Tuesday 26 February 2013

Golf

Today we playd golf . We had a instructor.  He had rools and one of the rools wer we cudint pas the safty line. Also you can not pas the mat. We can oly swing the golf club wen the instructer ses. We get to play agen on Thersday.

This blog post was guest written by Eldon and Kaleb from Division 18

Red Dresses

Today a few of us decided to wear our red dresses to school. Do you ever do something fun like that in your classroom?

Monday 25 February 2013

Fin Helps With Word Work

Today Fin helped us learn our new words. He them added them to our world wall too.

Working on Self Assessment

Last week in writing we reviewed good writing. Today we took a closer look at our writing to see which part of writing we are doing well at and where we need to work to improve. We looked really closely and cross checked with our list. We also rated our work. Here we are double checking our work and sharing our self assessment with our friend.



One of Zahra's Goals

In 2013 Zahra would like to get better at learning her math facts and reading more challenging books.  She will do this by playing more math games at home and by reading more at home and at school.  Don't give up Zahra, we know you can do it!

Thursday 21 February 2013

Modified Physical Education

Every Thursday we spend the first 30 mins after the lunch in the gym being active with Mrs. Morrison's class.  Today the gym was not available to us. What did we do instead? We danced in her room and it was so much fun.





Reading with Miss Greensheilds

This week Miss Greensheilds has joined us during community read. In case you forgot, Miss Greensheilds lives in Regina, Saskatchewan so how can she be joining us for community read? By skype of course! Here are some photos of us reading to her. Today Ms. Lirenman even brought in her fancy head set so she can hear us much better and we can hear her too.









Tuesday 19 February 2013

We Love Our New Headsets

We love listening to books on the iPads with our new headsets. :-) (Smiling face was suggested by Roc)

Another Voice Message

This morning we received another voice message from Ms. De Suarez a teacher librarian in our school district.  Listen to what she had to say to us.


Monday 18 February 2013

Jobs in Our Community - Video Game Programmer

This afternoon Ms. Lirenman's friend Beth used FaceTime to visit into our classroom.  She is a video game programmer which means she makes video games.  What a cool job!  She talked to us about the three main types of people that work on video games.

The first part of making a video game is the game designer.  They are the ones that come up with the ideas behind the video games.  It is them who decide what should happen in a game, how many levels it should have, what special features it needs etc.

Then the design idea goes to  artists who work with computers and drawings and decide how everything should look.

The final step is what Beth does. She takes the ideas that the game designer comes up with, and the items the artist has  created and writes the code to make all the parts of the game do exactly what they should be doing.


She told us that some games can take up to six years to make and other games can take just a month or so. It really depends on how complicated a game is.  As the programmer you have to make sure that the game does exactly what you want it to do. If you push a button on your console to make a character jump, you have to make sure that the character doesn't just float in space.  There are a lot of things you have to program.  She told us that it was kind of like writing a recipe.  You have to have the right ingredients (or programming code) or the game doesn't work.  

Beth also told us that once a game is "ready to play" they have special video game testers test the game out before it can go to the public.  We all thought that would be a great job.  Beth told us that it isn't an easy job because there are always mistakes in a game and these people have to play it enough times so that them find it all. They have to write down what they were doing when it doesn't work.  It sounded fun but we agreed that it would be frustrating to have a game go wrong all the time.



But we weren't the only ones listening to Beth today.  Ms. Lirenman was talking to some teachers on twitter last night and one asked if her son could listen in on the conversation too.  Because the original call was a FaceTime call we couldn't have him join us on FaceTime so he joined us on Skype, from Ms. Lirenman's laptop.  He was right beside the iPad watching the big screen just like us.

Can you see the laptop on one little table and the iPad beside the projection device?

Here's a close up look at our guest joining us via Skype.

After Beth finished telling us about her job we had many questions for her.  Some of us wondered if she had made some of the Mario Games but she explained that they are only made by Nintendo and she doesn't work for Nintendo.  She did tell us about some of the games she was involved with.  She was involved with making the FIFA 2004 - 2008 games, a basketball game, and a game called Driver San Francisco.  Someone else was curious about when video games where first invented. She wasn't sure but looked it up on line while she was talking to us and it looks like something was invented in 1971, even before she was born.

Our visitor on the laptop also had a question. Ms. Lirenman brought the laptop to the iPad so he could as her his question.  He asked Beth  how much schooling she needed to do her job.  She talked about going to university and/or a technical school for the job.


As usual, Ms. Lirenman asked her two questions too.  Beth's favourite part of her job is getting to work with so many fun people.  Her least favourite part of the job is some of the long nights she has to put in. Sometimes she has to work past dinner and with a family waiting for her at home she'd much rather be with them.


Just before Beth had to go we took a few pictures so that we could use them on our blog posts.  Here are some links to some of our blog posts about what we learned from her visit. There are many more on our individual blogs so please go check them out.


Overall it was another great visitor in our room. Like with our other visitors we learned a lot from Beth.  There really are so many different jobs in our community.

Our Writing Criteria

This morning we talked about what good writing looks like. Ms Lirenman listened carefully to what we had to say and recorded our words on her computer.


Then a few of us wrote up our words on a big piece of chart paper to post in our classroom so that we can refer back to it every time we write.


Here is what our final chart looks like.


What does good writing look like in your classroom?

Jobs in Our Community - Care Giver

Today one of our dads came in to talk to us about his job. He is a care giver for people with disabilities. He told us about how he takes care of people with special needs. He helps them get to appointments, or to recreational events because without his help they could not get there. He makes sure they are clean and fed. He helps them do so many things they can not do on their own. He makes them smile.

To do this job he had to go to school for one year. His favourite part of the job is knowing that at the end of the day he has helped put a smile on someone's face. His least favourite part of the day is when he has to leave them alone.

Thank you for sharing your job with us. It made us think about what we can do for others and how it makes us feel too. It is important to give back to our community.

Friday 15 February 2013

Jobs in Our Community - Canada Revenue Agency - IT Services Manager

This afternoon Steven's dad came in to talk to us about his job. He works for Canada Revenue Agency as anIT Services Manager. He told us about how he manages people and helps fix computers, printers, and servers. He also helps keep important government information safe from the wrong people. We learned about collecting taxes from people and how the tax money is spent on things like roads and even schools like ours. His favourite part of the job is working with different types of people. His least favourite part the job is the bureaucracy that comes with working in such a big place. We are really glad to have him in this afternoon. Here are some photos of his visit.









Valentines Day

Some how in all of the excitement of the day Ms. Lirenman forgot to take pictures of our Valentines Day celebrations.  Thankfully a lot of us did remember to.  We also wrote about it on our blogs. If you're curious to see more we highly recommend you give our blogs a peek. We love visitors, and we love comments just as much.  Thank you!





Jobs in Our Community- Early Childhood Educator

Today we had Ms Sumra in to talk to us about her job. She is an Early Childhood Educator and works in a daycare. She told us about a typical day in her job. We learned about her learning circle and how she teaches young children by a theme. She showed us her bug box and we sang a song with her. Her favourite part of the job is working with the children. She also really likes finding and making special activities for the children. Her least favourite part of the job is cleaning up some of the big messes that the children make. She also finds that sometimes they get really noisy and they don't listen as well as they could. Thank you so much for telling about your job. We learned a lot this morning.





Thursday 14 February 2013

Working on Our Collaborative Project with the High School Kids

A couple weeks ago we received our stories back for our really big high school buddies. We are working really hard on them still. Some of us are still creating our images in Draw and Tell on the iPads but some of us have started creating the final version of the books in the iPad app Book Creator. Hopefully we'll be able to share them back with them soon.





Pancake Breakfast

This morning we were lucky enough to be served a pancake breakfast by our wonderful parent group. While the parents were making the pancakes Ms. Lirenman remembered that one us had wondered about how to make pancakes on our class Wonder Wall. So Ms. Lirenman brought her down to where the pancakes were being made so that she would see for herself. Needless to say she came back to class with a smile, having just had one of her wonders explained. Thank you parents for a wonderful breakfast this morning.





Learning with a University Student

This morning we met Miss Greensheilds from Regina, Saskatchewan. She is a university student at the University of Regina studying to become a teacher. She read us our Valentines Day story. She also showed us all the snow she has in her back yard. It made us say, "wow, you are lucky!" We don't have any snow. Here is a picture of her reading to us over the computer. We love learning with others.



Wednesday 13 February 2013

Happy 100th Day of School

Today we did a whole bunch of things around the number 100 to celebrate our 100th day of school. Check out the video to see some of the things we did today.


Tuesday 12 February 2013

Jobs in Our Community - Alpha Technologies

Today Ms. Lirenman's friend Andrea skyped into our classroom to share her job with us.  She works at Alpha Technologies where they make power systems that help keep the power on - from cell phone towers to traffic lights to cable tv signals. They have a big factory (130,000 sqft) in Burnaby, with 500 employees. She told us that she uses a lot of math, reading, and problem solving at her job.  Her favourite part of the job is having new problems to solve every day so the job never gets boring.  The one thing she doesn't like about her job is that she has to get up early to go to work.  She challenged us to find one of Alpha's boxes next time we are at a traffic light.

We are glad she took the time to speak to us.  If you want to learn more about where she works you can check it out here


Digital Guise

Today after recess we had a fine arts presentation in the gym.  A group of men called Digital Guise performed for us.  All their instruments were machines instead of traditional instruments but they could play a lot of really cool songs.  At one point they had made a song from words from volunteers.  It was very funny.

100 Day Curiosities

Tomorrow is our 100th day of school and we are curious about many things to do with the number 100. Here are some of the curiosities we came up with today. We are excited to celebrate our 100th day of school tomorrow.

Thursday 7 February 2013

Division 18 Wishes You A Happy Chinese New Year

As we shared yesterday we have been learning a little bit about Chinese New Year. Today we shared our special home made paper fortune cookies with all the adults in the building. Below are photos of a couple of us delivering the fortune cookies and a photo of what our classroom looks like today. Enjoy.





Jobs in Our Community - A Structural Engineer

Today Kaleb's dad came in to tell us about his job as a structural engineer. We learned that he designs bridges and buildings. We also learned that sometimes he checks out bridges and buildings to make sure they are still safe.  His favourite part of the job is seeing the creations that he draws on paper become real buildings or bridges.  His least favourite part of the job is when he has to work outside in the rain.

Here are some photos of his visit.  It was great to have him here this morning.