Easter Bulletin Board Ideas

Now that you have some Easter art up it's time to transform your bulletin board (or, you know, maybe not because we can't be changing it for every.single.season).  BUT, if you are keen on changing your bulletin board (or maybe have a lot of parent volunteers in your room that can help) here are a few ideas I found on the inter webs.

These first 2 I couldn't actually find the site they originated from to link back to it... I thought the first one was fun though.

and this one I thought I would have each of my students decorate a paper egg to add to the bulletin board

This one comes from here

Do you decorate your classrooms bulletin board for Easter?

Post a picture of it in the comments!

If you are looking for bulletin board ideas for other seasons and holidays here are a few other posts I've done:

Spring

Valentine's Day

Winter

Christmas

Remembrance Day

Halloween

Back to School

PS.  Happy April Fools Day!  I can't imagine there's a lot of pranks being played in a time like this but have you ever played a prank on your students?  Here and here are what I did last year to my students.

Book Trailer

A while ago I was subbing in a class that was making book trailers.

This was back when I was doing a lot of subbing in the school with just a few kids and was teaching grades 1-8 all at the same time.  It was the perfect thing for the kids to do because the younger kids could do their book trailer on a picture book they read and the older kids could do it on a novel.

First, some resources that I used:

What is a Book Trailer

I used this resource for the rubric (which I wrote on the board for my students).  I used the book trailer review sheet idea but instead we watched a couple of book trailers and reviewed them together as a class.

Book Trailer Examples

More Book Trailer Examples

It was tricky showing such a wide range of student ages book trailers that would not only be appropriate for them but picking one that might be familiar to them.  So after we watched a couple we story boarded our own book trailer.

To do this I read them a picture book (because it would be quick and fresh in everyones minds).  

Then we used the rubric that I had written on the board to add in ideas that we could use in our book trailer.  For example, according to our rubric we are supposed to pick 4 adjectives to describe the overall theme of the book so we picked 4 together and I wrote them on the board.  Then we had to have a sentence to entice people to continue watching our trailer.  Now, it was a few months ago so I don't exactly remember but I do remember the book was about monsters getting their hair cut.  So, our leading question was something like "Have you ever wondered where monsters go for a hair cut?" and we wrote that on the board.

We continued to fill in the rest of the rubric with ideas we had from the picture book I read them.

Then it was time to start creating our trailer

Book Trailer Maker

We never finished our book trailer for the picture book but together we came up with about 4 slides, what the words on them would be, what the picture would be, and then added effects like music.

I wish I could show you the one we created but in order to download them you need the upgrade (otherwise it's free!)

If you are interested in other ways I've seen students share what they are reading check out my post on Book Creator.

This Week At School

What started off as a week with only a half day booked turned out to be a fairly busy week in the end!

This week I worked in 3 new to me classrooms all in the same division (I have the ability to work in up to 3 divisions in any given week... and often will work in all 3 throughout the week)!  One of those classrooms was French immersion (luckily for me it was the kindergarten class).

I also only subbed in early years classrooms this week (grades kindergarten through 6th grade).  There isn't much to report on what we all did this week at school but I got to take the kindergartens outside on a shape hunt (even though it's snowing... yes SNOWING... that marks 8 months of snow for us).  I also got to take a grade 4 class to the computer lab and when I gave them free time nearly every last one of them went to play Roblox so I got to learn a little about what that is... prior to them having free time they were playing Prodigy which is nearly equally as appealing to kids.

Kindergarten classroom

Next week is a shortened week due to Good Friday... so far I've only got 1.5 days booked but I'm sure it will fill in at least a tiny bit more.

A Search Engine for Kids

A while ago I mentioned KidRex (a search engine for kids) and last week one of the EA's at a school I was at showed me Kiddle... another search engine for kids!... just in case you forget about the KidRex one.

Once again, it is pretty visual... a picture accompanies most (if not all) links that come up.

One thing that I didn't notice about the KidRex search engine (but was told this one had) was that Kiddle filters inappropriate language (I should note that I did try putting some inappropriate language into KidRex as well and it filters it too).  Then I tried something that a kid would try to look up but might not be considered an inappropriate word... so I searched "butt" nothing inappropriate came up on either search engine but KidRex wouldn't let it load at all... an "Oops! Try again" came up instead.  Kiddle loaded some things about Brent Butt and tv shows.  Later, I tried searching Brent Butt on KidRex and it still wouldn't let it load (because of the word "butt".

Kiddle also has an image search, news, and videos tabs... in fact it looks a lot like Google.

I don't have much a preferences either way with which one of these search engines I prefer BUT because Kiddle offers an image search I might be swayed that way... sometimes kids need to look up pictures to add to projects and this gives them a great (and safe way) to do it!

So, do you let your kids or students use Google to do searches?
Have you ever tried KidRex or Kiddle?
Do you think you will now that you know about them?

I personally think it will be hard to make the switch... and hard to get students to make the switch as well (they are so used to using Google!) but I would like to see it happen... even adding a bookmark to Kiddle could be a great start!

Sumdog

I've been doing a bit of a series on using technology in the classroom.

If you want to catch up you can read about Mystery Skype here and I also did a post on Spelling City.

So Sumdog!

What I like about it:

You can pick a level that your students are currently struggling with, what you are currently doing in class, or just have them doing everything!

You can even put each student on something different.

The nice thing about Sumdog is that even though all the student levels may be different in your class they still play the exact same games and they play against each other.  No one needs to know that Sammy may be doing addition and Violet is on division.

There are so many games to choose from... my students LOVED playing this!

The "store" opens after school hours (although, I guess it would depend on when your school is done).  I LOVE this... it means that when students are playing it during school hours they have to be playing the games and not wasting their time in the store buying things for their houses or new clothes for their character.  You can open the store early... I think I did this once for like the last 10 minutes of a class.  I didn't tell them about it and I'm not sure if any of my students realized it was open.

You can see how your students are doing at the levels you put them based on how many questions they are getting right/wrong.  The games are pretty much like flash cards... you want to get a quicker response than your opponents to win pretty much.

As a teacher you can even play the games!  My students LOVED it when I showed up in the games to play them.

You can even create contests for your students to play in... I didn't do this.  As a beginning teacher I just didn't have time to do everything!  But it might motivate students to play it more often.

With the free version you get a certain number of reports and you can choose when to do them... I never did the reports as I wasn't really using this as any kind of assessment.  You can pay for a subscription which is $2/student

We only used Sumdog for math but you can use it for reading and writing as well (you have to pay to do the reading stuff though - also $2/student).  The writing is basically to help you with your typing skills.  Like I said... we never used it but I could see how my students would likely be more into that than something like All The Right Type.

My students were all about asking each other for their usernames so that you could add them as friends (a couple of them added me too... I'm feeling so loved!).  I'm not sure what adding someone as your friend did.  I imagine you could just see what their character looked like and their house.  Maybe it also made it easier to find them when playing games?

My students really liked playing this game... I know for a fact that many went home and played it because they would talk about it the next day.

There are enough games in the free version to keep your students occupied.  Mine never asked about the premium one.  I am curious about the reading though... it could be worth it to pay the $2/student for that.

What I don't like about it:

It shows your first name and last initial.  You have to register your students for it and they have to log in to use the website.  Originally I just used all their first names with their last initial but because of privacy concerns I then sent home a letter giving parents the option to change their child's name on the site.  I only had a couple parents that wanted to change it... one of my student's name was Batman on there... this is kind of a fun alternative because you wouldn't necessarily know which classmate you were playing in a game (unless they told you their secret identity of course).

It also says the country you are from.  You aren't just playing people in your class... you are playing people all across the world.  My students would all go to a game and go "one, two, three" and then click to start it... it pretty much guaranteed they would be playing each other.

Unlike in Spelling City for this one you have to remember a log in name and password.  I made all my students passwords match the passwords they use at school so those were easy for them to remember.  I think there is a way to change their log in name to whatever you want it to be but I just left it as whatever the program gave them.  I wrote all their log in information on an index card for them and if they forgot any of their log in info they would just ask for their cards.  Many of my students wrote it in their agendas as well for when they were at home.

How I used it:
I had one student that wasn't allowed to have a log in for the site... everyone else was.  So I used it as one of the options during our scheduled computer class when we didn't have other things to be doing in there (the student that wasn't allowed I just put on another math website).

If I had more computers in my classroom I could have used it during their math centers... I would have LOVED this.  (if you have ipads or tablets in your classroom I am almost positive that you can play the math games on these).

So, how would you use Sumdog in your classroom?
Do you think you'll be trying it this school year?

Also, stay tuned because I have at least one more idea of how to use technology in your classroom!

Spelling City

Last week I talked about using Mystery Skype in the classroom.

This week... ways to use technology as centers, or with your regular curriculum.

I have 2 programs for you to look into this week with the first being Spelling City

I started using this last year with my grade 5 and 6's and even though the free games were pretty basic (and childish for them) I did book us an extra slot in the computer lab to study our spelling words on this program... so I think they liked it.

How it works:
You can either type in your word list that you give your students or import lists that others have already created.  I always did the importing because my students were doing the Words Their Way program which MANY teachers have already done all the work of putting on the website.  I would just do a search for the sort and make sure the words were all included.  Easy Peasy.

Once imported I would rename the sort.  I had 3 groups in my class and each groups words came out of a different coloured duotang.  They saw the duotangs only about once a cycle while we were passing out the words but they knew which colour their words came from.  So I would just title sorts "green group", "red group", and "blue group" so that they would know which words to work on that week.  Any old lists I made sure they wouldn't be able to see.

I also sent home a letter to their parents about it.... so that they could access it at home to study their words.  Probably a bit more fun than sitting at the kitchen table and having your mom read off the words and you having to spell them back (which is what my mom did with us back in the day).  The nice thing about the letter is that they have one already made for you to fill in your info and print off for your students!

Other than sending them to the website once a cycle (usually the day before our spelling test) I didn't tell them which games to play or what they had to do on there.  Many would do the spelling test to see if they could get all the words right, they would often print a wordsearch of their words to go over later, and Hang Mouse, and Audio Word Match were the other 2 more popular games.

Not every student had headphones but you don't necessarily need headphones to play the games.

I had one student that was deaf that would give the headphones to her interpreter and then her interpreter would interpret what it was saying to her...it worked perfectly.

The nice thing about this is that it does not require your students to register for anything.  It is just like they are going to a website (you'll have to give them your homepage URL) and playing games.  Their names are not stored on the website anywhere.

There was only one thing that I didn't really like (well, asides from the games being too childish for my students)... they could see the premium membership games that I wasn't paying for.  The premium membership was just over $50 (likely american) which I guess I could have used some of my classroom budget for.  It includes space for 25 students (which would have been enough for my class).  It would be something to consider in later years when I'm not so concerned with using my classroom budget for all the materials that I need for the year (because I will already have things like a classroom library and resources).

Would I use it again?
Absolutely!

What do you think, will you use it?
How would you use it?  I could also see this being used as a center during some reading/writing centers

Also, what spelling program do you currently use (if you are using a program)... I'm interested in finding a different one!

Stay tuned next week for another easy way to use a math website in the classroom!

Mystery Skype

I've been looking into different ways to incorporate technology into the classroom lately and came across "Mystery Skype"

Mystery Skype is basically a Skype session that your class would have with another class somewhere in the world.  During the Skype session they are each trying to guess where the other school is located (by city) by asking yes and no questions.

Paul Solarz has a GREAT explanation of the whole thing (including student roles AND a seating arrangement).  You can find it all here.

If I were doing this in my classroom the first thing I would do is to divide the class in half and have each class pick a different place in the world (I think I would go with country to make it a little easier to start with).  They would need to do a lot of research on their country to start with and keep it a secret from the other half of the room (which would also be picking a country in the world).

Then I would give each half of the class the different roles and have them go against each other.

In Mr. Solarz classroom he makes sure they all have laptops to work on so that they can do research while the questioning is going on (to come up with the next questions and to try to figure out where the other group is).... in this case we would also need the laptops to answer the other groups questions likely.

After we did a couple of trial runs in our classroom I would set up a Skype session with one of my teaching friends in the same province as mine... just because students would likely have more knowledge of our province and some of the different towns/cities around us.

After testing it out with a class nearby us I would venture out to different parts of the world.

The benefits?
Students learn to think quick
They learn to do quick research
They learn about different parts of the world
They get to use technology!

Would you ever consider setting up a Mystery Skype session?

This MONTH at school

What have we been up to in my classroom?

Well, I got strep throat a while ago and took a couple days off work.  When I came back my students accused me of having a cold because it sounded like I had something stuck in my throat.

But we've done some art and had some displayed in an art show (zebras and elephants).

We made "working" models of our digestive system then went outside and ran water through them to make them "pee"... we all enjoyed that.

We've been learning about our lungs lately.  Yesterday we put one breath into a balloon and measured how much water it displaced in a bucket.  Next week we will do some exercise and check it again.

We have been reading "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" for ELA and social studies. 

 My friend also sent me this template of a museum (okay, she had already made up all the rooms and everything so it was super easy to get my students to fill in the information).  I put a couple of my grade 6 students in charge of the different rooms in our virtual museum (my grade 5's were doing sensitive issues with another teacher).  Then I had them come up with a question for each thing they did that could be answered from reading the information they have provided.  See below for some screen shots of the museum my friend put together (I have our museum with all our info saved on my work computer only).  Hopefully we will find time to get into the computer lab to go through it.  The grade 6's keep asking when we will do it.

One day, when I'm not so overwhelmed with teaching a new grade every year, I would like to change the rooms and use this virtual museum as a template for other topics.

On Monday we are going to start a final project in Social Studies that will have groups of students studying the different decades of the 1900's. In my opinion it's a little late for a final project so I'm really hoping we can pull it off.  The last couple of weeks (there is only 3 weeks left) we will have a decade party a day.

In ELA we are making fairy tales based off of other ones that we read.  And it's taking FOREVER.  Gah.. I thought we would have time for one last novel before we departed for summer but that isn't going to happen.

And in math we are chugging along in math groups.  It makes me happy that some students were excited when we went back to math groups instead of whole class instruction.  I'm happy that they are happy.  I think we are going to quickly get through area and perimeter and do this project on volume and nets.  In grade 5 there is a weather unit that we didn't do in science (because I've been doing grade 5 and 6 science stuff) so this is a good way to incorporate that... even if it is just a little.

Last week we went to the zoo for our field trip.  My group went to the polar bear tunnel at the right time and saw them swimming.  I was super impressed... even if the picture the girls in my group took doesn't show it... they didn't tell me they were taking it.

We had our track and field day on Wednesday.  The rain held off for the most part which was always a plus.

Hopefully everyone is having a wonderful end to their school year!

(only 15 more days here... but who's counting?)

KidRex

One of my coworkers told me about this lovely little (big?) search engine. 

We've all been there when we get our students to do some kind of research and they type whatever it is they are looking up into Google only to be able to read 1 thing in the top 10 searches. 

WELL NOT ANYMORE 

KidRex is a search engine that is designed for kids. 

Now, I'll admit the main page is a little childish, I'm not sure what my students will think of it when I tell them to do their searches on there next time we have to do some research (we haven't used it yet). 

BUT, according to my coworker the articles on there are at a lower grade level so that most of your students will hopefully be able to read more of the articles that pop up (my coworker who has tried it teaches grade 3). 

So I did a little comparison using the word "mucus" (forgive me but we are studying the human body) 

Here is a side by side comparison 

What I noticed: 

1) My students will be attracted to the pictures that accompany nearly every link 

2) There are still "advertisements" (the Hyland's and Similasan are things you can buy - likely not telling us much about mucus) 

3) There is no image search (and I'm not sure about you but I find that no matter what image my students search for there is ALWAYS something inappropriate that comes through AND they always scroll through the search for forever so that they stumble across it) 

4) I clicked on the Britannica link to see how the wording was... it was still kind of wordy for what my grade 5 and 6 class would be able to read BUT it was short. 

5) Wikipedia didn't come up in the first page of searches. 

6) There were only 8 links on the first page... Google had quite a bit more links. 

7) The writing is larger 

8) There is also far less writing in KidRex

Want to try KidRex out?

You can find it at:

http://www.kidrex.org/

This Week At School

- first off it was only a 3 day week for my students... Monday was a holiday here and Tuesday was meetings for teachers and meet the teacher in the evening when students dropped off their supplies.

-  We did our first entry in our math journals!  I bought an interactive math journal document from TPT that is fantastic (plus I got it on sale which makes it even more fantastic).  It took us ALL morning but we did it (this also included decorating our books, setting up a table of contents, and picking out a ribbon that will be used as our bookmark. We still have to make some success criteria but I thought we would do that after we did a few entries together so that they know what I expect.  Naturally I forgot to snap a picture of my page of my math journal but I'll hopefully remember to do that tomorrow and I'll update this.

- We made these name spheres for our lockers as an art project.  We ended up cutting them out into circles so that they would fit on their lockers and then I laminated them so they would last (I'll take a better picture of mine tomorrow as well).

- I plan to save all their art projects this year and we will make a book out of them at the end of the year.  To go with every art piece we will do some poetry.  So we were doing a really simple poem about us for this piece of art.  Remember our writing folders?  Well we used them to go through the writing process for the poems.

-  I gave them homework for the weekend... I gave them each a piece of paper with a heart on it and they are to fill it with pictures and words of things that they like.  We are going to put that heart in the prewriting section of their writing folders so that they will have a whole heart full of things that they like... hopefully that will translate into things they like to write about as well.

-  We did "Where Did the Water Go?" in science class to learn about the scientific process.  I couldn't find sodium polyacrylate anywhere so I went the diaper route and took the powder stuff out of it. I tested it once at home and assumed it work in the classroom.  To be honest I was REALLY scared I was going to pour water all over someone's head (it was a super sweet girl too that guessed the cup with all the water) but it worked!... I must admit I added A LOT of the powder to ensure it would though.  One student had seen the experiment before but no one really listened to her and the thing went over like gangbusters!

Afterwards they wanted to see what would happen to the "water" if we left it overnight in the cup... so it turned into a further science lesson the next day.

-  I photocopied pages for my students from an "I'm Through, What Can I Do?" book and we put them into duotangs.  So far they are working great!

-  We got everyone into the computer lab to change their passwords.  HOPEFULLY they all changed their passwords to what they told me they would.

-  In my school we do opening religious exercises in the morning that I help to lead.  We started those up on Friday and I'm doing devotions from the Adventures in Odyssey Series that my 4-6's seem to be into.

-  I have an interpreter in my room for the first time ever!  She is pretty fantastic... I hope all my jokes are being translated well!

-  Everyone was excited to play "Ruleopoly" (one of my students even decided to make her password ruleopoly).  I was nice and let everyone roll this first week.  I told them that if I have to talk to them more than a couple of times in a short period of time I would tell them to turn their names over and they wouldn't get to roll the next week.  Boy does that work!  I also told them that anyone who wasn't signed out of their computers when the bell went was having their name turned over and everyone was in line within seconds.  I may have stumbled upon something really great here.

I got my Ruleopoly board from perhaps the more commonly known Homeworkopoly but I wanted to use it for more than just them getting their homework done (why have multiple behaviour things going on at once?) so I just changed the name!


Stay tuned for a post on our Ruleopoly

We did a group work project where they had to stack 6 cups using only an elastic band and 4 pieces of string (no hands could touch the cups).  I had to give them a hint that they needed to use everything and each of them had to have a part in stacking each individual cup.  They all eventually got it.

We are off to a swell start to the year in 5/6CP!

Dutch Tulip Fields

I had a smaller class the day we did these “paintings” it was nice to be able to sit and quietly work on some artwork for a couple of periods with my students.

I got the idea for this art project from the "A Faithful Attempt" blog

We started the lesson in the computer room where I had them Goggle Image Search images of “Dutch Tulip Fields” and they wrote down the colours of flowers that they saw in the photos. After they looked up the tulip fields they did another image search for “Dutch Windmills”. They searched through the photos of windmills until they found one that they liked and wanted to try to draw. I told them they had to have it approved by me first so that they wouldn’t be doing any crazy super modern looking windmills. Once they found the windmill they wanted to try to draw they drew it out 2 times on a piece of scrap paper.

The students always need to see what we are doing before we start doing it so I showed them some photos from these sites about what we would be doing and what it would look like in the end. We talked about things that we liked about them and how we might be able to improve on the examples (not that there was anything wrong with any of the examples… but everyone should strive to be unique and make their own piece)

Back in the classroom I gave each student a stiffer piece of white paper and we put it on our desk landscape way. They drew a line about ¼ of the way from the top of the page (we are studying fractions in math so this was a good reminder of what that would look like) and then picked a point to draw all our other lines out from.

Some drew the paths really narrow and we talked about how they would have a lot of work to do later on with colouring if they chose to keep it that way.

Once they had sectioned it off I then had them draw really thin sections between each larger section for the green paths.

I drew my own example on the white board as an example for them to follow along with.

Once they were all done drawing the lines they drew in things along the horizon. The only thing I told them they had to include was the windmill they had practiced drawing in the computer lab. Some of them drew farm houses, trees, and fences as well.

This next part they had a little difficulty getting. I suspect it was the word “outline” that they didn’t understand. I told them to outline each tiny section of green with a green marker (naturally, some started to colour in the entire section with their green marker). So every other section would be green on their paper. Once they had outlined one or sections I had them take a small paintbrush with water on it and run it over the marker. They thought it was really cool how the colour spread out.

They then looked back on the colours they had looked up that tulips could be and picked some colours for the other sections of their fields.

I’m not one to micro manage in art class so I told them that they could do a design in each section of their tulip fields or just keep doing outlines. We filled in these with colours using the same water technique.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to use for the sky and horizon but I feel like we use paint a lot in our class so while we were working on coloruing with water I decided that they should also do the sky and everything along their horizon using the same technique (mostly because it would mean it was easier for myself).

Anywho, our final products are below… I think they turned out quite good.

Olympic Graphs

This is post is incredibly late!

During the Olympic Games we kept track of 5 countries and the medals they received (we chose to keep track of Canada, USA, Germany, Russia, and China).  We kept track of them by making bar graphs (keeping track of each countries gold, silver, and bronze medals) and then in the hallway we kept track of each countries total medal count with a pictograph.  

Why bar and pictographs?

Those are the only 2 graphs my grade 4's need to know this year.

After the olympics were over I brought them to the computer lab to learn about Microsoft Excel and we put the information from our bar graphs into there and printed out a graph.

Then we glued that graph onto a piece of construction paper and wrote a question that could be answered by looking at the graph.  Some students did some really complicated questions... some students did some pretty simple ones... I just let them come up with a question that they were capable of answering.

They wrote their question on a piece of white paper, folded it in half and wrote the answer the question on the inside (so that someone walking by could flip up the piece of paper to see the answer)

Here are some of my students graphs, questions, and answers

(we've since been working on showing our work)

Quick Writing Ideas

My grade 8's are supposed to be using some of their time in the computer lab to write blogs.  I thought it was a genius idea at the time.. the thing is they have been slacking.  BUT we are in the process of reviving these blogs of theirs and to help I've been given them one written suggestion that they can do every week and one commercial that they can respond to.

This week they can either respond to this question

What if it actually rained cats and dogs?

OR

I showed them the Dove Real Beauty Sketches Commercial

I warned the class ahead of time that it was about girls... except I think it went a little something like this

"So I'm going to show you a commercial and I don't want any of you to complain.  Especially the guys.  I think we can all learn something from this and we have moms, sisters, aunts, grandmas, cousins, and friends who are all girls."

"So there's a girl in it Miss Penner?"

"Umm... yeah... there's a girl in it"

They were all quiet for the commercial (I showed them the longer 7 minute version posted above).

We had a short discussion about it after.

Just basically going over what we saw ourselves as was not always what the rest of the world would see us as.

I asked them if they thought the first sketch (where the person described herself) was more accurate or the one where a stranger did.  They agreed that the 2nd one usually was more accurate (except in one case).  

I heard them talking about it on the way out and I REALLY hope that if there are any issues with beauty or someone not feeling good enough that this well help.

I also hope that someone forms a response to it on their blog.  

That would be cool.

No one cared about the Sony Bouncy Ball commercial enough to write about it (they loved watching it though... I showed them many different Sony commercials over the course of the week).

Oh yeah, and if they choose to not write about either of these this week that is also allowed... they just have to think up something else they could write about.

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.

Student Blogging

I had been talking to my teaching partner one day after school about how I just didn't have time to have my students do much writing in my grade 8 ELA class and she suggested blogging.  

I loved the idea as soon as I heard it.

Our class blogs are set up on Kidblog.  It's very simple to understand and if you do any blogging of your own already I'm sure it will be a snap.  

It took us a couple of weeks to get started with the blogging (in my defense I only see them every other day) but here is how I started off with (for many) this new concept of blogging...

1)  I told them about my blog.  I told them how I've earned about  a whole $1.50 off my blog.  We talked about how many people have successful careers just being bloggers.  They can sit around at home in their pyjamas eating bonbons and watching day time television while working (in fact some people probably earn a living by blogging about those day time television shows that they are watching!).  They thought it was hilarious how little I had made off of blogging begging me to spend it on them.  But it got them interested.  Make sure you tell your students that they will not be making any money off of these blogs but it could be practice for the possibility of one day making money this way.

2)  I showed them others blogs. 

 I started off by showing them my blog (the ads were all blocked by the school division but I explained where they were).  I read them a story or 2 off of it and we discussed the theme of my blog (teaching/subbing).

Next we jumped to a blog about a woman who just blogs about her every day life.  I told them the theme to their blog doesn't have to be anything special... it just had to be something they knew a lot about.

This one took a bit of hunting around to find but one class was super into Duck Dynasty.  I had told them they could probably find a blog on almost anything and so my challenege was to find one on that show.  While I found one and we looked at it and they made fun of me for not knowing how to pronounce all their names.

Finally, I showed them a funny blog (look up Reasons Why My Son is Crying).

3)  We discussed ideas on what the themes to their blogs could be.  Many of these kids come from farming families so I've got a couple of blogs on farming/horses, I've got at least 1 on volleyball (perhaps because it is volleyball season) and another student who is supposed to be reporting on the hockey games.  Some don't have a theme yet and that's ok.  I post questions/videos/websites on the weekend for them to look at and respond to.  

4)  I let them help me come up with a rubric.  Below is what I posted to my Kidblog about how they will be graded.  

Now that we are halfway through the month I'll make up a better rubric and pass it out so that students have a really good idea of how they will be marked.  Once students start letting me know they are done with their posts I'll starting marking them (I've already got some claiming to be finished which is great - less marking to do at the end of the month).

5)  I have no plans on paying for that blog.  But no one loved the tree and bird theme as much as I did.  To solve this had an online vote.  Basically I posted photos of their options and in the comments section they told me which one they wanted (doodle won).

TIPS

-  Originally I only had it set up so that I had to approve their comments.  But I was constantly about 100 behind them.  I had to be really firm about leaving quality comments and eventually I took off this function so that they could post their comments right away without my approval... I warned them about the consequence if they started posting anything inappropriate.

-  Students started posting in German and I got really firm with them that it was an English Language Arts class and that any posts with German in them would get deleted.  I've stuck by this.

-  Since a couple of my students ruined it for the bunch I put comment moderation back on AND blog post moderation.  Now I have to approve everything they post.

-  I gave my students the option to switch back to pen and paper journals because some were complaining about the typing (A LOT) but I strongly urged them to stick with blogging telling them that typing would get easier with practice.  Also, if they make the switch they will be required to write 4 journals a month instead of 3 and will not have any access to the blog.

-  I've got 2 students on my radar when it comes to what they post. I spoke with both on Friday about appropriate behaviour for the blog.  I warned them that if  I don't see improvement they will be removed from the blog.  The nice thing is that everyone wants access to that blog so I have yet to hear of anyone wanting to switch from blogging to writing and no one has acted out again to have themselves removed from it.

-  I handed out a couple of "How To" handouts.  One was how to access the blogs and write a comment (they were required to practice leaving a comment on one of my posts) and the other was on how to write a blog post.  They were pretty fancy if i do say so and I think they helped them out a lot.  If you are planning to get your class into blogging I would be happy to share them (we were using the tree and bird theme at the time so all pictures have to do with that)

And... here is what our blog currently looks like (the screen shot is of my page - each student has their own page to blog on)

I made this post shortly after I found all the German comments... can you tell I was a little mad?

Since the post was so long...

TO SUMMERIZE

Most of us are having a great time blogging in grade 8!

Do you have questions?  

Don't hesitate to post your questions here.  I know I've been a little absent from posting for a while but I do respond to my e-mails and I will also respond to comments.

Teaching What you Don't Know

I've already told you about the time I became the go to French Music teacher and the time I became a violin substitute. But I also do not know much about a high school computer class. Especially when they are doing fancy things (which they almost always are).

So this teacher is in a grade 5-9 school and I naturally assume going in that I'll be teaching something normal like math or social studies but no no no... that is only a small part of the job. The majority of the day is computer class.

I should also say this school was located in one of the more well to do areas of the city and so all the kids had cell phones or iPods and had a way to sneakily work their way around the schools security system to access Facebook all class.

I should also say that since it was grade 9 students I basically blended right in with them.

So they are all in Computer class with their cells under the tables and on Facebook. I know all of this and my way around it is usually "oh that's cool what you are doing right there, can I just see you mouse for a second" and then close out of whatever program/website they are using that they should not be.

But grade 9's are scary and this was in my first year as a substitute teacher.

So instead, of fighting them all day on it, I let it happen writing down all the usernames of students who were not working on the assignment (which let's be honest was basically everyone).

At one point one kid even decides to print off what ends up being hundreds of pages of a website.

The teacher must have received my detailed note about how horrible computer class went and what does he do?

He keeps inviting and requesting me back every day he cannot be there.... and I keep accepting because let's face it I'm new to the game and need all the jobs I can get.

It wasn't terrible but it did make me look poorly on some of the students...

When I asked them to do their work they said they didn't need to because their parents would or it didn't matter what marks they got because they wouldn't have to really work.

Sometimes I think that the presents may get bigger and more expensive when you work in a school in a well to do area but I think the kids are just so much more appreciative of you when you head to an inner school... Definitely not true of all students or schools. Just sometimes.

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!

Computer Class

Back in the day we loved hitting up the computer lab to play some Oregon Trail and Number Munches. But oh how the times have changed. What's popular now you ask?

Well other then the math game websites we make the children visit there is always accessing a local radio station (if 10 kids access 10 different websites that play music it makes the ambiance all the more enjoyable). There is also attempting to access blocked sites (ahemFACEBOOKahem) and then some kids are able to access some Call of Duty like game (maybe it's the actual game just an online version). It's tough keeping those kiddos on the math websites these days...

Perhaps the oddest thing that kids sneak off to do (as in they sneak off in the world wide web... not the bathroom or anything). Is they go to a translator website. It's not a regular translator though that would for example translate French to English. No, no, no... this one reads out what you write. But writing out normal words for the translator to read is no fun at all. So what do kids type out for it to read you ask?

alkfdsjnzksd kldjhg kdls dsk

No I did not just sit on my keyboard. That is what they type out.

What makes computer class all the more enjoyable is when 5 or more students are doing this... basically just a bunch of random sounds.

Of course one student is always typing about Charlie (the boy sitting next to him) and getting his computer to say things like "Charlie smells" but the rest... they are all doing the gibberish.

Always a fun time when you get to head to the computer lab!