Another Voice Message!

Today we received a message about our most recent Lego Challenge.  Take a listen.

listen to ‘Carmen Bellehumeur’ on Audioboo

Lego Challenge Number One

Last week Ms. Lirenman was walking in Steveston with her teacher friend Ms. Wise. Ms. Wise was telling Ms. Lirenman about these lego challenges she has been doing with her students in her grade 1/2 class in Richmond.  Ms. Lirenman listened closely and thought, "hmm, I want to do this with my students too".  So today we had our first lego challenge.

Challenge:  

1. With a partner choose 20 pieces of lego. We were in partners because Ms. L wasn't sure we had enough lego for everyone but you could do it as individuals too. Having said that we do like working with our friends.

2. In 15 minutes create as many different objects as you can with the 20 pieces of lego. As you create an object take a photo of it.

3. After 15 minutes create a pic collage with what you created and add it to your blog.

Here are some photos of us actively busy on the task.

Here are some of our some of our final pic collages.  Please check out our individual blogs to see more of our creations.

We can't wait for Lego Challenge Number 2 !

*Update May 22, 2014

Today we were able to blog a bit about the challenge.  Check out some of our blog post found on our individual blogs.  Perhaps you'd like to start with Marcus, Camron, or Brayden's Blogs. All our blog posts on this subject are categorized with "writing".

Squishy Circuits

Today Ms. Lirenman introduced us to something called Squishy Circuits. We have four kits in our classroom right now. Each kit contains LED lights, buzzers, an engine, and a power source.  Ms. Lirenman made two special play doughs too - one that is conductive and one that is insulating.  Today we experimented with the conductive dough and never made it to trying the resistant dough.  As you can imagine we were pretty excited making lights turn on, having buzzers buzz, and motors spinning.  We can't wait to get our hands on it again to see what we can make.  Here are some photos of the day.  The last photo is one of the benefits of having these playdough in our room right now. 

And the side bonus of having squishy circuits in our room,  we finally have play dough to use with our play dough tools! 

Here are some of our blog posts about the experience.

Yvonne's
Keeghan's 
Jadyn's
Natasha's
Amaan's
Carlos'

Be sure to check out our individual blogs under the science or writing categories to see more of our reflections.

Our New Lego Table

Guess what Ms. Lirenman bought for us this weekend? A lego table! Aren't we lucky.

Learning About Pheasants

Today we Skyped with Ms. Cassidy's class to learn more about pheasants.  We had many questions about the birds and between Ms. Cassidy and her students our questions were answered.

At the end of the call Ms. Cassidy shared a link to a video showing the birds hatching.  We were fascinated by the video.

If you're interested,  here is the video Ms. Cassidy shared with us.

Thank you Ms. Cassidy's  class for sharing your pheasants with us.

Sharing with Tangible Play

On Friday we had a google hangout video conference call with Tangible Play.  The days leading up to the call we added our questions and comments for them on a Tangible Play wonder wall.

During our video conference call we had many things to share with Tangible Play.  First off we asked them how they made their apps. Then we told them what we liked about their apps and what frustrated us about them.  Many of us shared which app we liked best and why.  Tangible Play wanted to know how they could make them better and what apps we wanted to see them make.  We had many ideas to share with them.  It was so great to have them ask our opinions too.  Even though we are only six or seven we have a lot to say for those who will take the time to listen to us.Thank you Karen and Henry for listening to us.

Animal Research Projects

For the past few Wednesdays we have been working on independent animal research projects.  We used video resources from Discovery Education and the Pocket Zoo app to take notes and collect information.  We used a graphic organizer to keep our notes organized. We also used books from our classroom library.  This week most of us finished our projects and have added them to our individual blog.  Here is one  finished project.  Check out our blogs under the science and or writing category to see many others.




Please note all still photo images are from Discovery Education.

Boy + Bot by Ame Dyckman

This morning Ms. Lirenman read the book Boy + Bot by Ame Dyckman.   It's a wonderful story about a friendship between a boy and a robot.  When we finished the story many of us took the time to tweet to Ame Dyckman to let her know what we liked about the book or how we connected to it.  The best part though was that Ame Dyckman tweeted each of us back individually.  Here's some of our tweets and her responses.  Ame Dyckman is the best!

Tile Mosaic

Right now our school is working with artists from Quebec to create a tile mosaic.  Each class will work on the mosaic twice this week.  Today we had our first go at it with our big buddies.  Here are some photos from today.

Student Led Conferences

This afternoon we invited our families to come and see what we have been up to. We had student led conferences.  Before our families arrived we talked with Ms. Lirenman about what we wanted to share with our families.  Ms. Lirenman reminded us that we had to show case different aspects of our learning and while what we like to do for free choice was important to share, we also needed to share some reading , writing, math and other aspects of day at school.  In the end we came up with a list of ten things to share.  They were 1. Journals 2. Word Wall Words and activities, 3. Calendar Math Books, 4. Our Blog and work stored on our iPads, 5. Our Seeds/ Plants, 6. Art Work, 7. Just Right Book Boxes 8. Go Noodle, 9. Tangible Play, and 10. Free Choice Activities.  We created little videos explaining what to do at each activity and created QR codes so the parents could scan and hear incase we couldn't remember what to do. If you click each activity you can see the videos we made.

When our families arrived we gave them a sheet with  QR codes to every video.  The room was full of buzz.  We had to use our headsets to hear the videos.  Here are a few pictures of us busy sharing our learning with our families.

Once we had time to share our learning with our families, our families were required to fill out a form created by Ms. Lirenman.  They had to give three stars (things they were proud of with our learning) and one wish (something they'd like us to continue to work on). They also had a space to leave comments to us or to Ms. Lirenman.  Ms. Lirenman also created a spot to let her know if they wanted to meet with her in private at another time.

Ms. Lirenman was really pleased with the turn out, and we were excited to share our learning with our families.  Have you ever had student led conferences?  If not, you should give them a try.

The Day the Crayons Quit

This morning after the assembly Ms. Lirenman shared the book The Day the Crayons Quit.  It's a collection of letters written by the different crayons in a crayon box.  The letters are written to Duncan, the owner of the crayons.  As she read the book we stopped to think and share what we though the next letter might say, and why.  We used the knowledge of how we use crayons to come up with our predictions.  Some of the crayon's letters surprised us while others didn't.  Once Ms. Lirenman finished reading us the book she asked us to write letters back to the crayons.  We each picked colours and began writing.  Some of us wrote on big paper and some of us wrote on small paper.  We all wrote on what and where we wanted to. Ms. Lirenman gives us a lot of choices which we love.  This is what we looked like busy writing.

Here are some of our letters. If you click on the names underneath the letters you can hear us read our letters too you.

Jadyn's Letter

Diego's Letter

Simar's Letter

Daniel's Letter

Grayson's Letter

We strongly encourage you to check out the rest of our  blogs too.

Look at Our Seeds

Last Tuesday we warmed up our seeds in our pockets and then put them in the window.  Look at some of them now.

Drama

This week we learned about the acting concept called tableau. In groups of four or five we created a freeze frame scene and our classmates had to guess what our scene was about.  Here are some photos of us practicing.