We Are Bloggers!

Ms. Lirenman is very impressed with us right now because we really love to blog, even in our own time.  So far almost every night, including weekends, some one in our class has blogged from home. Many nights it is three to five children and not usually the same children.  Sometimes we are getting help from our families (even though we need to tell them that we are suppose to do it on our own) and sometimes we are doing the writing all by ourselves.  Ms. Lirenman keeps telling us that it makes her smile right down to her heart when we blog from home.  She loves that we are self motivated to write all by ourselves.  We really do like to blog.

If you haven't checked our our blogs lately we think you should.  You'll be impressed by what we are writing and that some of us are even commenting on each others blogs.  We are trying to work on telling our story in words (and pictures too). We are working hard to remember to spell our word wall words correctly, to put capital letters in the right places, and to add punctuation marks.  It's still a work in progress for many of us but we know you'll be impressed by how much we continue to improve as the year goes on.

Here are a few samples of blogs we've written.

If you want to see all of our blogs you can find them here, or click the tab at the top of the page that says Individual Student Blogs.  We love it when people read our writing, and love it even more when the leave us comments.

Ways to Make 10

Last week in math we looked extra closely at the number ten, and the different ways that we could make ten.  Here are a few of the things we did.

Nicky used the 100s chart to highlight different ways to make ten. Then she took a screen shot of her work and brought it into Draw and Tell where she talked about what she knew.

Roc showed different ways to make ten using a 10s placemat and dinosaur counters.  Then he took a photo of his picture using Skitch and labelled it.

This student played Find Sums while learning different combinations of ten as he added apples to a tens frame.

We played some other games to learn more about the number ten too.  We are curious, have you looked at the number ten? And if so, what did you do to get to know ten a little bit better?

A Voice Message from India

Today we received a voice message from India from a man named Mr. Panakal.  It's very cool to be getting so many voice messages from so many far away places.

listen to ‘Mr. Panakal’ on Audioboo

Skyping with SOUTH AFRICA!

Today we were super lucky as Mr. S. from Cape Town South Africa stayed up really really late so that he could skype into our classroom.  Mr. S loves math and he loves sharing math lessons with children around the world.  Ms. Lirenman met Mr. S through a group she is part of on Skype called Hello Little World Skypers.  Anyhow today after Run Across Canada Mr. S skyped in all the way from Cape Town, South Africa!

Unfortunately we didn't get to meet any of his students because it was almost midnight his time when we met but he did show us a few magic tricks.  After he  played a game with us.   He asked us questions but we couldn't answer with a yes, no, or maybe. We couldn't even nod our heads. It was tricky though because he'd ask us a question which we would answer, and then he would quickly ask us another one that we would typically answer with a yes or a no.  For example he may have said, "What is your favourite fruit?" and then as soon as you answered - say you said bananas -  he would say, "Do you like bananas?"  The obvious answer was yes, but we couldn't say the word yes.  He tricked a lot of us into saying yes, or no, or maybe. The lesson behind the game was that we need to think before we speak and not just speak with out thinking first.  How many of you really think about what you are saying before you say it?

Mr. S. also challenged us to determine if the circumference of an empty toilet roll was bigger or smaller than the height of an empty toilet role. He taught us about circumference.  We were fooled again but  learned something in the process.  He told us to try and trick our families at home.

It was very cool to be taught by someone other than our own teacher, and especially by someone that lives so far away from us.  Ms. Lirenman keeps saying she needs to get a world map into our classroom so that we can put a pin in to represent everyone we have connected with and where they live in relation to us.  We better hold her to that.

Here are some more photos of the skype call.  The cool thing is the photos above were taken by Ms. Lirenman and the photos below were taken by Mr. S.  Now we know what we look like on the other side of the skype call.  Enjoy.

A Special Guest!

Last Friday we had a special guest spend the day with us. Can you see who it is? And no, it's not the student, he is in our class every day. :-)

More Global Read Aloud Projects

Even though we finished Charlotte's Web last week we are still finishing up projects that we started regarding the global read aloud.  Back at the beginning of October we received two voice messages on our blog, one from Mrs. Fisher' Class  in Manitoba, and one from Mrs. Tomessetti's Class in Ohio.  You can find their voice messages here.

For the past week or so we have been working on a collaborative project with Mrs. Fisher's class which should be ready to share with the world in the next few days.  Unfortunately in the mean time you'll have to wait. :-)

This past Friday we were lucky enough to Skype with Mrs. Tomessetti's class. We shared our favourite parts of Charlotte's Web and we learned a little bit about their part of the world. They learned a little bit about us too.  It was a great Skype session and as usual we learned a lot.

If you've been following our blog closely you'll see that we have had a lot of connections because of this  Global Read Aloud.  We have connected with Mrs. Sarchet, Mrs. Leech, and Mrs. Wideen's classes once a week to read a chapter of the story together over a Google Hang Out.  We  connected with Mrs. Madonna's grade one class in NYC where we made and sent flat Wilburs to them and then met them over a skype call.  We also worried about them all last week as their school was affected by the storm that came with hurricane Sandy. Thankfully we have heard that they are safe and there school was set to reopen this morning with some water damage that still needs to be cleaned up.  In addition we skyped with Mrs. Tomessetti's class as mentioned above, and we are working on a secret project with Mrs. Fisher's class.  It's been an exciting time to be learning in our grade one class.

Did you participate in the Global Read Aloud? If so what did you for it?

Learning to Read

Last week Ms. Lirenman was finally able to start reading with us in small groups after spending a lot of time reading with us one on one and getting us ready to read and work independently.  Here are a few of us working with her at the rainbow table.  You'll notice some of us are gluing our newest reading strategy into our literacy conference books.  This group was learning about using pictures to help solve unknown words.  They were also reinforcing the strategy of checking for  understanding.

Here's what we sound like in action.  You're probably wondering where the rest of our students are.  Believe it or not they are in the classroom too, they are just in secret spots reading on their own.

How do you learn to read in your classroom?