City Skyline Arrays

I saw this in a classroom a little while ago

and I thought it looked like a fun way to teach math and art together (if you happen to be using array's to teach multiplication that is).

If your students are well beyond learning how to multiply here is another art activity with city skylines.

This Week At School

It was a busy week at school.  Temperatures dropped below -30 and the flu is still running rampart (I would say on average there are about 5 students missing per class that I've been in).

What did I do this week while at school?

I learned a new way for measuring the surface area of a triangular prism.  He told me multiple times that this isn't a standard way of solving for it but it works so I'll do my best to explain it to you...

First, base x height to determine the surface areas of the 2 triangles (no need to divide by 2 since there are 2 of them).

Then, figure out the perimeter of one of the triangles (so you'll be adding up all 3 sides)

Then, multiple the perimeter of the triangle by the distance between the 2 triangles.

Finally, add what you got in the last step with your surface areas of the triangles from the first step and voila!... you should have the surface area of the triangular prism.

I was also in an art classroom this week and I found this...

Bob Ross Painting?

Now I can't say for certain or anything but... do we think this teacher may have done a Bob Ross painting?

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!

Interactive Spinner

I've seen this in a few classrooms now but this is the first time I've actually seen this spinner used for something.

Apparently it was used during parent teacher conferences... my guess is students were taking their parents around the room showing them some of the things they had been doing and were able to do.

This Week At School

Well this is it folks, yesterday marked the last day of school before Christmas break and I had the day off (which I expected).  I'm back at it in exactly 2 weeks though... I managed to get a subbing job on the very first day back to school!... not only that but I'm at a school I haven't been at in a couple of years.. so it should be interesting.

Anyways, this week at school was actually a bit busier than I had originally anticipated.

I was a surprise gym teacher early in the week (I say surprise because I was actually supposed to be doing other things but the day got all switched around which meant I stayed in the gym apparently).

I did a bunch of Christmas math activities with some grade 7's.

I was back at the school with just 9 kids and this time 2 of them were away so I had only 7 (and only that many in the afternoon because they are split up for the morning)!  We cleaned in the morning and watched movies in the afternoon which was perfect for me because I was not feeling the greatest.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas (and a happy New Year)

Here's a picture of our Christmas tree this year

Since it's Christmas break I find it only fitting that I also get a break for 2 weeks and so I won't be posting (at least I don't plan on it) until January 7th. 

Enjoy your break!

Calculator Plus

… is the new cell phone. As a way of getting around talking about cell phones in a grade 8 class I was recently in students started to refer to them as “calculator pluses” because they aren’t allowed to actually have them (cell phones) in class. For the record, I saw no cell phones in my class… or uh… calculator pluses. And in my books as long as they stay put away I’m good with them keeping them in their pockets (even if they are technically supposed to be in their lockers).

I did however see many calculators in my class… these are also fine… we are doing square roots after all.

What One Doesn't Belong

While doing my little stint in grade 8 the last couple of weeks I've been attending the meetings the teacher I'm in for would normally go to... and every so often you learn about something kind of cool.

It's called Which One Doesn't Belong and it's a website comprised of a bunch of 2x2 grids of pictures, numbers, shapes, etc. where students have to decide which of the 4 pictures doesn't belong and give some reasoning behind it.  Usually, if not always, you could argue in some way that each of the pictures doesn't belong with the other 3.

How would I use this site in my class?  I think I would start math classes off with it to get students thinking and having to work through a reason why that particular number, shape, etc doesn't belong.  It's quick, it's easy, and requires you only to get to the website and select one of the grids.

Pumpkin Investigation

I saw this in a classroom nearly a year ago (and I've been saving it for a more appropriate time to put up on the blog)... to be fair I did happen across this bulletin board in December and thought it was not quite right for the season.

The papers are hard to read but one of them says: 

"Introduction and Naming our Pumpkins"

"We began our investigation by naming our pumpkins. We have a big one and a small one. First, we brainstormed a list of names for each pumpkin. Then, we took a vote to decide what their names would be. The vote concluded that the big pumpkin would be "Alvin" and the small pumpkin would be "Theodore"

Below that the paper says:

"Describing Alvin and Theodore"

"Next, we thought about all of the things that pumpkins "can do", what pumpkins "have" and what pumpkins "are". We came up with these lists as a class. Then, each student recorded the lists on their own sheet of paper. We hope to use these descriptive words as our pumpkin investigation continues!"

Their "can" list included words such as: roll, rot, light up, break, be white, float, and grow. Their "have" list included words like "seeds, stems, guts, bumps, scratches, dent, lines, and pulp. Finally, their "are" list included: round, orange, fat, big, small, yummy, heavy, squishy, and a fruit.

More hard to read pictures of words but here's what they say...

"Pumpkin Read-Aloud and Art"

"During the month of October our classroom library has remained stocked with plenty of books related to the autumn season. We read several books about pumpkins including one called "The Ugly Pumpkin" which served as our mentor text for our pumpkin art. In this book, the students noticed that not every pumpkin is perfectly orange and round... some pumpkins are actually quite funny looking! We also discussed how some fruits, like squash, like to masquerade as pumpkins just like the character in our story. The students were given two primary colours, red and yellow, so they could create whichever shade of orange that they liked. Our art turned our fantastic with some pretty creative, silly, and unique looking pumpkins!"

"Descriptive Pumpkin Writing"

"When we finished our pumpkin art we thought it would be a great idea to write about our pumpkins. It was fun to look at all the different pumpkins that the students created and to notice the differences. I demonstrated what format that writing might take by first creating my own pumpkin art and then describing the pumpkin in writing for the students. The students offered me suggestions on ideas about how I might describe my pumpkin. It was a real collaborative effort! The students' creativity and wonderful ideas continued to shine through in their writing"

"Pumpkin Predictions"

"Our class had many questions regarding our pumpkins, Alvin and Theodore. We compiled a list and decided to investigate Alvin to discover some answers. In groups of four or five, I showed the students a small sample of tools we would be using to help us answer these questions. For example, I would show them one unifix cube next to Alvin. Then I asked, how many unifix cubes would we need to make a tower tall enough to reach the top of Alvin's stem? We did the same thing with a piece of yarn. If one centimetre of yarn looks like this, how many centimetres of yarn would we need to reach around the centre of Alvin once? We answered each of our questions in a similar manner. Before carving Alvin we measured everything together and recorded the "official" answers. The students were very surprised with some of them! Others were very excited with how close their educated predictions were!"

"Skip Counting Pumpkin Seeds"

"After carving the pumpkin, removing the seeds and drying them out for counting we discussed as a class which method of counting would be the easiest and quickest. As a teacher, I was very pleased when the students came up with idea of skip counting piles of seeds almost right away. Every day during our morning we practice skip counting. The students suggested that we make piles of two, five, and ten to count all the seeds. We decided to make five equal groups of students. Two groups were responsible for skip counting their pile by two's, two groups were responsible for skip counting their piles by five's, and the final group skip counted their pile of seeds by 10's. We ended up counting 426 seeds!"

This Week At School

Another full week teaching grade 8. 

It was mostly just a continuation of everything we were doing last week. 

In math we were talking about Pythagorean’s theorem 

In ELA we were reading Half Brother (and we also did an Orange Shirt Day activity, a listening test, and some writing activities). 

In Music Education kids continued making their mix tapes. I had them colour a photocopy of a tape to go with their themes and write in the songs for one of their sides… here are some of their tapes 

In Social Studies they handed in their family trees or timeline assignments and we moved on to some textbook work.

And nearly all week my homeroom begged for me to take them outside (because I had taken my other math class outside to measure triangles earlier in the week) but it was such a crumby week outside that I decided they could do the activity with their regular teacher (today it was even snowing on and off throughout the day!)

I must admit... I'm going to miss this class.


And I know they're going to miss me too.

It's been a swell 2 weeks.

This Week At School

My home away from home for the last week

I’ve been lucky enough to be in the same classroom all this week 

(and spoiler alert: I’ll be back in this same room next week as well).

I’m also a pretty lucky substitute because I hit the jackpot considering what I believe a grade 8 class could be because they are amazing. They work quietly (and yes, most of them are working), don’t interrupt, and are just overall a lovely group of students.

So what have I been up to in this grade 8 class?

We are reading Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel and they are super into it. I read them about every third chapter or so and we are on chapter 10 already (they had started before I arrived though).   Even I'm into the book... in fact I brought it home with me this weekend to get some reading done and have every intention of finishing it so that I know how it ends.

We are learning about the Pythagorean Theorem in math which is going pretty good. One of my math classes is definitely better than the other (behaviour wise) but for the most part they are getting their work done and understanding the theorem and how to do it… we are still working on recognizing if a measurement is an area or a line (I mean it seems so simple to me).

In Social Studies they have been working on a timeline or family tree. I assigned it for homework to be completed on Monday though so next week we are moving on to some textbook work.

I also teach a grade 6 music education class and they are creating a mix tape. I found a blank mix tape template online and had them colour it one day when we didn’t have access to the computer lab. Their mix tapes have to have an overall theme to them. There are a lot of “happy” “sad” or “dance” themes but I’ve done my best to steer them away from genre themes or artist themes so that there is a bit of variety in these mix tapes. I think the hardest part of the assignment will be to make sure when you add up the songs that they don’t exceed 30 minutes per side.

Yesterday afternoon I was missing about half my class because it was a fun afternoon spent outside (in what I would consider almost too cold of temperatures to be outside all afternoon... I should have tried harder to find some gloves to bring this morning I guess).  We played a bunch of games keeping score and surprisingly the 8th graders came in 2nd place (out of 3 places)... I really wasn't sure they had it in them.

Overall I would say it’s been a really good week and I’m looking forward to having to be back for another week.

AND, this week I managed to book myself not only 5 days for October already but also another 5 days in January (and a few others in between). I’m predicting it being a fairly busy year.

This Week At School

Another week in Mrs. B's grade 7 ELA class...

We had our first TUSC meeting.  When the chairperson asked who wasn't prepared about 5 people stood up.  Honestly, I was expecting more and a couple of them really apologized to me in private about it so I'll take it.  If this coming week we could only have about 2 people stand up that would be wonderful.

We watched a video about Harriet Tubman and almost got through it all.  I think we have about 10 or 15 minutes left.  The nice thing about this video is that despite it being in black and white and hard to follow the kids actually sat quietly today to watch it!.. I mean I even left the room a couple of times to check on students that couldn't sit quietly in the room.  So that's a success!

We are past the halfway point in Underground to Canada.  I'm really hoping that by the end of this next week we will maybe have a couple of chapters left.

In the other classes I help out in we played some battleship to help with coordinate pairs.  That brought back some fond memories of when I taught grade 5/6 and my students loved making coordinate pairs pictures at the end of the year. 

Anyways, the teacher had printed off some blank battleship pages and stuck them inside these dry erase folder type things which works WAY BETTER than just using a page protector.

Other than that I guess I just survived another week teaching middle school!

Oh, and the Jets won the series against Nashville so I finally got myself a white Jets shirt so I can be ready for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's whiteout at school.

This Week At School

Despite not feeling the greatest all weekend I managed to pull it together enough to work every single day leading up to spring break!

In one of my classes this week I hadn't been in since September (it was actually the class I subbed in for my first day of work this school year). It was nice to go back and see them but it was especially nice because I only had 8 grade 4 students (and after lunch we lost 2 of them and only had 6)! It was a nice relaxing day. I even taught them how to play my favourite game to play while substitute teaching - Snake 

At one of the schools I was at this week one of the teachers apparently brings her dog to work every single day... which is a lot less of a distraction than one might think (I guess the students are used to having the dog come to class with her). Anyways, she came into my class for one period and when she read a book to the class on the carpet the dog (which was a border collie) was sitting watching her read the book and looked just like one of the students... eager to see what the book was all about. while it sat and looked at the book.

The kids in this grade 3 class had what they called "science hats"

Science Hats!

I asked them what they were supposed to be and they kept telling me science hats so I'm not at all sure what that green stuff is supposed to represent... my guess was grass but they thought this was preposterous.

We did an Easter tanagram activity in math class that I thought was great and had them super engaged

Easter Tangrams

They coloured, cut, and remade the egg. Then they tried making those other shapes at the top of the page. Just remind them to be careful when cutting because the cuts have to be fairly presice for it to work well. The activity is from Mathsticks (and when searching for this tangram activity I actually found a bunch of other egg/Easter related activities so you might want to search it out!)

I ended the week going to swim and gym one last time with the one rural school I frequent that goes to this. It was the students last time there so we stopped at McDonalds on the way for a treat or in their case, lunch (my husband, who attended the school many moons ago, says they even did this when he was attending the school so I guess they've kept the tradition going). 

It was an easy end to the week as I was in the same class for 2 days and the list on the board was pretty simply: reading, math, and a science test were the harder things to do that we managed to get almost completed by the end of the morning of the first day.

And with that it's Spring Break!  

I'll be taking a break from the blog next week (although there is one post for next week ready to go so watch for that) and will be back to the blog (and school) after Easter.

Have a safe and happy Easter (and spring break if you happen to be on it)!

Multiplication and Division in Grade 1?

A couple of weeks ago I posted this picture:

Math - groups of

saying that it had something to do with math...

Well, the students had actually done all the colouring and lines and numbers on this page prior to me being in this class (which was either a grade 1 or 2 class... sorry... I really don't recall which right now!) so I'm not 100% sure on how their teacher told them to group the circles but I imagine she asked students to find similarities in the pictures (you can see that this student coloured #4 and 12 the same colours at least).

The day I was with them they were discussing what they had discovered.  

Someone said they noticed that 3, 9 and 15 both had circles in triangles

Another said that groups of 2's showed up in 2, 4, 6, and 10

Someone else noticed that groups of 4 (or circles in a square shape) showed up in 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20

Then the other teacher in the room asked them about numbers 1, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19

One student noticed that they were easy to spot because the circles all formed a larger circle. 

No one was really seeing that no other numbers go into those numbers (and I mean, honestly, why would they?  They are in grades 1 or 2 and haven't learned about multiplication or division)

So the teacher had 4 of them stand up and form a square like the picture for 4.

She asked them to then put themselves into groups of 2 which they could easily do and everyone had a partner.

Then she asked them to put themselves into groups of 3... someone was left out.

Next she had 6 of them stand up and asked them to make groups of 2 and 3... which we should know worked fine.  Then she asked for 4's and it didn't work.

Finally, she had 7 of them stand up and form a circle like the picture.  She asked for groups of 2 and someone was left out.  She asked for groups of 3 and someone was left out.  

And then we ran out of time.

But those students were thinking.

They were beginning to notice that 2 doesn't go into everything (or 3 or 4)

They were beginning to think of things in groups

They were wondering why they weren't able to form smaller groups out of 7

They were beginning to learn about multiplication and division in grade 1 (or 2)!

Wow.

I would be interested if anyone has ever come across this lesson anywhere because I would definitely love to see what else happens throughout it!

The Winter Olympics

Well the 2018 Winter Olympics have come and gone and I'm getting this post up just a pinch too late.

Confession:  I'll often spy good ideas to write about or do in my classroom one day but I save them an entire year when that holiday or season comes around again.  Since the Olympics aren't coming around again for another 4 years I decided it was 100% okay to write this now.

Anyways I spied this in one of the classrooms I visited this last month

2018 Olympic Games Medal Count Poster

and it reminded me of one that I had done with my students when I taught grade 4 

2014 Olympic Games Medal Count Bulletin Board

I had my grade 4 students pick a few countries that they wanted to follow during the Olympics (we picked Canada, USA, Germany, Russia, and China) and on our hallway bulletin board we kept track of how many medals they got pictograph style (I think we might have even had 1 picture (of a medal) = 2 actual medals won.  I can't remember if we kept track of how many gold, silver, and bronze medals each country got... I feel like we may have kept track of those in a notebook but on the bulletin board we just kept track of the total medals won.  

On the other side of the bulletin board they each wrote some predictions about what country they thought would do best, how many medals that country would get and how many of the medals would be gold, silver, and bronze.

After the Olympics were over and we knew the totals of those 5 countries medals I taught them about graphing.  They already knew about pictographs because of the giant one we were adding to every day in the hall so I figured we would do some bar graphs.  So off to the computer lab we went and I taught them how to make a graph in Excel and we all printed one off (these graphs had the medals broken down into gold, silver, and bronze).

But we weren't done then.  After this I had them come up with some questions that they could answer by looking at their graphs.  It could be something simple like "how many gold medals did Canada get? or something more challenging like "how many gold medals did all 5 countries get?".  I left it up to them decide on the questions... 

Here are some of the results..

The white paper on the bottom with their questions on it was folded in half so that when you flipped it up you saw their answers and thinking.

I'm still pretty proud of that bulletin board and what we all did with the Olympics that year. 

What did you do in your classroom to celebrate the Olympics?

100 Day

Not sure when exactly this is happening (I imagine it's different depending on where you live) but I know here in Manitoba it's coming up soon!  One of the classes I was in recently was celebrating 100 Day early (not sure why) and this was one of their activities:

I tried to encourage the student that made the banana out of Lego to take one piece off and say he could make 4 bananas out of 100 Lego's but he wasn't interested in removing a piece.

I also had one student make a slice of watermelon out of Lego's but I never saw her completed worksheet.

This Week At School

It's likely not breaking news or anything but teacher's here are still steadily getting ill or going to meetings as I continue to be kept busy. I now have subbing days booked into May.

This week I subbed in elementary and middle schools. We did an Olympics web scavenger hunt (and watched some winter Olympic trailers from 2014). We played some Sumdog and played some bench ball in gym class. 

We also had explore time 

and ONLY when we have explore time!

I went back to the school I was teaching French at last year and we read and listened to A LOT of books.

I found this cute little reading corner

and some chairs/stools that I've never seen around before

Hot Chocolate Activities

The first week back from winter break this year I was in for a grade 4 teacher the entire week. I had already assumed that there likely wasn't going to be a plan left for me so I took it upon myself to do a little planning over Christmas break... it started with an art project about hot chocolate and went from there...

So first, I found a hot chocolate art lesson on A Faithful Attempt

To go along with the theme of "hot chocolate" for the week I also read them a poem about hot chocolate called "The Perfect Cup of Hot Chocolate"

I had told them that when I taught in my grade 5 and 6 classroom that for every piece of art work that they did in that class I had them write a poem to go along with it. So the following day I taught the class hot to write a Couplet poem and they wrote some couplets about hot chocolate.

Then I wanted them to write about their own perfect cup of hot chocolate... but figured we could have a bit of fun making our own hot chocolate before that. So, I had them write out the steps to making hot chocolate (using the supplies that I had to make the hot chocolate which were cups, spoons, hot chocolate powder in a container, and a kettle). I told them that I was going to follow their steps exactly and had them face away from me as they read their directions. Needless to say, the first few hot chocolates that we made didn't exactly turn out. We had a bunch where the container of hot chocolate was "inside" the cup (we couldn't actually fit the container inside the cup so it just sat on top), some hot chocolates that had cold water in them, and one where we put 4 teaspoons inside a cup and that was it. I gave them a chance to edit their work to make it more detailed so that I might actually make a cup and after they edited their work we were making a steady stream of regular hot chocolates. 

This wasn't the first time I did this... when I was teaching grade 8 ELA I had the students tell me how to make a sandwich

Lots of them complained that the hot chocolate wasn't chocolaty enough and that they make theirs with milk and why didn't I have any marshmallows. So, for the second part of their descriptive writing project I had them write about their own perfect cup of hot chocolate.

They were supposed to try to use up the entire page but some complained that their perfect cup of hot chocolate was nothing special and one said his perfect cup was the one he got at McDonalds. So I also had them describe the perfect cup to put it in.

Then, the following day I did a hot chocolate science experiment. The purpose of the experiment was that we wanted to know what the perfect temperature was for drinking hot chocolate AND how many degrees hot chocolate temperature would drop every 2 minutes.

I went through the scientific method with them for this and we filled out most of the page together. Here is our scientific results (the numbers on the far right show the number of students that thought their hot chocolate was at the perfect temperature for drinking then)

As you can see our results are a little inconclusive.

My best guess is that some students wanted for their hypothesis to be right that they just decided that temperature was right for them. A few also were out to lunch during this process and realized a little too late that we were doing more than just writing on a paper and enjoying hot chocolate and just voted for what their friend did.

For the record, the students that voted for the 90 degree temperature it was likely already closer to 75 degrees by the time they got it. Likely still a little too hot to be drinking but they forced it down I guess.

And there you have it folks, how to spend a week talking about hot chocolate

This Week At School

What I once again expected would have been a slower week back to work (what with it being the first week back for students and all) was actually a full week for myself. I worked every day in the same classroom this week.

I wasn't sure if there was going to be a sub plan for myself (and if I'm being honest I really didn't expect one) So.. a lot of stuff from years past became part of my lessons for the week

We did January's math poster, sudokus, and math games in math class

Math by the Month

We had a TUSC meeting

We did some Hot Chocolate art, poems, descriptive writing about our perfect cup of hot chocolate, and experiments to test what the perfect temperature to drink hot chocolate is.

Descriptive Writing

Hot Chocolate Art

Science Experiment

As you can see our results for what the perfect temperature to drink hot chocolate was inconclusive.

Hope everyone had a great first week back from break!

This Week At School

Busy week this week out and about!

Monday I was a grade 2 teacher.  We wrote letters to Santa, read some Flat Stanley, and made community posters.  It was also wear a hat day and no one told me... I have reindeer antlers that would have been perfect!

Tuesday I was at the colony school teaching kindergarten-4th grade we did a lot of read alouds and after school they were very excited to set up their Christmas tree in their classroom. 

Wednesday I was back at the colony school but this time teaching 5-8th graders.  This means I get to play them on Sumdog for at least a little bit (and I don't always win).

Thursday I was at a school close to home.  We spent pretty much the entire morning in the gym practicing for their Christmas Concert.  A teacher asked me how the day was going and I said I had hardly seen my students in the classroom so I couldn't complain.  At the en of the day we had choice time and ended off the day with having them clean up to find a "mystery mess" (and let me just tell you... I've never had students clean the windows at clean up time before!... they did an amazing job!)

Friday I was back at the school I had started things off with at the beginning of the week (only this time it was a grade 4/5 classroom).   Only the morning this time which was fine by me because I had already worked all the other days this week (plus I had a return to make and some shopping to do in the afternoon when it's slightly less busy).  Today was pj day which if I'm being honest I did know about... I definitely COULD have worn some pj's but I didn't want to have to pack them in a bag of some kind and bring them there and change in and out of them multiple times... plus I wasn't just going straight home after work.  So what I'm trying to say is, the kids wore pj's this day... I did not.

One more week of school left before the much anticipated break!  So far, I've got one day booked... I'm thinking it likely won't be much more than that.

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.