Blue Spruce Vote, Making Kites and Earth Day

Blue Spruce Vote
This week, the 'Blue Spruce' book voting took place in each primary classroom. Students have read all the new books by various Canadian authors over the course of the year and created memory booklets to remember which books they enjoyed and why. Mr Cann read some during our library visit and I introduced the others during our classroom read aloud time.  Here is a picture of the books to choose from for this year. 

My class selected these 3 books as their top choices with Kate and Pippin by Martin Springett as their favourite. 

This is a story about a dog that befriends a small fawn. I guess my students are animal lovers :)

We will have to wait for Mr. Cann to announce the overall winner after all the votes are tallied from the school. 

Art - Grade One Kites
The Grade Two students are just finishing their abstract art and I will share those with you soon. The Grade One students have been making symmetry art. By taking paint and folding it to make a similar impression on the other side of the paper, they created these amazing symmetrical butterflies. On the drive home that day, it suddenly hit me that we could make equally amazing kites with them.

When I first started teaching, my board introduced a wonderful design and technology program for primary students. I remember the first time I was told that 6 year olds were going to be given saws!!

 I have to admit, I was pretty worried. However, after receiving safety training and doing this for a few years, I have quite changed my initial hesitancy although I still really hover close by...don't worry.  You can really see students applying the knowledge they have learned. In this case, students had to measure how long the length of their butterfly kite was and then cut the wood accordingly. It was interesting to see which students could measure accurately. What was even funnier was having to actually teach a lesson on how to put on safety goggles and yes, that shape on the bottom of the glass is where you put your nose! Many students had them upside down and were complaining their noses hurt. I am proud of how safely they worked, cooperated, carefully measured and followed through to complete the task. As one Grade one boy said to another, "Isn't this the best day of Grade one ever".

Earth Day
For Earth Day we watched the movie the Lorax (the older Dr. Seuss version). Students then went on Pebble Go to research which animal was in danger of becoming extinct and why. Currently students are writing an article about their animal using the Lorax format (e.g., I am Fred and I speak for the Polar Bears). We have had some interesting discussions and I know students have learned a lot about what we need to do to help all the living things on our planet. 
Eco Girl would be proud! To watch her in action, click on this link!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOstNIfNbpw

Also, I was telling the students how 'knitters' came to the rescue of some little penguins in New Zealand but forgot to show them the link at school. Here it is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pqsxjgBjCQ

May 6th is Music Monday
Wow, when I look at my May calendar there are a lot of fun things happening! Music Monday starts at 1:45p.m. and is outside. Please feel free to come and see the whole school perform for you. If it is a nice day, bring lawn chairs and invite the Grandparents to come and enjoy an outside concert. If it is raining then the concert will be held in the large gym. I believe this year you might recognize one of the songs as the song astronaut Chris Hadfield created with Ed Robertson while in space! 
                                     See you there!

Earth Day, More Art in the Sky and Reading with Meaning!

Storms and Blogs
Last week the storm on Thursday evening blew out the power in the area where I live for three (LOOOOONG) days. 
I found out a few things...
1) My woodstove is great as it kept the house (and me) warm 
2) Yes, you can make and heat up coffee with a blowtorch 
3) You really miss your technology (and texting) when the batteries die (prompting me to wonder how would the 'pioneers' handle this?)
4) The pioneers must have really had bad hair...ugh, no curling iron
So, if you wondered where I went to, let's just say I had some technical difficulties for a while! But I'm back....

Earth Day
To celebrate Earth day at school, students will be out doing some spring cleaning around the Florence Meares P.S. playground this Friday. Please send in an old glove (even a rubber glove or plastic one is fine) so students have one when it is our turn. There are usually some provided so don't worry if you forget. Monday April 22nd will be our first 'Litterless Lunch' Day. This is when you pack a lunch for your child that has no wrappers to throw out. Try to use containers that can go back home or a thermos. I realize this may take some creativity but I think I might be able to do it for one day myself...
Remember Eco -Girl and our Super Eco-team will be flying through the school to help with any Eco-emergencies! 

                           Reading Strategy of the Week
??????????????????????????Questioning???????????????????????????
When reading with your child, help them use question words when discussing the story. Try to have them use different question words to start the dialogue with you. Here is the chart we used when doing our mini- lesson on questioning.

 A great book to use is 'Little Black Crow' by Chris Raschka as it is a book entirely written using questions. My students have written their own animal question books using this authors style. By researching a favourite animal using the computer program 'Pebble Go' which is part of the Burlington Public Library's on-line tools, students were able to implement and showcase what they have learned.

The other books pictured are great books to use for 'Narrative Writing' which we have begun to discuss. The 'Sidewalk Rescue' book really helps us learn about 'Story Mountains' which is when we analyze a book to discover the structure of a good narrative. The Fourth Little Pig is also a wonderful book that you can use to help students infer the outcome of the 'problem' in the story. We wrote alternate endings for this book in 'Writer's Workshop' and some of the student endings were really delightful! 

(special thank you to teacher and friend G. Cunningham as I totally scammed her 'story mountain' chart to use with my students...good teachers share but also good teachers give credit to those who share :)

                                Art in the Sky (May 13 -16)
Cool facts!
*The Falcon we are creating will be 260 feet in length across our 
  field
*Each class will have a specific colour and all the colours will go
   together to make the falcon (don't worry about getting a t-shirt as
  this will be organized for you)

Here are some of the dates of interest:
May 13 - Daniel Dancer shares his multi-media presentation with grouped classes

May 14 - Volunteers and older students prepare the field by mapping out a grid and laying mulch in areas

May 15 - Event Day -Photographers, Media, T-shirts given out

May 16 - 'Celebration' Assembly - DVD of how we all came together to create 

                              Have a great week everyone! 

Butterflies

Painted Lady Butterflies
Coming soon (well, May 7th to be exact) butterfly larvae! Just ordered from Boreal laboratories! I am so looking forward to doing this with my class. All the Grade 2 students study 'Life cycles' and the Grade 1 students learn about 'Basic Needs for Living things' as part of their Science program. Students will get their own larvae to feed and nurture until it forms a chrysalis and ultimately a butterfly. It is a great time for students to learn about 'metamorphosis' as well as learn about life (and sometimes death). 

This is a picture of one of the butterfly releases that happened last year. As you can see, it is a very 'hands on' experience!

There has been a lot happening in the classroom. I will post more details soon when I have taken some pictures. Stay tuned! 

Tenth anniversary and Upcoming events

Did you know....
In Science the students have been learning about Simple Machines. Recently they used a pulley to move an object. This experiment demonstrates how a pulley can make a job easier as it uses less force/energy.  Here is a picture of how they transformed my classroom door into a construction site!

If you are looking for a fun Science website to support the Simple Machines unit, I would recommend Edheads. Here is the link:
http://www.edheads.org/activities/simple-machines/


Here are some Upcoming Highlights:

*Florence Meares Public School will be celebrating it's tenth anniversary this Tuesday. We will be having an assembly and meeting in our Tribes to begin to discuss the 'Art for the Sky' project. It should get very exciting for the students. 

* Mrs Langman's Life Skills class is running in the Torch run relay. They are asking that each class contribute some twoonies for charity. The class that brings in the most will get a pizza and lemonade lunch. I really think this is such a good cause for some great kids. It would be awesome if we could support them in any
way we can.

* We will be moving on from Telling time, Temperature and Money to Linear measurement!

                                  Reading Strategies
     We will be finishing up the Reading Strategy: 'Inferring' and  moving on to 'Questioning'. We will be applying this information to our 'Writer's Workshop' activities'. Using the Knuffle Bunny (Mo Willems) stories as a model, both the Grade One and Grade Two students created 'Inferring' pictures. I provided students with the 'setting' and they had to create a scene where the story was implied. Using facial expressions, actions, minimal or no words, and objects, the students created pictures that tell a story. Some of the students were very creative and it was interesting to see different interpretations of the same setting. 

When you are reading stories with your child. Take a minute to help your child comprehend what they are reading and remember to help direct them to the pictures for clues about what is happening in the storyline. I know it may seem like a basic skill, but for so many students it needs to be explicitly taught. Many students are good 'decoders' and can read difficult words, but understanding the meaning and comprehending are skills that need to be reinforced and taught in a strategic way. Asking questions (not too many or it interrupts the flow of the story) as you read with your child reinforces understanding of what is being read. 
                                           Happy Reading!

Art for the Sky

Coming soon!                               
                                      Art for the Sky
An exciting school-wide event is taking place at Florence Meares Public School. The entire school will be working together to create an artistic masterpiece similar to the one created at another school in Burlington. This picture is an aerial photo of the children and staff at the school. Can you see them?

Of course our design will be unique to us, since the artist 'Daniel Dancer' will be creating a vision that is meaningful for our school. The fun will begin in mid-May and for a week there will be lots of preparation to do; songs to learn, assemblies and cooperative activities. What a great way for our school to work together! If you would like to see more of his artwork, please follow this link to the gallery.
http://www.artforthesky.com/htm/skygallery.htm


Have a great Easter weekend! Here is a glimpse of some of the fabulous Easter art decorating our hallways this month. The 3 D eggs are made by our Grade Two students and the Easter bunnies and hatching chicks are from our Grade One students. 

Sorry this is a short (and a bit later than usual) post this week...struggling with migraines. Probably from eating Easter chocolate :)

Reading strategy - Inferring

Where is Spring?

This week we took down our winter art in order to hopefully chase winter away and usher in Spring! Here is a look at our Monthly book collection - Rabbits and an Easter theme. If you are looking for some fun reads, Dav Pilkey's books 'The Dumb Bunnies' are a real hit with boys (girls too). The 'Hopper' series by Marcus Pfister are a nice read with lovely pictures. Muncha, Muncha, Muncha by Candace Fleming is one of those books that little ones will make you read over and over!

However, I have snuck in some books which support our reading strategy - 'inference'! The series 'Knuffle Bunny' by Mo Willems is a great opportunity to talk to children about how to find clues to predict aspects of the story by looking at the picture.

We have talked a lot this week about how to 'infer'. We now know that there are 'text clues', 'picture clues' and we can 'use our own schema' to predict and explain what we have read. Here is an example of a group discussion where we read the text and had to determine what was happening. You can see our thinking and predictions.

Once children are able to infer text, they have a greater ability to comprehend what they have read. This is a higher level thinking strategy that is supported by such educational gurus as 'Debbie Miller' who wrote the book 'Reading with Meaning'. 

Spring Baskets

Here are a few of our Grade One Easter baskets...just waiting for the Easter bunny. 

The Grade Two children are making different baskets and are growing their own grass to go inside! Stay tuned as they are still working on them. Here is a sneak peak of the beginning stages. No grass yet...

Chocolate chip cookie recipe from the December blog post...

A few people have asked where to find the mini Hershey kisses. I have found them at quite a few local grocery stores. However, since you don't know what you are looking for, here is a picture of the package and a link to the original recipe post (for the worlds best chocolate chip cookies!)

p.s. I don't work for Hersheys or know anyone that does. Any chocolate chip works, I just happen to like these ones. In fact, I sometimes like them so much I fail to make the cookie and just eat them as is...sigh! 

March Recipe, Art, Technology

                                   Blog thoughts
When I first started this blog, I assumed that a few people might read it and that it might be difficult to find something to write each week. Wrong...on both counts! I routinely hit 1500 blog hits a month and I am never at a loss for something to write. In fact, I often have to curb my enthusiasm and not write too much. So, I'm guessing that as well as parents of the students in my current class there are also other educators and parents checking things out. I will try to write news and happenings so that everyone gets something out of this blog!
                                          Spring Art! 
My Grade One students did some art to celebrate the arrival of Spring (not here yet but hoping soon). They turned out so well that many people have complimented us. I adapted an idea that I found on pinterest to make it look more like a stained glass window. 

If you want to do this at home. 
We used:
* tissue (cut into eggs)
* markers to decorate the eggs /a few sparkles
*wax paper (folded with the eggs placed inside) 
  (glue stick to save the frustration of tissue blowing away)
* an iron to iron it together
*bunny cut out of black
*cotton for the bunny tail
*shiny recycled kleenex box for the one special Easter egg for the
  bunny
*black construction paper frame

                                  Technology Moment
Mr Cann our wonderful librarian is teaching the students how to use Halton Cloud. The implications for this program are incredible. Students can work at home on the same document while conversing in a message box. Mr Cann and I modeled for the students how to create a shared story while we were both on separate computers in different parts of the library. Our students can access their private work using their regular passwords through the Halton Cloud link on the F.M. Library webpage. 
                                    Study Ladder
I know a few people have asked for some different programs that might be used over the March Break. I have set up a free account for our class on 'Study Ladder'. There are many free learning games in whatever area of curriculum that interests you. It has some motivators similar to Raz Kids so students will enjoy that. I will send passwords and links home in the front pocket of the agenda for you. If you are in a hurry, simply google it.

                                   March Recipe for you
One side of my family is from Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was always a tradition for me to make this bread for my Irish Grandpa. It is quite simple for children to make and is great with natural ingredients. 
So for St. Patrick's Day...I give you....
                     Grandpa's Favourite Wheaten Bread
3 cups flour (1 1/2 white and 1 1/2 whole wheat)
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp soft butter
1/4 cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
Mix together and add buttermilk to make a dough. ( I use my food processor but you can mix it by hand just as easily)
Grease and flour a loaf pan. 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook for one hour
Note*** For treacle bread use all white flour and add treacle (you can get it at the British import store in Waterdown) with the buttermilk. 
It is also nice if you want to add raisins, currents, chopped dates
I like to have this bread toasted with special home made jam!

              Enjoy a wonderful March Break everyone!