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.