This Week At School

This week at school...

-  We had a truth and reconciliation day.  It started off with an assembly with multiple speakers (one being Phyllis Webstad the author and main character in Phyllis' Orange Shirt).  Then we had a couple of other sessions throughout the day.  In one of those sessions we played a game where students had to try to collect rights that people have.  There were 7 in total that they were looking for and they started off with some (some may have had 5 of the same right, others had nothing to start with, and others had 12 to start with).  So they had to trade to get their other rights BUT they weren't allowed to talk or they would have to sit out for a minute.  Then we had a discussion about how frustrating it was for those that weren't given enough rights to begin with, how we obtained the rights we were missing (some people stole them from other people if they left them on tables) and yet how easy the game was for others.  We then related it all back to residential schools and how even still not everyone has their rights being met.  It was a real eye opener and if possible very much worth a play with your students on (or around) September 30th.

I was in a classroom that I hadn't been in yet... ever of grade 3/4 students.  Since February was I Love to Read month they were having a "battle of the books" so I read them one and we watched a video of "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish"... they voted for the One Fish Two Fish book.

We watched a Bill Nye video when I was a science teacher (yes, they sang along... some with their own lyrics)

I spent the day teaching middle years basic French.



Wednesday this week was also Pink Shirt Day - a day to talk about bullying and how it impacks those around us.  If you didn't do anything for Pink Shirt Day it is never too late so here is a link to some things that I've done with my students in the past.

This Week At School

Another busy week at school!

This week at school I...

- Was an art teacher

- Was a grade 6 teacher

- Was a French Immersion teacher

- Was a kindergarten teacher

- Finally subbed in the 3rd division that I'm part of

Would you believe that my best day out of all of those was the kindergarten class?  Anyone who knows me knows that I definitely do not want to work in a kindergarten classroom (but I'll sub in one) and would prefer grades 4-6 where they are a little more independent.

Anyways, Friday was an interesting day.  Many school divisions outside of the city were closed due to a major snow storm that rolled through (some even "closed" Thursday at noon due to power outages and unsafe driving conditions for buses).  Here's what it was looking like Friday

Would you believe that just 3 days earlier it was 20 outside!?!

Lucky me, I also had recess duty this blustery day!  The cherry on top was it was not snow falling from the skies at recess but rather ice.  When you looked out amongst the school yard every adult had their back to the wind to protect their faces from the ice.  The outdoor recess bells were also frozen solid so we had to yell out across the yard to get them all to come inside.

When I arrived to work on Friday a guy instructed me to park under a very large tree which was quickly loosing its branches due to the weight of the snow.  I asked him if he thought it was done dropping branches after I parked and he assured me the worst of it was over.  Well, this is what I arrived to after school

I ended up dragging the large branch in front of the car behind me because there was no where else to put it!  I'm still unsure if that branch hit my car or not as it's pretty snow covered but we'll investigate it a little more another day... for now I'm just glad I made it home safe!

In other news, I had planned to go buy a Christmas tree (yes, we go the fake route as it just makes more sense so we can reuse our tree year after year).  When we moved into our house and set up our old tree we quickly realized it was much too small for our bay window so we finally splurged on a nice 7.5 foot one.  It was half off at Michaels.  And, since my husband was taking so long to get back to me as to what tree I should purchase I ended up wandering the store a little too much and found discounted Halloween shirts.  Naturally I bought one and I'm planning to wear it on Halloween (as I'm already booked for that afternoon).

It's Canadian Thanksgiving this Monday so it's a long weekend!  Wishing all my Canadian readers a great Thanksgiving!

This Week At School

This week at school I...

I went to a soccer tournament and spent all day outside.  Luckily it wasn't too cold (although I definitely wore gloves and a toque most of the day) and the rain held off until the bus ride back to school.

I went to a different colony school (but one that I had been to last year) and taught middle years.

I went to a kindergarten classroom and quickly realized that kindergarten is tricky this time of year... routines are being drilled into them so much they definitely do lose their minds when anyone strays even the slightest from their routine.

I had a half day turn into a full day.  The teacher that I ended up covering for the in the afternoon was also away for the morning but they couldn't find a substitute teacher for her (so I think someone else covered the couple of classes she had in the morning).  I doubt anyone thought there would be a substitute teacher shortage this early on in the year!

I was a French teacher... very little French was spoken.

I was in a classroom with a student teacher!  Huzzah!  These always make for easier days.

We played some Silent Ball and Snake.

Needless to say it was a busy week at school (and I've already got quite a bit booked for next month already too).

This Week At School

Another busy week at school!

For some reason one of the schools I was at this week still had an indoor recess (I'm quite sure that the other schools nearby likely did not have an indoor recess though so no one was quite sure why we had decided that). I also had a day of outdoor recess duty but luckily for me it has started to warm up (it's not in the positives yet but it's warmer than -20 which is lovely). I hadn't had outdoor duty in a long time so I guess my time had finally come up.

Last week I was helping some students come up with a design for their spaghetti bridges and this week I was helping them to start constructing them. I'll find out next week if they had much success with their designs.

I was in a new to me classroom this week... it ended up being French immersion which despite having taught basic French for part of a year I usually try to avoid French immersion. It was a chatty group of grade 2 students though so you know they loved to help me with reading some of those French words and you know they also loved it when I said we would be speaking in mostly English that day.

One of my classes had an assignment to do on Roman Numerals... adding them, subtracting them, writing out long lengthy numbers (like 1974) in Roman Numerals. It was during this assignment that I learned right along with them what it meant if there was a line over one of the letters (it means to multiply that number by 1000) and how they would have multiplied their Roman Numerals (which is actually kind of interesting and I was surprised it actually worked out when we tried it with some basic multiplication facts. Why they had such a long (and in my opinion difficult) assignment on Roman Numerals I'll never know... I guess there is always the chance that it might come back bigger than what it currently is.

Finally, on Friday I took my class on a short community walk. They call it their km walk in the community so my guess is the route we take supposed to be about a kilometer long.

Fun fact: On the way to work on Friday I heard about what the top 3 jobs are that kids think they want when they get older... I can't remember what #1 was but #2 was to be a blogger... which I was pretty surprised by because it involved writing...  If the class I was in on Friday was any indication on what the future bloggers will be like... well let's just say they don't like to write so I'm not sure how blogging will work out.  #3 on the list was to be a Youtube or Instagram star (which is no surprise except that I am surprised that it wasn't higher on the list).

Just 2 more weeks until Spring Break!

This Week At School

Another busy work week at school!

This week at school I...

Was in some new to me classrooms so I left my information at a couple of new classrooms.  It may currently be busy subbing but that won't last and I'm hoping these other teachers being away occasionally might help fill in at least a few of those gaps.

Helped some students come up with plans for a spaghetti bridge competition.  Do we have some winning designs?  I might find out in a few weeks!

Had one of my half days turn into a full day... which isn't the first time this has happened in February.  The pm class was not nearly as good as the AM class... which is also what happened last time.  The pm class was also a nursery/kindergarten class with 28 kids in it!... so that might have contributed to the not so great afternoon.

Went back to the school that I had a teaching job at a couple of years ago when I was teaching French.  It was a wonderful day (I think I ended up in the 2 best classrooms).

I saw this lovely cat step stool by the sink in a grade 1 classroom I was in and thought it was pretty cute.

Cat step stool

I planned some Pink Shirt Day activities (for those that don't know Pink Shirt Day is a day to stop bullying and this year it happened to fall on Wednesday, February 27th but if you missed it fear not... there's an International Day of Pink happening on Wednesday, April 10th).  Anyways, I just a few things I had done when I taught grade 5/6 you can read about it here and here.  It includes a link to a free resource that I use so it's worth the peek... I promise!

I attended an in class baby shower for the grade 1 class I was subbing in.  Luckily the teacher was just in meetings in the building so she stayed in the room and opened some presents in front of the kids (the boys that it was positively disgusting when she opened the box of diapers).  She has one week left and then she's on maternity leave so it was well timed (but also not because I was there).

At one of the schools I was at this week the kids were having their spring pictures taken.  Nothing says spring pictures like indoor recess because it's just too cold to be outside!... for the record we only had indoor recess a couple of days this week... it IS warming up!

Here's something I haven't seen in a looong time...

Class pets - fish

Class pets!

3 more weeks until Spring Break!

... but who's counting?

This Week at School

This week at school...

It was a busy week!

Monday I taught grade 2 where we learned what numbers added up to be 10, listened to Charlotte's Web, and wrote about our weekends in our journals (and yes, we did get side tracked with our sharing when I started it by mentioning the word "Christmas").

I noticed they haven't taken down their Halloween decorations yet... unless this spider is just always out and about. And here I am already decorated for Christmas!

One of my students also gave me a picture of a drawing he did during the day... he later asked for it back which is probably for the best since Pittsburgh is apparently the enemy.

 

Tuesday I taught in a grade 5/6 classroom. We watched a bunch of videos on why we shouldn't smoke (and voted on our favourites) you can actually watch (or show the videos to your class) here. Yesterday's class had halloween decorations still out and this class was free of all things Halloween. I actually quite liked the set up in this classroom... lots of windows and plants and I liked the counter they had by the windows with taller chairs so students could do work there.

They also wrote a bunch of "Things that are Awesome" on one of the windows. I didn't get a chance to ask them what that was all about but it seemed like an ongoing thing probably.

Wednesday was a half day outside of the big bad city. For the first couple of periods I had only 6 students! We played Go Fish (in French) and other French games online. After recess I had 16 students in my class for ELA and can i just say this teacher's library bins would look perfect in a future classroom of mine.

I also noticed they had a book tweets bulletin board in their classroom which I thought was kind of cool. Here's the general idea behind it

Thursday and Friday I was at the same school and the same classroom. It was one of the colony schools so you already know I had a delicious lunch provided for me. I had about 12 students in my class so it wasn't too rough of an end of my week.

French classroom Before*During*After

Now that summer is basically done why not show you a picture of my fabulous French classroom. 

This was what I walked into... yes the picture is a little skewed BUT the classroom is actually very large.

Here's what it looked like after I put all my fabulous touches in it

And here is what it looked like at the end of the school year

Yikes! What happened you ask!?!

The school was doing a big reshuffling of classrooms to put them in an order/location that made more sense. And... they were actually getting rid of the French room altogether. Well, they weren't getting rid of the physical classroom... how odd would have that been considering it was in the middle of the school. They just weren't having a room for French any longer because classroom teachers were going to teach their own French the following year. This meant that the wall that my white boards were on was coming down to give my next door neighbour a MASSIVE classroom (which is pretty much the size of all the classrooms... lucky kids get to really spread out at that school!). Because of the big reshuffling they needed somewhere to store everyone's stuff and well... my lovely room became the dumping ground for all things to be moved and all things to be garbaged. Lovely.

The nice part of all of this was that I certainly couldn't teach in a room that looked like this... could I?

So from about the 2 week mark before school let out I started teaching from the students classrooms (or the library in some cases) which meant we played a lot of bingo or watched movies in French (with English subtitles)... which gets a lot less complaints than you may think. This also meant that I could take down all my stuff from the walls and pack up my classroom 2 weeks before school let out. 

Let's just say on the last day when everyone else was making lists of stuff to do over the summer and scrambling to get stuff put away I was sitting back with my feet up and my bowl of bonbons (or maybe I was helping them clean up and reminding them that I was on the sub list for next year)

Bonjour!

Before Christmas break I managed to land myself a half time job teaching French every afternoon to grades 4-6 students.  So despite us just starting our 2nd week back I've been busy with planning and setting up my room (plus I've already had 2 mornings where I've subbed).

Here is a picture of the room prior to me moving things around

In a couple of weeks once I have student work up on the walls and have switched out all the bulletin boards (I've done 2 so far so I have 2 left to switch inside the classroom) I'll snap another picture.

The room is quite large (if you can imagine some rooms in this school are actually double this size!) and does not have any windows to the outside world : (   It does however have a sink in one of the corners which is handy for the odd day that I teach art in the room!  

AND for the afternoons it's all mine (and the students I share it with)

This Week At School

(or perhaps a more appropriate title would be these last few weeks at school).

It's been a little crazy at the school these last few weeks (I believe the board said that we were down to only 13 school days this morning)... so it is time to wrap things up, get my assessments in order (for my grade 8's), and write those report cards.  But we've been trying to have some fun during all of this too.

-  In math we have powered right on through fractions, decimals, and money.  They were a synch after spending so much time on addition and subtraction at the beginning of the year for most of my students.  Right now we are looking at perimeter and area.  I'll post a link to a book we watched (yes, we just watched the youtube video of someone else reading the book) to learn about perimeter and area... it took us an entire hour to get through!  Wowzers!  But the kids were engaged the whole time!  Today to continue our investigations of area and perimeter I had them draw out their names on graph paper.  Then they had to count all the edges of the letters in their names and the squares each letter used to come up with the area and perimeter of their name.  They were so confused that I was letting them colour and draw in math class - we work really hard in math class (often doing the work out of the textbook).

-  In science we have been studying rocks and minerals.  I think my favourite part of this unit has been teaching about erosion.  We've gone out to the sandbox twice now to build mountains and dump water on them to see what would happen.  Then I had them come up with a plan of how to get their mountain to "weather the storm" so to speak.  After they came up with some ideas on their own we watched a Bill Nye video on it (one that I did not preview) and I was so impressed that many of things Bill Nye went over in the video we had already talked about and learned (I'll give myself a pat on the back for this later).  Then today I took them back out to the sandbox to reattempt building a mountain that would last.  We had a lot of fun.

-  On our way back in from the sandbox the kids pretended their waterbottles were wands and multiple students bopped me on the head to tell me I had their permission to get married tomorrow (Saturday).  Erm... thanks guys... I hope they are providing me with a guy to marry as well!

-  We did some folk art in art class (I'll post pictures sometime) and we have the supplies for Fathers Day sitting under the sink ready to go!  I even created a poem for the Father's Day presents... 

what's that?  I need another pat on my back?  Well... if you insist.

-  French is pretty much done.  I've got them counting to 50 and they know their school supplies and what to call common classroom objects (although, I don't think a VCR or cassette player are common classroom objects anymore).

-  ELA is finished.  We somehow survived poetry!  We started our assessments early and they are busy looking at newspapers.

-  All that's really left is to write these fabulous report card comments (hopefully I'll get all but my 8th graders done tomorrow), survive assessments, and figure out what I want to order for my classroom for next year (I discovered the black and white pages AND turquoise stuff in one of the catelogues already).

No pictures today but here is the video of the book we used in math class to learn about perimeter and area...  I paused it a lot during the reading so my students could come up with their own table arrangements.

This Week At School

I know, I know... I didn't post this last week (so forgive me if I talk about 2 weeks in this post... you'll never know anyways).

-  We started fractions in MATH and we've been playing with different manipulatives to help with learning them (and I must say we are doing pretty good with fractions so far).
-  We started Rocks and Minerals in SCIENCE.  Lesson one involves them mining a cookie.  They used a toothpick to do this and if they broke their toothpick and wanted a new one they had to buy a new one off of me with something that they mined out of their cookie.  I'm not sure if anyone broke their toothpick... no one bought a new one from me though.  We also talked about destroying their cookie and how that represented the land around the mine.  Would the people that lived there be happy if you blew it up into pieces?  Let me tell you... some of the pretend people living around those cookies would not be happy with them.
-  I took a personal day and it was wonderful.
-  In French we are moving on to learning about school supplies and other objects in the classroom.  I feel like I maybe should have done this first.  Ah well.
-  In Health the kids are making comics about stressful situations and positive ways to make the character feel better.  Most of their comics are about salads and bananas beating other fruits and vegetables up.
-  We had our last student share for "Star of the Cycle". I can't believe it nearly took us all year to get through everyone!  We decided that we would turn that time into show and tell for 3 people and then afterwards we would go for a walk outside (we also went for a "rock walk" for science and I had them run a lap after finding their rocks... this may have been where they got the idea).
-  One of my grade 8 classes earned a celebration for filling up a cup with marbles.  They chose to play some beach volleyball/play in the playground.  Then we sat outside and read for a bit and worked on some poetry.  It was a really great class and I'm impressed with how well behaved (and able to listen and follow instructions) most of them were!

The kids made fraction flip books with the substitute.  Later we will add in decimals for the fractions as well.

They also made Mother's Day candles with the substitute

Dutch Tulip Fields

we've been writing a bunch of poems in grade 8.  I find that if  we write at least part of one together they understand what I'm looking for... so every day weird poems end up on my board.

Remember this.... I feel like this deserves a post of its own... I mean look at my eyes!

French Stories

We spent a lot of time in February reading stories in French class.  I thought it was a pretty great way to introduce sentence order and I picked some REALLY easy and basic readers for the students.

At the end of the month they were required to create their own story (somehow creating their own story took us until the end of March though).  Together, as a class, we came up with what they had to include in their books based on what the books we read were like.  The thing that we noticed about the books I had them read was the last page was ALWAYS a little different from all the other pages (so for example in "Nos jeux preferes" every page was about something a person would like to play with but the last page was about how they do not like to play with fire).  I told them their books could be VERY basic... but the last page had to be different (many books were about colours or family).  

They also noticed that only the first word in the title was capitalized in French so that was also something they had to do.

Other than those things they had to include an author and illustrator, colour their book, do a neat job, have it spelt mostly correctly (they have French/English dictionaries), and have the sentence order mostly okay.

Here is one of my students final book

We are working on reading them to the class and then they go up on our board.

This Week At School

-  In SCIENCE my students created commercials on different things that use light (as in scanners for barcodes, automatic doors, cd's, telephones, and solar panels).  I really wish I could post one of them because I think they did a fantastic job (if only they would have spoken up a little more).  They were really creative though (pulling moving whiteboards, making pretend solar panels, having catchy starts, one group wrote Walmart on the board and I was confused all day why someone did it... then I watched their video and it all made sense.  I feel like such an awesome teacher this week and mostly because of this because awesome teachers video their students light commercials.  Next week we are going to watch the commercials, talk about how they could improve, and self grade the projects (and review for a science test).

-  I'm also really excited about how well we are all doing in MATH.  Seriously, 4CP is shining like a star. Everyone is getting their grades pulled up and just doing awesome.  While working on multiplying we are also doing a graphing project for the olympic games (see out bulletin board below).  On Friday's we work on our bar graphs (not in the picture).  Eventually I'll remove their predictions and replace them with bar graphs that we make in Excel in the computer lab.  One day at recess as I was stapling new medals up to our board I heard the class across the hall commenting about how many medals the countries were getting.  It's nice to see our bulletin board getting noticed!

-  We FINALLY started the comic book part of our unit in grade 8 ELA.  I have one class of grade 8's that to be honest isn't normally quiet.  But on Thursday all was quiet as they were finishing up work and flipping through comic books (and graphic novels).  Right now we are in the process of learning about comic books. Basically, I printed off 4 articles that we will read and answer questions on to learn about fonts, writing styles, and pictures then in about a week (or 2) we will get down to actually turning one of our short stories into a comic book.  I REALLY hope they do an awesome job.  I'm excited to switch up those bulletin boards in that class with some exciting comic books.

-  In FRENCH we have finished reading our 5 very basic French books.  Now we are in the process of creating our own books.  I'm excited for this as well.  I rarely have anything French related to showcase on the bulletin board so hopefully their books will turn out awesome.

-  I sadly got cut from the board members visit schedule since I will be teaching French and not ELA while they are here.  I might try to get them back out to my hut though.  The students could read them their French books (either the ones they make or the ones I gave them).

-  Next week is the ski "trip".  Don't get excited... it is a day trip.  6:30am - 6:30pm.  Which means it will be a 5:45am - 7:15pm day for me.  I guess the roads won't be busy on the drive to work!  This means planning for a substitute.  So far they will be doing problem solving, St Patrick's Day art, and heading to the computer lab.

-  My grade 4's were lucky enough to watch Canada's gold medal game in curling (they had been begging for at least a week to watch some curling over the noon hour).  I put it on while they did some math in the morning.  That same day Canada also won gold in woman's hockey.  We weren't watching it because I was reading my students the first couple of pages of an article in grade 8.  I did put on the medal ceremony for them later on.

-  On Thursday I stayed a little later to get some work done and one of my grade 8 students came at the end of the day to get some work he had to get done.  Praise the Lord they do bring stuff home with them occasionally!

It was another really great week in my classes.  I'm REALLY loving my job which is a huge change from before Christmas break when I wasn't sure if I was doing anything great.  So thankful for everything I've been blessed with there and to finally have the opportunity to show someone what I'm able to do in the classroom (other than substitute teach).

It's true

Our Olympic bulletin board (on the right are their predictions for how many medals they thought each country would get  - then broken down further to gold, silver, and bronze).

And because I teach grade 8...

This Week At School

-  Was a full week!... for reals we haven't had to work a full 5 days for a very long time (no snow days this week)

-  In MATH we are full steam ahead with multiplication and can you believe it.. I've had multiple kids come up and tell me they are liking math.  I'm flabbergasted.  The student that I was really worried about not getting it is getting it amazingly and my students on another program who have been working adding and subtracting up until now are also doing a slower multiplication program.  We are all multiplying and it feels great!

-  We are double timing it in ART class.  Working on Valentine's Day art projects (which I feel like I botched the instructions on.... hopefully they still turn out okay) and a movement piece for later on (we started the movement piece weeks ago, then had a bunch of snow days and a pipeline explosion so it is just on hold until after Valentine's Day).  Stay tuned for instructions on both of our projects!

-  Friday's are Olympic day in math class.  Yesterday I showed them a chart of the medal counts from the Winter Olympics four years ago and based on that we predicted what we thought the medal counts would be for this year (For Canada, USA, Germany, Russia, and China - they picked the countries... okay I made them pick Canada, USA, and Russia).  We are working on creating a pictograph on our outside bulletin board for the medal count and in the classroom we will work on bar graphs for the medal counts (which will eventually turn into a computer lesson to create the graph in Excel).  Stay tuned for a picture of our bulletin board!

-  Speaking of COMPUTER CLASS, we are finally doing more than just All The Right Type and free time!  This week we worked on using word art in Word to create name tags for our desks (I made them remove their old ones because some had multiplication charts on them).  

-  In SCIENCE we watched for a shadow for at least a week to appear on a certain tree in the school yard.  But alas, it has been cloudy (naturally, the sun would come out after we did the lesson inside rather than outside).  In case you are ever having a very gloomy week and want to teach your students about shadows I found a great website to hep teach kids about shadow lengths!  First we predicted what we thought shadows looked like throughout the day and then we went through the website.  Afterwards they had a worksheet to do to show where a shadow would come from a tree at different times... some got it, some didn't take their time and all the shadow lengths looked the same, some drew their shadows coming from random places.  I think we will go back and look at it next again next science class.  For the record, it got sunny the day after the lesson and my students have been OBSESSED with checking its shadow and counting how many steps long it is at different times.

-  In FRENCH we are doing I Love To Read Month.  We went through one really easy book and then we went through a book about a groups favourite games.  I've told my class to try to remember what it was like when they were learning to read English. What did they do to try to figure out what was going on in the story?  So we've been looking at pictures and recognizing words that they've already learned.  I must admit they have a much better memory than I originally thought!  I also introduced the word "Nous" this week which refers to a group of people.  I even stuck up a new poster on the wall that I thought showed this best. Since we were talking about Nous I figured may as well tell them about Je, Tu, Il, Elle, Vous, Ils, and Elles as well.  They already knew about Je and a little about Tu, Il, and Elle.  Every day 1 we head to the library to do an online program to just reinforce what they are learning in the classroom.  They are pretty into it which is great (and one less day I have to plan something for!)

-  Haven't had much ELA this week since my lovely grade 8's are doing a DARE program.  On Friday when I supervised they watched a couple of videos and one talked a little about plagiarism... so happy for this since some of my students are definitely plagiarizing on their blogs and apparently me telling them they could get in serious trouble later on if they make that a habit isn't enough for them to stop.  Hopefully they get it now.  

-  I've been having trouble with getting my 8's to hand stuff in.  This week I'm trying something new... we've been writing short stories and I should definitely have more handed in than what I currently do so anyone who hasn't handed in their first story we did (on an inanimate object) by Monday gets to spend their next day 5 (so Thursday) lunch hour in the computer room working on getting it done.  Next week it will be anyone who hasn't handed in story #2 and posted an article review.  The following week their third story.  It pushed at least one of my students to get their work handed in sooner.  Not sure what to do in grade 4 with this.  I only send homework in math and only when they don't do well on their hand in question... I definitely have some that need the extra practice and I'm worried about report card time...

Apparently it has been a busy week!

Here are some lovely photos of our week at school....

We watched some Olympic snowboarding on Thursday in French class because I was missing half my class (for the record we started out watching about Festival du Voyegeur).  It was just the qualifiers but one guy fell... the response in the classroom was shock and then someone said "well, at least he made it to the Olympics" we also watched parts of the opening ceremonies on Friday at different times.  My grade 4's watched it at lunch.

Pop Art Snowflakes ours didn't turn out as well as the originals on the site.

Our Valentine's art

The beginnings of our movement pieces... I am well aware they look like nothing special right now

I got to school REALLY early yesterday morning to take some of these pictures, get old stuff off bulletin boards and get grades into my computer.

This Week At School

... wait we had school this week?

Confession:  My students were only at school 2 days this week!  The reason?  Friday was a professional development day and on Monday and Tuesday the area was recuperating from a little (big) natural gas emergency leaving the school without heat.  Since we were only at school 2 days this week I hardly have anything to say!.. And if you know me you know this is a lie.  I always have a lot to say!

- On Monday and Tuesday I was supposed to be at a math professional development and have a substitute come in.  BUT Monday was a snow day so I stayed home and just went on Tuesday (yes, I went to PD even though my school was closed)

-  We started multiplying (again) and shocker, my students are actually enjoying it!  Yay!  No one has panicked over it or had a heart attack about it yet.

-  It had probably been about 2 weeks since we had done any science.  So I used a health class to remind us that we do in fact study science and we are doing a light unit.  We did a reflection experiment.  The kids love the experiments because we turn out all the lights in the room and they get to play with flashlights.  I sent them home with homework:  to check out their shadows at different times (morning, noon, and afternoon) hopefully one of them remembers!

-  In ELA we talked about responding to articles with our own opinions.  I used an article on dress codes as an example.  Then handed out articles either on Justin Bieber and his recent arrest or the Seal Hunt.  Now, they have to write a blog post as their response and then respond to another blog post about their topic.  Hopefully they get them done soon... My grade 8 assessments are due at the end of the month!

-  In French we are working on introducing a friend to the class.  They are actually doing quite well with it.  Everyone forgets my STUPID rule (you don't pronounce the S, T, P, or D at the end of French words... usually).

-  We also started a French program online.  I'm the first person in the school to actually use the program with the students.  Someone give me a pat on the back, gold star, and $100!
-  On Thursday I had my hair kind of curly.  My grade 4's thought nothing of it.  The grade 8's though asked if it was my natural hair to which I responded it was... and every other day they had seen me I was wearing a wig.  They thought it was funny and yes, I know they meant to ask if my hair was naturally curly (it isn't) since I normally have my hair straight (which I do with the help of a flat iron)... my natural hair is somewhere in between the 2.

-  I'm going to take a break from our regular health curriculum to talk about inclusion.  I have one small group of students that only like working with each other.  It isn't a huge problem but if I pair them up with someone other than someone from their group they would rather choose to work alone.  There is also a clear leader in the group and if the leader decides they don't want to do something the others don't either (thankfully the leader is a good student and the things they choose not to do are things like decorating cookies or eating ice cream).  If anyone has any great ideas on how to bring this up with my students let me know!  I'll just be happy if those in that tight group start including others in their things or make their own decisions.

I don't have many pictures from the week (okay, I only have one) but come on... we were only there 2 days! My grade 8's wrote stories from an inanimate objects point of view and here is a little excerpt from one of their stories.  Can you guess what this student's inanimate object was?

Looks like this student is admitting the class is stinky!

This MONTH At School

Probably more like 2 months. 

A thousand apologies... I just really needed some ME time and then I got sick over the break and blah blah blah excuse, excuse, excuse.  

The important thing is:  I'm back!

What have we been up to since coming back from Christmas break?

-  In Science we have started our unit on light and I am SO into it!  The kids are too!  We do lots of investigations and playing with flashlights and turning out our classroom lights.  It's been a lot of fun.

-  In math we are finishing up subtracting.  I'm still not super into math.  HOPEFULLY, we will get through multiplication and division with a minimal amount of heart attacks in the next month and get to move onto something a little more fun and creative and hands on.

-  We also started doing "daily math".  I had started them on it in September probably but they were having a really hard time with it.  I found something a little easier (it even involves some multiplication and division) and we are doing okay with it.

-  In art we did some work with pop art and snowflakes (I forgot to take a picture... watch for it next week).

-  In health we did some cooperative games (watch for a blog post on the 3 things we tried)

-  In grade 8 ELA we started a short story/comic unit!  Some of them are super into it.  I'm even throwing in some fairytales!  (watch for some lessons on these as well)

-  Some of those grade 8 students are really getting into the blogs!  

-  We are working on our editing skills.  Pulling out dictionaries and thesaureses and devoting actual time to editing.  I hope they are getting it.

-  In French we are starting to speak French in French class.  What a concept!  I'm teaching them basic phrases and words and am making them ask to go to the bathroom in French.  It's a start.

AND... here are some photos from the last couple of months (again, a thousand apologies)

I planned a Christmas party for my grades 8.  Basically I had them play that game where you take turns trying to unwrap a present with oven mitts on.  There were boxes within boxes and about a bazillion layers of newspaper and tape.  The present?  A pencil.  Then we started watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", ate food, and went sledding.

We did some 3-D fish art forever ago 

It's hard to tell but these are ornaments on a Christmas tree - we used pastels for the tree branches and water colour for the ornaments)

Water colour and tissue paper/stained glass trees.  I loved how these turned out!  And I love how creative they got with them!

Work in progress.  It's hard to tell but it is the French alphabet which is exactly like the English alphabet except the letters sound different.  They were supposed to write the letter sounds on the page if they were different from the English sound.

2nd snow day = a day to do some art!  What do you think?


Art projects coming up:
- a piece on movement
- a "we are dreaming of warmer weather" piece
- something to do with valentine's day!

LINKS:
3D Fish Art
Stained Glass Trees

This Week at School...

-  Continued with cross country (only one more practice to go!)

-  I signed my teaching contract for the year!

-  We are learning about bears for our Habitats and Communities unit in science

-  We did the Terry Fox run... Terry Fox is a Canadian Hero

-  Discovered that my grade 8's have a free computer class... so I'm making them each a blog to keep up with.

-  Slugging it out with basic multiplication facts in math

-  My grade 5's learned (and memorized) the days of the week in French in order!

And... I managed to take a few photos...

My Grade 8's Blogs... Only the class will be able to view them so I won't bother posting a link.  But I created the blogs here.  So far it seems like it will be really great.  Stay tuned for updates on how we are doing with it and tutorials.

I only see my grade 4's in the morning and for the most part only teach them Math and Science.  There is one ELA class that I have with them on my own (without my teaching partner) so every day 4 we have a new Star of the Cycle.  My amazing, talented, and awesome boyfriend made the template for me!
  I might be willing to share...

Remember that amazing, talented, and awesome boyfriend of mine?  He also made us a job poster.  The kids picked these jobs at the beginning of the year and we will switch jobs every Monday (those who did not have a job this week will all get one next week)

This was our art lesson from last week.  You can find the tutorial here (I pretty well just followed the on screen instructions - we have a projector in the class so I was able to pull up the website and show it to the class)

It's hard to tell just how large this mug is but it's pretty large.  That boyfriend of mine gave it to me along with a bunch of treats to stash away in my desk when I first got hired... anywho, the mug finally made its way to school and my classroom on Friday.

When I went to sign my contracts I was given a present from the school division in the form of a book!... I'll stick it in my pile of books to read.

Stay Tuned for.. 

- a tutorial on an optical illusion lesson I did with my 4th graders in art. They enjoyed the lesson so much that some went home to look up more optical illusions and many are making second and third art projects on the illusion we did. Hopefully we will finish the project on Friday.

- A tutorial for how to use Kidblog and what we are doing with it

- A substitute teaching book!  What it's called, who it's by, and where to find it will all be coming shortly!