy your bucket is full.  How do you fill your bucket?  Your bucket gets filled when you are kind, polite, help others and thoughtful of others.  If you dip into someone's bucket by being unkind you also dip your own bucket :( We have lots of bucket fillers in our class!  Who's bucket have you filled today?

 

I like Myself? The author's message is that each individual is special and unique.  We made the yellow flowers with their individual photo as the center and they wrote four things that they are good at or make them special.

 

 The Grouchies:  The Author's message is that we can choose to be happy and look at things positively in life.  We can push the grouchies away by making smiles your choice!

Science World 'The Air Around Us'

Thursday Oct. 20, 2011

What an exciting Science presentation!  We learned may ways air moves around us and how it keeps us on Earth.  Most of all it was fun and exciting!  Here are some fun photos of the presentation:

 

Class Garden

As part of our Science we planted some Spring bulbs and Summer Lillies.  We are hoping that with our sign on the planter, we can leave it outside our door for everyone to enjoy!  We have already discovered bugs in the soil and wrote in our science books about what plants need.

 

Ms. Sandi Our Aboriginal Support Teacher

On Friday mornings we are lucky to have Ms. Sandi come in and teach us about Aboriginal Culture.  Our first activity has been working on an Aboriginal Animal story that follows the favourite book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?  Our book starts with Totem Pole, Totem Pole What Do You See?  

Some interesting local Aboriginal information we learned:

In B.C. we call:

-a community a clan

-Aboriginals => First Nations

-Totems => Story Poles

-Story Poles and canoes are made out of Cedar as it considered soft wood

Friday we also got to have our chance to participate in carving our Yennadon Story Pole:

New Curtains!

Look at this so called curtain!  We made a plan and fixed it!

Everyone was so excited to get started!  Anyone who wanted to was able to help by using the sewing machine with assistance.  The class chose a heart pattern and a star pattern for sewing the curtain :)

Bonus Reading!

Bonus reading had started!!!  We do lots of reading of poems, strip stories, interactive stories, word sorts (categorizing) and literacy stories in class.  We are working on getting our mouth ready to say the first sound, as often the word pops out of our mouth.  We have been working really hard on being Picture/Image Detectives and describing what we notice while giving evidence.  These all help us be powerful readers and writers.

Here we are comparing two pictures from one of our stories and discussing with our partners.  Then we report out what our partner says and discuss the evidence for why we are coming up with these conclusions!  These strategies are so important to be Powerful Readers and Powerful Writer!

When we are reading or writing we are setting 'Stretch Goals' and then self checking when we are done!  We use the SmartLearning Desk Strip to help us make goals and self check.

Here is a Journal example from Sept. and then Oct.  In Sept. we were focusing on where on the page to draw, setting a goal and where do you write on a page.

                                                             

 

Now that we are in Oct. our class has been moving right along so well we are adding feelings to our writing!  This is amazing at this time of year!  Our class is so eager to learn and investigate!!!

We have been working on Higher Level Thinking with many of our books.  Lots of A/B partners, hidden object, inferencing, reading together, drawing images and writing!

Check out our display about "The Grouchies" in the main hall outside of A Pod.

So by the time a page comes home for Bonus Reading as a class we will have read it several times and done a variety of SmartLearning strategies with them.  They are more than welcome to practice a part of it or all of it.  They may come up with a friend to read in front of the class or by themselves!!  We have had a great response by many students wanting to read in front of the class already!!!!  Here are a few examples to see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzinB3typOI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRYNT2l908

Lexia and Ninjago!

The two newest thing in our class is Lexia and Ninjago fever!!!  Our district has 10 licences to a new program for reading and phonics! So we can only use them before recess as it is shared with another school.  Everyone wants to play on the "Video Game"... so no it is not a video game but a phonics game that tracks their progress and will not let them go any further without successfully completing each level.  Each level has several areas they work on and the student has the choice of which section they want to work on.  They use headphones in order for them to hear the computer sounds and instructions.  Some students are on it daily to help with letter sound recognition.  Keep up all the great work on letter sounds!!!

Ninjago!

Students are allowed to bring Ninjagos as long as they are not playing with them during teaching time!  We also encourage sharing if someone doesn't have one and to give them a turn.  Our class has been fairly good with including anyone who would like to play!

First Walking Fieldtrip!

Wow it always looked to easy when you see a group holding a rope walking down the street.  Well not so much.  We did make it to to the Island on the school grounds.  We took our private eyes to investigate the Island.  We plan on doing lots of walking field trips one because it is great to be in our surrounding environment and lastly as this is the only type of field trip we are able to go on as of now.

We are very fortunate to be working on Inquiry/Exploration with Mrs. MacQuarrie in the library on Friday afternoons.  She is a wonderful resource and our school is so fortunate to have her!!!  She is responsible for all the ordering of reading books and many of the manipulatives we use in our classrooms.  She has a nack for getting a lot resources for our students with a little bit of money!  She is also involved in our district Eco School, which is cutting edge Education in authentic environments!  Yes, rain or shine.

Terry Fox Run!

Congratulations Div. 18 on running a great Terry Fox Run!  It is always so wonderful to see such participation from everyone.  We had some kids run 6 times around the field!!!  Way to go!!