Terry Fox Day!

Today was the National Terry Fox Run for schools!  We held an assembly this morning to celebrate the life and accomplishments of Terry Fox.  Our fabulous little school raised over $1800 for cancer research! As a result of reaching our goal, one student from every classroom got to paint their teacher's face!   It was very funny, and the teachers kept the make-up on all day!

We're very proud of our classroom's Athlete of the Week!

Watching a quick video about Terry Fox during our assembly

The artwork begins!

Mr. Moffatt was a good sport!

Mr. B got painted too!

The finished product! Isn't Mrs. Waters beautiful?!  She is a cross between Harry Potter, a devil, and Rudolph, with a unibrow thrown in for good measure! Very creative!

We started our new read aloud novel this afternoon, One Night in Doom House, written by R.L. Stine. Lots of people know R.L. Stine's writing from his Goosbumps series.  We thought this would be a great read as October is almost here and Halloween is quickly approaching! The story follows Nicky and Tara, two kids who just happen to be ghosts. We've read the first three chapters and are enjoying it already!

Good luck to our Cross Country runners tonight!

ELA

We started our weekly 'Word of the Week' today!

Every week Mrs. Waters will give us a new word to learn that we can add to our vocabularies - we learn the definition, some synonyms of the word, and then we put the word in our own sentence, and draw it out!  This week's word is 'pursue'!  

For something different today during our writing time, Mrs. Waters put this photo on the screen!

http://indulgy.com/post/rPvvdVfFX1/photo-writing-prompts

We had two choices - we could either use the picture to start a story, or we could write about what we saw in the picture.  No matter what we chose to write, we all enjoyed using the picture as a starter, especially those of us who have trouble getting started when we have to write! That dog was pretty funny!

We talk every morning as a class about restitution.  Restitution is something that Mrs. Waters uses in our classroom to help us learn who we are as students, become more self-aware, and to help us understand our behaviour.  It also gives us a chance to fix our mistakes and learn from them.

We did a 'Needs Inventory' yesterday to see where which of our needs is the strongest- love and belonging, power, freedom, or fun.  Today Mrs. Waters gave us our results, and our class was very balanced!  We took our class results and graphed them in math class!

Tuesday

We completed our first class read aloud today! Judy Moody was a really funny book to start the year with!  The book was about Judy starting a new year of school (which we are doing as well), and making new friends (like us).  The book was very easy to read and understand, and the author was very funny! We also really liked the random illustrations in the book.

After we finished reading, Mrs. Waters made us write our favourite part of the book on a sticky note and we had to put our notes in our 'parking lot'! The parking lot is a place where Mrs. Waters wants us to park our thoughts and opinions sometimes!

We also wrote our first individual tweets on our Twitter board today!  Mrs. Waters asked us to tweet some thoughts about our first few weeks at school.  You can check out our Twitter board outside of our classroom!

Fun in Kindergarten!

HAPPY MONDAY!

The highlight of our day today was our first class of the year with our learning buddies!

We are paired up with Mrs. Lockhart's kindergarten class this year, which is exciting because some of our students were in her class when they were kindergarten, and some of our students have younger siblings in that class as well!  We had a ton of fun getting to know the kindergarten students that we were paired up with, and played with them in their classroom.  The kindergartens will no doubt benefit from the leadership of our class, and it's nice for them to have a familiar face they can turn to on the playground if they ever need a hand.

We all left Room 1 with a huge smile on our faces!  We can't wait till our next class!

Creating houses

Some of us REALLY liked the Dora chairs!

Building at the block center

Digging at the sand table

Making a snack for Mrs. Waters in the kitchen....yum!

Learning letters with alphabet puzzles

Creating with lego

Writing cards for our families and parents

Math!

So far in math this year we've been engaged in a fun unit on data (statistics and probability).  This unit is always fun to do at the start of the year as we do a lot of class surveys, which helps us get to know one another more! The kids have been choosing their own topics to survey (topics they are interested in), and then independently poll their entire class.  Once they have collected their data, they take their results and create a graph for the class to see.  From these activities the students have learned some 'big' vocabulary - what it means to 'analyze' data, and then 'interpret' the results, and also what a proper graph needs in order for someone to be able to understand it.  Next week we'll be moving from the 'basic' bar graph, onto the more complex double bar graph, which will require more specific data collection.

Here are some photos of the data collection in action!

We Rock!

Today we read this book...

It's a great little story about how people need a rock, and it gives you some cute ideas on how to find the 'perfect' one.  We discussed how rocks are used in a talking circle, sometimes in the place of a talking stick.  We also talked about how Indigenous cultures feel a strong connection to the earth, and how they believe rocks are also living beings.  They are sometimes referred to as 'Grandfather Rock'.

Mrs. Waters brought a big bag of rocks home from the shores of Lake Winnipeg this past weekend, and we all got to pick our own. Without looking, we reached into the bag and pulled out the one that felt perfect to us.  It's understood that the perfect rock will find you!

On our rocks we wrote a wish or goal for the school year, and then all of our rocks were placed into a vase, which will be a centrepiece of our classroom!  

Writing on our rocks....

"Learn more to be ready for middle school!"

Some wishes & goals for this school year!

"I wish I can be a better printer."

Our beautiful centrepiece!

Social Studies

This year in Social Studies our focus is on Canadian history, from the end of the last ice age until Confederation in 1867.  Yes, that is a HUGE expanse of time, but this is honestly one of my most favourite things to teach! In our first few classes we have talked a lot about what 'makes up' the subject of Social Studies, where we get our information from, and terminology we will be using in our class the entire school year.  A large part of our studies this year will be focused on Indigenous history and our First Nations, as these groups were here long before Europeans ever set foot on this land. We discussed as a class which words we will not be using, and why we shouldn't use them (not only because of the racist overtones, but also because of the historical inaccuracies).  It was an interesting discussion!  Ask your child what big word we're going to be using this year!

Our first area of study, as we'll move chronologically, will be the last ice age! We're activating what we already know (or we think we know) about the ice age; we had a good laugh about the kids not just relying on the movie Ice Age for their information!

Our various sources of information

Our ice age graffiti exercise

Tuesday in Pictures!

Our first 'family photo' together on the playground- all 27 of us!

The view from Mrs. Waters' chair this morning - they're hard at work!

Our fun challenge today: put a spaghetti noodle in your mouth and try to thread three penne noodles onto it, without using your hands, in three minutes!  It was hilarious to watch!

SUCCESS!

Here's our first read aloud of the year! We read the first two chapters and it's pretty funny!

Monday!

First Monday of the school year, and it wasn't bad at all! We started off with a back to school Heritage assembly in the gym where we were welcomed by Mr. Moffatt. We had our first gym class following the assembly- remember that we need gym clothes and indoor shoes!

We had a great time completing a group challenge- an exercise in teamwork skills and critical thinking! Mrs. Waters gave each group 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti, 1 meter of tape, 1 meter of string, and 1 marshmallow, and the students had to build a free standing tower that could support the weight of the marshmallow. There were some great thinking and building going on! 

We also worked on our classroom beliefs this afternoon.  Together we came up with a list of what we want our class to be like, and then we turned it into a contract! We all signed it, which means we all will try our hardest to make sure that our class is a place we want to be in!

Welcome Back!

Here's our first blog post (and group photo) of the 2013-2014 school year! We had a great day together getting to know each other, and deciding as a group how we want our classroom to run.  We played games, shared stories, and bonded over a unanimous love of bacon! hahaha  Everyone left at the end of the day with smiles on their faces, which is a good sign! I can't wait until Monday!