Catch Up

Hello! It has indeed been awhile since I have posted here. It has been one epic extravaganza after the next!

Our overnight at the Museum of Aviation was a great success. I have pictures but they are very large files. I am trying to figure out the best way to share them. It is difficult because we don't have a lot of server space at school so I can't even load them onto my computer!

Our movies are almost all done. From the rough cuts that we've seen, they are going to blow your minds! We have one film that needs to finish up some filming. Other than that, Will is busy editing away. We hope to host a screening on a Tuesday evening in the gym sometime in January. Stay tuned!

Our last week with Will was bittersweet. We had a lot of fun enjoying our time together and wrapping up some activities. Will was an exceptional teacher who really inspired the students of 310. I know from the positive feedback that many of you have been passing on, that you also appreciated the time he spent with us. He will be missed.

To celebrate his time with us, the students made him a book, presented him with a stop motion movie that I sent you a link to, and wrote him a song. We also presented him with a beautiful ukulele that I know he loves.

This week, we've been gearing up for the holidays with sing a longs, festive math problems, madlibbing comics, and crafting!

Today was one of those magical days in 310. It started with a surprise math problem from Will who Skyped in for a visit. The students took turns showing him their answers. Super fun.

Afterwards, due to the lovely volunteering capabilities of Sharron, Patricia, Sue, Carol, Andrea, and Melanie, the students were able to make some really stunning sock stuffies. What was great was that every single student really got into their projects. They were very focused and enjoyed themselves immensely. It was so nice to be apart of.

In case I don't see you tomorrow, I want to wish all of you a very happy holidays. It has been a true pleasure to work with all of you this year. It has been a banner year for me and I'm looking forward to continuing the trend in 2012!

Hagrid Math on Averages

Skyping with our friends in Ecuador

A surprise Skype Math Lesson with Will

Sock Stuffies

Vow of Silence Day

Sad?

When you are sad, what do you do that makes you feel better? Click on the comment button and write about what you do and why it works. Please remember to sign your name.

Links

I am back logged on some posts. Sorry. For now, here are two links to games that Will showed the class. They are all about problem solving.

http://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com/sugar-sugar.html#game

http://crayonphysics.com/

Have fun!

Remember that Thursday is Will's last day. :(

Vow of Silence

We had our meetings with our Movie Executives yesterday. Each group got some good advice and positive feedback from Matt and Shawn. It was interesting to get their take on our projects. Filming will start next week!

Right now, students are working silently in groups to prepare mini presentations about our culture. Tomorrow, we will have two Skype sessions with a class in Ecuador where we will listen to their presentations and they will listen to ours. A former student teacher of mine is teaching there and we are hoping to create many links with each others' classes this year.

Today's Vow of Silence organized by Free the Children has made for some interesting means of communication. So far, they have been very successful!

Students have wrapped up their look at mean, median, and mode in math. This week, they also looked at solving a problem about graphing. Students were presented with a set of data about mean test scores that increased over time due to the playing of classical music. Students had to prepare two different graphs with the same set of data: one to make it appear that there was a dramatic increase in scores, and one to make the increase look less dramatic. Students have been altering scales and making good use of colour to make each graph show a different case for playing classical music.

In Literacy, we have been doing some writing each day. Yesterday's prompt asked students to convince us about what cereal to buy for our overnight trip. Many students used factual arguments, strong adjectives, and a good introduction sentence.

Later today, students will present their African drumming pieces with Natalie and learn about apostrophes and movie reviews-all while being SILENT!

It's a great quiet day!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

We've been up to so much goodness this week!

The movies are well on their way to being planned. Groups are almost done their storyboards and scripts. All of their movies have their own distinct style and include a variety of shots to help make their films look more professional. Next up, we will be discussing sound and presenting our ideas to Matt (a director) and Shawn (a producer). I'd like to ask the students to dress in business attire on this day to make it feel more authentic.

To help us with our endeavours, we watched two more films this week. We started with Marcel the Shell which was a good example of character development, different shots, and it was just super cute. We also watched a film made by kids in Ireland which was a good example of what we might be able to accomplish. It also was a great example with sounds and music in mind.

Baby Rye came for another visit. This time, we talked about what changes Baby Rye has gone through and what kinds of feelings he might have. We discussed how is "schema" is not as big as ours and how he probably doesn't feel things like embarrassment, shame, or accomplishment. His feelings are probably more like hunger, frustration, and contentment. It was interesting to see so many of the boys really show an interest and level of tenderness for Rye. So sweet. Most of the kids got a chance to hold Baby Rye which was super exciting. While he was here, we took his measurements which helped us with our math!

In math, we continued our study of averages and Hagrid. We calculated our class mean height and width, the median height and width, and the mode for height and width. We used this data to find out how big Hagrid is. Then, we made a life size cut out of him. He's ginormous! We also used Will and Tiiu's height and shoulder width, as well as Baby Rye's measurements to play around with our data. We discovered that "outliers" changed our mean more than our median.

We have danced a lot this week. In gym, we danced during our fitness stations and especially loved experimenting with the hoops. This gave Will an idea and he let us try different things with the hula hoops for the whole gym period the next day. We've never sweated so much! Today, we danced to "Double Dream Hands". If you've never tried it, you really should. It's impossible to stay mad while doing it.

On Friday, we had a great time skating. We shared the ice with Owen's grade 1 class. A parent from that class commented on how great our kids were at helping out the younger students. YAY 310!

We practiced Double Dream Hands again. The students are getting a lot better at it. When we got back from gym, something amazing happened! We were filling out our agendas when Ray's class barged in and surrounded us. They explained that they were inspired by our Random Acts of Kindness from last year and decided to R.A.D. us (Random Act of Dance)! They busted out into dance and we joined right in. So fun! I love Churchill!

Students should be looking for props for their movies this weekend. They were also given packages for our Museum Overnight. Please remember to also hand in contributions for our "Santa Fundraiser". Have a great weekend!

Monday, November 21, 2011

In math today, we had Tara join us who will be our student teacher in January. I taught a lesson planned by Will which starts with reading a chapter in Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone that describes Hagrid as being two times as tall as a normal man and five times as wide.
The big idea of this lesson is to understand that how we collect our data is important. We also want students to understand mean, median, and mode.
We started with a conversation about what average means. Then we discussed how we could find out how big Hagrid is. We decided to use our own class as our baseline. Next, we discussed how we could take our measurements in a consistent manner so that our data was as accurate as possible. Students decided to round to the nearest half centimeter, to take their shoes off, to use meter sticks taped to the wall, and to read from the bottom edge of the ruler. For width, they stood next to the wall, placed the ruler along the person's back, and read from the inner edge of the ruler. In both, we were careful to place our guiding ruler perpindicularly to get an accurate reading.
Tomorrow, we will continue this lesson.

In Literacy, students started their very exciting movie making projects. Students were assigned groups and looked at a wide selection of picture books that they could potentially adapt into short films. They had a worksheet that helped them to visualize their choices. Students also found out that they will be pitching their movies to a professional movie director and producer. Each group will be expected to put together a professional package that will include a script, storyboard, location list, prop list, actors, etc. They will present this package to our two professionals next week.

Students were so engaged. I can tell this is going to be an exciting unit.

Tara

Hi! My name is Tara Jamieson. I wanted to say that I love the Hagrid math that 310 did today. I am looking forward to working with 310 in the new year. Thanks for letting me visit today.

Tara.

Storyboarding

After learning about the different types of shots and seeing them used in the "Two Men" video, students learned about storyboarding and then set out to storyboard their chapter adaptions.

November 17th!

A very nice card and thoughtful gift from students in room 310. THANK YOU!

Will you ever forgive me?! I'm so sorry little blog. I will try harder to do better by you.


At least I have a good excuse. Things in 310 have been busy for everybody.


Our Remembrance Day ceremony was another thoughtful and respectful occasion. Students in the School of Rock performed two lovely songs at both our school ceremony and at the Westboro Cenotaph. I am always moved by the seriousness with which students approach this day. The students in 310 also spent some time writing postcards to my husband's grandfather. "Papa" was a member of the Fusiliers Mont Royal who were at Dieppe. He is 96 and living at the Veterans Affair Hospice in Montreal. My husband and brother in law spent Remembrance Day with Papa and brought him the postcards. He was very touched. Thank you 310 for making my Papa feel special and remembered.


In math, we are continuting our look at effective communication in problem solving. Will and I have been attending a three part workshop on problem solving in math. We have learned some exciting things and are looking forward to implementing them in 310. Most recently, we solved an authentic problem about the costs of our Aviation Overnight and played a very strategic game involving factors and multiples.







We are going to be switching gears in Literacy. Now that we have spent some time assessing the class and the students, we have a better idea of where we are at. Through their letters and other assignments, we have seen that the students in 310 can spell very well and are mostly very fluent readers. We are now going to focus on some structural aspects in their writing. For this reason, we are going to take a break from letter writing and instead spend some time writing and answering various communication book prompts.








Will's placement will soon be over. He is taking over many of the teaching duties right now. He has begun his unit on film making. We have already watched several short films in class to begin deciphering common features. Last week, we watched
"The Bully Dance". Students have spent time this week adapting chapters from our read aloud novel into script format. They are now going to turn those scripts into storyboards. As a culminating task for this unit, students will be adapting picture books that we have read in class into short films. It is going to be a very engaging unit and the students are really excited about the process.

An example of a student script



This is the film they watched today. They had a very engaging discussion about the different shots used and why the directors made the decisions that they made.

We are finally wrapping up our unit on electricity. Students are finishing up centres where they have been able to explore with materials used to build circuits. They are using these circuits to test the conductivity of different items. For the past two days, we have been using the Ottawa Hydro website to explore the new "Time of Use" rates in math class.

We had another Junior dance class today. Read about here.

Ukulele Club starts today. Students do not need a ukulele to join but if they one, it will help us out a lot.

The Week the Clowns Came

Untitled from Tiiu Tsao on Vimeo.

Here is a video version of our Haunted Circus. Please keep in mind that you are not feeling the creepy arms poke out at you, or the hands grabbing your ankles, or the cupboard that rattled so much you thought it was going to grab you. We got a lot of positive comments and were pumped at how well we did. Thank you to all of the parents who came out to help. We really appreciated it.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Super sad that Will is not in class

Getting down to business despite their misery
Have I told you how proud I am of 310? They are such a hard working bunch. In the mornings, they come in and get right to work. There are many times in our day where you can hear a pin drop! I'm thinking of allowing tours of our room so that others can bask in the glory of it all.

Did you know that the Haunted House is only a few days away! Yikes! Please make sure you are working on your costumes or asking for help from your peers at school. We will be finishing our props on Thursday so that we are ready for a rehearsal on Friday.

Entertainment Books went home today. If you'd like to order one or more, keep the book and fill out the order form for additional copies. Send in the forms and the cheques before next Friday please. If you are not interested, simply return the bag with the book and form.

I looked at everyone's summary of the video we watched yesterday. Many thought the farmer was not responsible for the over development of his farm. All of the students used the graphic organizer successfully to summarize.

Today we read "The Enemy". We had an interesting discussion about the futility of war, dehumanization, propaganda, and what an enemy really is.

If you are a part of the School of Rock, you now know that we will be doing two performances on Remembrance Day. During the morning, we will perform Imagine and Highway of Heroes at our school assembly. In the afternoon, all of the junior students will go to the Westboro Cenotaph ceremony. The School of Rockers will perform Highway of Heros which will likely be broadcast live by Rogers. More information about this to follow soon.

Manic Monday

What a productive Monday! This week, Will is away at University. I am flying solo and I'm not so sure the kids are excited about it.
We started by identifying what it looks like to be engaged. Here is what they came up with. I think this is bang on. Now, we at least know what we should look like.


Next, we reviewed what Will taught us in math last week. He lead us through some hands on lessons so that we could see how the areas of the parallelogram and the triangle relate to the area of the rectangle.


After that, we looked at a way to solve math problems. This is a model that the whole school is going to use so that we can start to develop a common language for math. To follow up, I gave them a problem to solve involving area. They are going to start solving this problem tomorrow in math. We also started our math journals today. This is a place for students to write about math. Today, they wrote out instructions for doing lattice multiplication.

In Literacy, we looked at the skill of summarizing. I reviewed a handy chart that can be used. Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then. We used it to summarize the two picture books we've looked at so far.

Once we did those summaries together, we watched this amazing stop-motion animation. We watched it a couple of times but did not discuss it. Then the students summarized the story using the chart.

After gym, I showed them the making of that stop-motion. I think there is an amazing amount of problem solving and teamwork evident in this project.

Students have also been writing some fantastic letters about their writing. Most are handing in their second letters this week. I will send home the notebooks soon.