RINGO. . .

 READING IS NOW GOING ON. . . . . or RINGO for short

This is what reading looks like in our class.     

Sometimes we want to read alone . . .

 Sometimes we read in big groups . . . .

Sharing something we all find interesting . . .  an index in a nonfiction book that lists some interesting animals!  This caught lots of people's interest

                                                                                                         

Sometimes we just like to be
beside a friend (or two!)

What does reading look like in your class?

Brain power!!!!

We are learning all about the brain and how it works. Ms. Veriah, our student teacher, had some very interesting books for us to look at and we learned so much!

Ms. Veriah taught us how to make a model with our hands and she talked about the 3 different parts of the brain.  We learned that the pre-frontal cortex is at the front of the brain and is called the wise leader.  It helps us make good decisions.  The hippo campus is the memory saver and helps us remember things and the amygdala is the security guard; that means it helps protect us by guiding us how to react in various situations. 

Once we knew the different parts of the brain we got to make a brain using play dough!   It was awesome!

We took pictures with the iPad.  Mrs. Betts is going to teach us how to use Skitch so we can label our brains and put them on our blogs!

Jahan wanted to know if he could upload his picture to Draw and Tell so he could talk about it!   I love when my students want to share their learning with the world!  Check our individual blogs in the next few days to see some of our work!

Writer's Alive! ~ The New Me!

Over the past few weeks we have been working hard at developing our writing skills.  We have listened to Kate Messner, the author of our Global Read Aloud book, Marty McGuire, talk about how she makes writing come alive for her readers.  We also had a Skype date with Howard Binkow earlier in the year and had many questions for him about his writing.  Last week we learned a new writing strategy to try in our own writing!  We read the book, Quick as a Cricket written by Audrey Wood and illustrated by Don Wood.

This book had wonderful illustrations and used a writing technique called similes to help the reader "see" what the writer was trying to say.  A simile compares two things that are not really alike using the words like or as.  After reading the book we came up many examples of similes.  Some of these were:  hot as lava, slow as a snail, golden like the sun.  We had lots of ideas and were eager to record our ideas on paper.

Our homework for the weekend was to think of five adjectives that describe ourselves.  On Monday, we watched a a video called My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OZzbQk4SwYI&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOZzbQk4SwYI

 It was very funny and gave us a good idea of how similes can be used to create a picture in the reader's mind.  We used the idea from the video and created a self portrait.  We had to think or something that could represent the adjectives we had chosen. Below are some samples of our portraits. 

I'm as cute as a princess
I'm as kind as an angel
I'm as quiet as clouds
I'm as black as night
That's ME! Ellie

I'm as strong as a tree
I am as pretty as a princess
I am as smart as a book
I am as happy as a ray of sun
I am as silly as a clown
That's ME!  Jessica.

 I am as brave as a king, I am as silly as a clown.  I am as kind as a bunny.  I am as strong as a weight lifter.  I am as funny as a monkey.  That's ME!  Kenji.

I'm as mathematical as a number
I'm as fast as a peregrine falcon
I'm as short as a stump
I'm as funny as a clown
I'm as smart as a book
That's ME! Nik

I'm as smart as a calculator
I'm as brave as a knight
I'm as fast as a rhino
I'm as active as a monkey
I'm as funny as a clown
That's ME! Raza

I'm as funny as a laughing hyena
I'm as kind as a bunny
I'm as smart as a book
I'm flexible like a rubber band
I'm as creative as trees

I'm as fast as a meteor
I'm as strong as metal
I'm as hot as a blue star
I'm as handsome as a king
I'm as smart as a calculator
I'm as brave as a lion
That's ME! Trevor






















 Can you guess what part of our portrait represents the adjectives we chose?

Special note:  Thank you to Ms. Betts for giving us the link to the video!  We had lots of fun creating "The New Me!"

Our Global Read Aloud Visit!

Today we got to meet our Global Read Aloud buddy class!  We drove to Surrey Center to visit Mrs. Schanre's class.  We arrived just after 1:00.  First, we broke into small groups and chatted about our favourite character or part of the book.  Some of us felt a kinship to Marty, others identified with  Rupert, Sparky, Veronica Grace and Annie.  We had so many connections.


Next,  we watched an interview with Kate Messner on the big screen.  She talked about her writing; where she gets her ideas, why she included things in the book and if some of the characters were based on real life people. It was very interesting hearing her speak about her writing.
































Then, we tried improvising!  Mrs. Betts gave us some ordinary objects and we had to convince the audience that they were something different!  We were really good at this!

Finally, we were treated some fantastic cupcakes made by one of the parents in Mrs. Schnare's class. They were almost too good looking to eat!


What a wonderful experience we had for our first Global Read Aloud.  Did you know that there were over 144,000 students and 4,000 teachers that took part in this project?  Wow!

Thank you to Mrs. Schnare and her class for sharing with us!  We had a wonderful time sharing a book together and the afternoon was a great way to celebrate.

We Are Ready to Share with the World!

We have been learning about blogs and blogging and how to be safe on the Internet!  The first thing we did was talk about safety and citizenship while on the Internet.  We watched a video from Garfield's Learning Lab and learned what type of information we DON'T want to post on the internet.  Then we made a poster sharing this information.    We learned to follow Garfield's YAPPY rules.  Don't share:
Your full name
Address
Phone number
Passwords
Your plans
while online.  We constantly go back to these rules while working with technology.

Next, we looked at lots of different blogs to see how they were designed.  We discovered that all blogs have many features in common; they have a title, a place to  write a post, make a comment and reply to comments. Some blogs have what is called a blog roll - if you click on the blog roll it will take you to another person's or class blog.  Next, we designed a paper blog so we could practice the skills we had learned (this idea was not my own but one I found while on Twitter so thank you to Matt Callison for sharing your idea with the world!).  We had to decide on a title for our blog and include the important parts of a blog.
 
After we had designed our blog we learned how to write a quality post.  We wrote our ideas down on a chart so we can refer to it while we write about our learning and share it with the world.

 All of our paper blogs have a title, a link for All logs and the name of the person whose blog it is.
On the right hand side is the blog roll.

We practiced writing a post and including an image to go with our post. Once we had finished writing our post, Mrs. Betts handed out our blogs randomly and we had to read the post and make a comment about it following the criteria on the chart, "How to Make a Comment".  Once we had finished our comment we handed it back to the person it belonged to so they could write a reply.

This was a very worthwhile project that helped us learn and practice the skills necessary to read, write and respond to people's writing on their blogs. 

Finally, after practicing all these skills on paper we were ready to share our thinking and writing with the world!  We are now connecting with the world through our individual blogs as well as our class blog!  It is so much fun and much more powerful writing for a wider audience than just for one person (no offense Mrs. Betts!)  Please visit our individual blogs and leave us comments.  We LOVE hearing from you!

Are you blogging at your school?  If you are visit us and let us know and we will connect with you.  If you aren't blogging yet, give it a try!

We Remember. . . . .

Yesterday we had a very moving and powerful assembly honour the many men and women who served our country during the wars.  Our gym was beautifully decorated with symbols of peace, love and remembrance.

                                                                                                                                                                   We had a bagpiper lead us into the gym.
She played many familiar tunes that we recognized.

Our choir sang, students shared their thoughts about peace and we watched a video of a Canadian singer playing and singing a song about our veterans.  If you would like to hear it click on the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd5_YZbhtl0&feature=youtu.be


Once we were back in our class we read a thought provoking story called, "Tusk Tusk" by David McKee.  It is about  overcoming differences, understanding others and making the world a better place that is written in a way young children can relate to.  We loved it and highly recommend reading it.

Thank you Chantrell Creek for providing us with such a thoughtful, powerful and inspiring assembly and thank you to our special guests for honoring us with your presence.

Friends are like Diamonds. . . . So Special

This week we had a presentation from a group called Friends 2 Friends.  We learned a lot about friendship.  We used puppets to practice the seven friendship tips we learned.  Here are some of us using the  puppets to practice our friendship tips. 

Some of the tips we learned were:  give your friends a choice when asking them to play, wait for your friends to make a decision, use friendly gestures or words (like a wave or a smile), do things your friends like to do.

Do you have any tips for making friends?  What do you like to do with your friends?