Drop Everything and Read

This week is Drop Everything and Read Week which means when we hear a special announcement we drop everything and read.  Take a look.

Learning With Older Students

For the next six weeks or so, on Tuesdays after recess, we have older students teaching us physical activity routines.  Today was their first visit. As you can see by the picture it was a lot of fun.  We can't wait for them to come back next week.

Look What Ms. Lirenman Did For Us!

One of our inquiry focuses this year is looking closely.  Ms. Lirenman has made us focussing frames but she really wanted us to have magnifying classes, bug jars, mini microscopes, and so many more tools to look more closely at our environment.  Instead of complaining she wrote a proposal.  And guess what?

Her request was funded.  You can read more about it here.

More Mystery Number Skype

We continue to learn with other classes around the world.  This week we skyped two times to play Mystery Number Skype.  On Tuesday we played with Mrs. DeGroot's class in Iowa, USA.

As you can see in the picture below we have a growing list of questions we can ask the other classes.  We also  have a class number chart to help eliminate numbers as we need to.  In the photo below you can also see where our classroom computer is. We walk up to it when we want to ask a question.

On Thursday we played with B4 in New Zealand.  While we  just had lunch, they were just starting their school day on FRIDAY!  We had quite a few questions for them since they live so far away from us.  Some of the things we learned from them is that they start what we call Kindergarten on their 5th birthday. That means every child starts school on their 5th birthday whether that be the first day of school or the last. At the end of that school year all children go on to grade one.  What that means is that some children have more time in Kindergarten, and some have less.  

Unfortunately we have no photos of our class Skyping with B4 in New Zealand because the video feature was not working.  However even though we couldn't see them  we heard  their Kiwi accents loud and clear.  They also asked us a question we hadn't heard yet.. "Is it a teen number?". We liked that question and will add it to our list of question we can ask.

Ms. Lirenman tells us that we'll be playing mystery number Skype all year long. There are so many ways we can ask questions about numbers and we have only learned a few.  Have you ever played Mystery Skype? Maybe you'd be interested in playing with us too? One day we hope to be very good at it and Ms. Lirenman believe that we will be.

Learning with South Africa

On Friday morning we learned some tricks with a teacher in South Africa named Mr. S .  If you ask one of us maybe we will show you our new tricks.  In the meantime here is a picture of us skyping with Mr. S.

Leaf Smudges

This week  we have been looking at all the signs of fall around us.  One thing we noticed is that the leaves are changing colours.  Here are some pastel leaf rubs we created.

 

The Butterfly Project

During the first week of the Global Read Aloud, besides co-creating books with Mrs. DeGroot's class in Iowa, we also worked with children from Ms. Alvarez's K class in Canada, Ms. Sargent and Ms. Goold's classes from the USA.  Each child created a butterfly, added their voice and sent them to Ms. Lirenman so she could create this collaborative movie.  The only problem is that when everything was put together, and even with some editing by Ms. Lirenman, the movie is still far too long for us to watch in one sitting.  So if you have some time please check out the video we created together as there are many wonderful butterflies to be seen.

What would your butterfly look like if you were a hungry caterpillar too?

Happy Thanksgiving

This week we talked about all the things we are grateful for. With our big buddies, and many other students in the school, we created a gratitude fence where we left messages of things we were grateful for.

We also talked about things we are thankful for and created these turkeys.

Here are some close up.

We also read a story about a community that wanted a turkey for thanksgiving dinner and they had a turkey making contest to try to get a real turkey to their town.  They made turkeys our of potatoes, and turkeys out of rope. They made all types of turkeys. We made turkeys out of paper.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

The Very Hungry Student

We are very excited to announce that our collaborative books with Mrs. DeGroot's class in Iowa are finally finished and ready to share with you.

Last week both classes met over Skype and shared the book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. We then got busy creating our own, slightly modified books called the "The Very Hungry Student".  We made six versions of this book and chldren in both classes added pages to each book.

Here are our final stories. Enjoy

Group One:

Mrs. DeGroot's Class - Saige, Merek, Faith, Jarred
Ms. Lirenman's Class - Carlos, Mya, Yvonne, Brayden




Group Two

Mrs. DeGroot's Class - Isabella, Keegan, Keagan, Merek
Ms. Lirenman's Class - Keegan, Brenda, Jaslehna, Diego




Group Three

Mrs. DeGroot's Class - Ryker, Benson, Preston, Sam
Ms. Lirenman's Class - Camron, Natasha, Jessica, Amaan




Group Four

Mrs. DeGroot's Class -  Sicily, Torry, Addison, Blake
Ms. Lirenman's Class - Daniel, Karman, Arun, Karanvir




Group Five

Mrs. DeGroot's Class - Kloi, Karter, Abi, Alex
Ms. Lirenman's Class - Jadyn, Simar, Seth, Diego

Group Six

Mrs. DeGroot's Class - JD, Mason, Kaina, Nicky
Ms. Lirenman's Class - Grayson, Joban, Marcus, Adien

New Math Stations

Right now in math we are working with numbers and we have six new math stations.  Some are counting stations, some look at the number ten, and some we are creating numbers.  Here are some photos of us hard at work on our first day in these new math stations.

We Met Our Goal for Terry Fox!

The students at our school set up a goal to raise at least $1,100 for the Terry Fox Cancer Research Foundation.  If they met the goal many of the teachers would let their students spray paint their hair.  This was done in front of the entire school at the assembly on Monday.  Ms. Lirenman said we could spray her hair but she had to go to a funeral later in the day on Monday so she didn't think it would be a good idea to have her hair spray painted for the funeral. We understood.  The next day however it was our turn to spray paint her hair.  Here are the before and after photos.  Ms. Lirenman was lucky because the pink, yellow, and purple spray paint was already gone. But she did get a lot of black. It was a fun day to start a Tuesday morning.

Some Questions for You About Marty McGuire Chapter 3

We just read chapter three in Marty McGuire and we have some questions for you. Would you have brought the frog back to your house?  Were you surprised when the frog didn't die when it hit the wall? We were.

We look forward to hearing your answers to our questions.

A Part of Being in the Global Read Aloud - Introducing Us!

Right now we are involved with the Global Read Aloud. We are reading the same books as other children around the world.  We are also co-creating with other children, leaving comments on their blogs, and video conferencing with different classes. Some of the classes that we are working with (or will be working with) have been sharing videos or slide shows of themselves so Ms. Lirenman thought it was time we shared a little bit about ourselves.  Here is the Haiku Deck she created with some of the photos she's taken these past five weeks.  Enjoy, and hopefully it will help you get to know a little bit more about us.

It's Book Shopping Time!

Every Friday after lunch we take the time to recommend books to our friends and then we go shopping for new books for our just right book boxes. This is what it looks like.

Some One is Asking Us Questions....

We are involved with a lot of classes over the Global Read Aloud book Marty McGuire, and The Eric Carle Books.  After school today Ms. Lirenman received an e-mail from another class sharing a blog post that was written for us!  You can find it here.

Now we need to think about our answer and answer them back.  I wonder if we have any questions for them about Marty McGuire? Hmm..

Mystery Number Skype with Mrs. Cassidy's Class

This afternoon we had a mystery number skype with Mrs. Cassidy's grade one class in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. On the first round they had a mystery number and we had to ask yes or no questions to try to figure out their number between one and twenty.   When our first guess was 9 and they said, "yes" we couldn't believe it.  

It was then their turn to figure out our number.  We were all very good at keeping it a secret and only answering yes or no.  Eventually after some questions they figured out our number.

Because we had figured out their number  so quickly the first time we tried they let us have one more turn.  This time we asked a lot more questions such as is it between 12 and 19.   They answered our questions and eventually we figured out their number too.

It was a lot of fun learning with Mrs. Cassidy's class via Skype. Here are some photos from this afternoon.

The Global Read Aloud - We Just Learned With Six Classes Around Canada

This morning we took part in a google hangout with six other classes from around North America.  Mrs. Sarchet read us chapter two in the book Marty McGuire by Kate Messner. It was our first hang out of the year.

Community Read Has Begun

Today we had our first community read of the year and it was a huge success.  Such a wonderful way to start our day of learning.  These photos show you how wonderful it really was.  We can't wait to do it again tomorrow and every Thursday and Friday morning all year long.