Reading with Friends Two Provinces Over

The grade one students have been practicing their Elephant and Piggie books to read with a friend two provinces over via Skype. How you may ask? Ms Lirenman and Ms Cassidy have arranged for us to read the same book with someone in each class.  As you can imagine it adds an exciting twist to "read to someone".

Writing Stories Through Code

This week we have been working on writing stories using Scratch Jr on the iPad.  It wasn't easy and for those of us that joined the class since January it was our first time coding.  Here are a  few images from of our stories.

By Safa

By Nolan

By Jesse

By Sajjad

If you want to see our finished products check out our blogs.

Nolan's
Jesse's
Sajjad's
Safa's
Nikhil's

Don't worry there are more stories still to come.

Claymation

We have been working in small groups to create our own versions of the story about the three little pigs through claymation. This was a first for both us and Ms. Lirenman.  A couple of groups are finished with one more to be completed.  Keep checking back as Ms. L. Will have highlights of each of our videos. In the meantime if you are eager to see the two completed projects check  them out here and here.  These are some images of us working hard.

Valentine's Day

Last week we had a lovely time sharing Valentine's Day with each other. Here are a few photos from our afternoon party. 

Spaces Where We Learn

Recently we made some changes in our learning spaces.  Check out what our room looks like now.

We call this the blue table. We keep our bins and our book boxes here. We can also find some supplies here.

This is where we often meet as a group. It's also our library. We have more books behind our project cart too. In case you might be wondering, we love to read and Ms Lirenman loves to spend her money on books for us!

This is another one of our choice work tables and where we can find some of our math, science, and word work tools. Right now our table is covered with our claymation stop motion projects. When they are complete we will share them of course.

This is another area where we can work and where Ms. Lirenman keeps some of her things. We can work in all of these spaces too. Also this is where we keep our wobble stools at the end of the night. Trust us though, they make their way all around our classroom.

This is our mega table. Right now it's decorated for valentines day. We love it because we do our best to squeeze everyone around it. We love it because it's big. You can also see one of our half tables, another great space for use to work.

This is view looking into our building, exploring, creating, and coding area or at least where you'll find tools for those fun activities.  We love to build and create but we also love to code with robots or learn with Osmo.

Here's a closer look at some of the tools we love to learn and explore with. We can usually see right out the window when the blinds are up. Right now they are done.

This is what we see when we walk into our classroom every morning. We can work where we want and we are often creating our own spaces for learning. 

What does your learning space look like?

Designing Our Own Valentines Holders

This week we were given the task to create our own holders for our Valentines.  In order to meet th design challenge criteria we had to 1. Create something that could hold valentines. 2. Have our name clearly on our container. 3. Have a moving part as part of our holder.  Take a look at some of our creations.

Math Playground

Last week while a few of our classmates were not well, we took our first peek at a program called Math Playground.  In Math Playground,  there are different activities that use different tools to solve increasingly difficult problems.  Here we are working through problems with pattern blocks, and problems with tangrams.  We will admit, at first try we couldn't solve all the problems.  But that's okay, learning takes time.

Global School Day of Play

February 3rd, 2016 was the Global School Day of Play.  Children around the world purposely played at school.  Since our class is smaller than most, and since we like exploring our environment, we walked over to a local school and played with a grade three class there.  It was a great morning of play.

Walking to a neighbourhood school.

Meeting our new friends and talking about all the things we learn through play.

Did you take part in the Global School Day of Play?

The Aqua Van Visits

Last Wednesday Brookside was fortunate to have the Aqua Bus at our school to learn with.  We were fortunate to be the first group in the gym with another class so get our day started.  We learned many things about the animals from the arctic. Below are some images from the morning.

As we can see we were able to see, feel, and learn about many different things during the Aqua Bus visit.  We are very grateful for our parent community for paying for this event.

Australia Day

On July 26th, we took the time to think of our friends in Australia by reading two different Australian books.