MULVEY SCHOOL

Archive for the ‘Room 5’ Category

We started our new inquiry project on the Bears. The students did a book browse and were asked  to think about something new and interesting they didn’t know before about bears.  It was great to hear and see the curiosity surrounding their new discoveries.

 

 

We continued our inquiry sharing what knew (or thought we knew!) about bears, followed by questions we had.  The students did a great job writing their thoughts on chart paper to share.

 

 

 

 

After doing much research on bears, we were fortunate enough to have an L.T.T.A. (Learning Through The Arts) artist Cathy Woods come into our class and help us work with clay to build models of bears. The students chose to either create a Brown Bear, Black Bear or Polar Bear.  The process took several days, first creating the body, legs, and adding the tail, nose and ears.

 

 

The students had to wait for the clay models to dry before painting their creations, adding claws and deatils such as the snout and eyes.

 

 

 

 

After our models were created, the next step in our learning was to be able to touch a real bear. How exciting would that be!  Of course, a real bear was out of the question but we were able to get our hands on a bear rug borrowed from the Living Prairie Museum.

 

Click here to watch the students interact with a bear rug for the first time!

The students enjoyed being able to touch and feel and see the parts of a bear up close!

 

We integrated the 7 Sacred Teachings, and had a short conversation about what the Bear represented – Courage. We discussed and shared in class what it mean to be courageous and shared some of our stories of courage.

At the end of our inquiry journey, we celebrated our learning by making a video about what they had learned about bears and we covered our back bulletin board with our new knowledge. The students also decided to make dioramas to present their knowledge at Student-Led Conferences.

Click on here to watch the video we made about our discoveries on bears!

[My apologies for the inaccurate date on the photo-time stamp!]

 

 

Way to go Room 5! You did a fabulous job on your inquiry on the Bear.

Butterflies are in the air!  We wanted to celebrate and share our inquiry learning of the butterfly by creating 3-dimensional models. We used Model Magic, construction paper, chalk pastel and telephone wire to create them.

We first constructed the wings by using construction paper. The students made sure the wings were symmetrical by folding the paper in half and designing their wing. Once completed, they had to make symmetrical designs on both wings. Again, this was done by folding the paper in half and cutting the design to get two equal cut designs.

Students used chalk pastel to represent the coloured scales on a butterfly. Students understood that the scales (colour) of a butterfly could rub off if handled too much. Just like the pastel chalk, it leaves behind colour when touched.

The students rolled out 3 pieces of the body of the butterfly; the head, thorax and abdomen. They attatched them together. The students waited for it to dry.

Once dry, the students painted their butterfly bodies.

 

 

The students had to wait for the paint to dry before adding the legs and antenae to the body. They used telephone wire and made sure to add the legs to the right part of the body (thorax) and add the antenae to the head.  Students made sure their butterfly had 6 legs. They reminded eachother that the 2 front legs can taste and that the antenae of a butterfly can smell. What great memory my students have!

 

We glued the legs and antenae on to keep it secure, then added the wings we made weeks prior.  After, we hung them in the classroom for display. Our room is full of flying beautiful butterflies!  Every time we look up, we are reminded of the first day of school when we were greeted with Monarch butterflies. We are looking forward to sharing them at student-leds!

 

 

 

The students of Room 5 (along with other primary classrooms) were fortunate enough to be invited to Balmoral Hall private school for a Holiday Make and Take event.  We walked over to the neighboring school and we were welcomed with craft stations, hot chocolate, cookies and a show.

The students enjoyed playing games prior to making crafts. Duck, duck….. goose!

The students enjoyed making reindeer ornaments with the assistance of staff and students from Balmoral Hall.

 

Before heading home, the students were surprised with a gift bag to take home. Inside include various items such as mittens, books, pencils, erasers and markers.  THANK YOU BALMORAL HALL for hosting a wonderful event for the students of Mulvey School.  The students of Room 5 had a great time.

 

The students of Room 5 continue to learn about butterflies through the  integration of mathematics.  They learned the terminologies symmetrical (both sides are the same and mirror each other) and assymetrical (both sides are not the same and do not mirror each other).  The students discovered that butterfly wings are symmetrical and had to create a butterfly of their own using pattern blocks cut-outs.

 

The students did a fantastic job and all were successful in creating a butterfly with symmetrical wings. It was neat to see that all butterflies created were all different from each other. No two butterflies were the same.

Cheryl Zubrack, our Inquiry and Art Consultant, visits our classroom every 1-2 weeks to help us with our inquiry of butterflies.  During her last visit, she came to see our understanding of symmetrical and assymetrical through movement.

 Here is a photo of our students showing their bodies in a symmetrical position.

Students then created their own symmetrical postion with their bodies. 

Here is Tishawn.

And showed us asymmetrical positions.

Here is Thomas.

The students also drew a butterfly with their new knowlege of butterfly wings (symmetrical) and explained their drawing to us.

Their drawings were a great assessment tool to see which students understood the concept that butterfly wings are symmetrical. 

Interestingly, the students were able to do this more easily with pattern blocks, but when given drawings tools it was  harder for some to create their symmetrical wings. 

Hmm…. we will need to try this again at a later date!

On to learning butterflies through the subject of Science!  The students learned the anatomy of a butterfly. After learning the names of the parts of a butterfly (antenae, legs, wings, thorax, abdomen, probiscus, head) they had to identify the parts of a butterfly using a real photo.

 The students noticed more parts of the butterfly and were able to take a closer look after learning the anatomy of the butterfly. They noticed the butterfly had 2 parts to the body, the thorax (which the legs and wings come out of) and the abdomen (the bottom half of the body). They noticed the different designs and various shapes of the wings as well.

 

 The students have gained much knowledge about the butterfly, that we are now ready to make 3-dimensional butterfly art pieces that share our understanding and learning.  

While the winter and cold has arrived here in Winnipeg, we often think of the butterflies we released back in September and hope they made it safe to Mexico!

WE ALL BELONG.

Love love love. Everyone needs love.

In Room 5, I try my best to foster healthy postive relationships between myself and my students, and my students with eachother.  I am greeted daily with hugs and smiles, and I love to return the hugs and smiles back. They say, “Laughter is the best medicine” and we make sure to get a daily dose of laughter each day.

 

Here are some photos of the friendships that have continued to grow or have blossomed this year.

Students are encouraged to work with eachother, help eachother, share and most importantly, respect one another.

 

It took a lot of patience and cooperation to get this photo! A lot of laughing, nudging, coaching,  and a lot of grunting happened because we had to make sure our hands made the shape of a heart! After 12 takes…  We finally got it! Ta-da!

Room 5 is a community of learners and friends. We continue to learn about friendship, empathy and the importance of being kind to everyone. You definitely can feel the love in this classroom.  There’s no place I’d rather be, than at Mulvey school in Room 5.

 

 

It’s always fun to play dress up!  Some students in Room 5 came to school dressed up in costume on Halloween.

A big thank you to Brianne Peterson (Romee’s mother) for volunteering to do face painting in our classroom and for sharing healthy treats with the class!

The students loved their new look!

I’m glad those who went trick-or-treating had a safe Halloween!

2, 4 6, 8… who do we appreciate?!

Student in Room 5 have been practicing counting by 2s, 5s and 10s.

The students also have learning about place value (how many tens, ones in a given number) and how to represent it using math materials.

At times, the students were asked to draw what a number looked like making groups of tens and ones.

The students were also expected to share their learning, by using their speaking skills.  Students counted out loud to their friends in class.

 

While a friend presented, the rest of the class used their listening skills.

All students were engaged and are getting better at skip counting and understanding place value.

For extra practice, have your child skip count by 2s, 5s and 10s at home, and see how high they can get.

 

I love music. And I love to dance.  So what does a teacher who loves music and loves to dance do?  She blasts the music in class and encourages her students to dance with her!

I brought a CD into class and played  the track “The Rules” to my students.  It had a catchy ‘hook’ and a good beat that made your head bounce. As we were listening to it, some of the kids got up and started dancing.  So I got up and danced along – and before we knew it, we were all dancing.

This was one of those “Kodak” pull out your video camera moments. So with my handy dandy iPhone (technology at it’s finest!) I recorded everyone dancing.  We watched it on my small screen, and then they wanted to do it again.  So we decided to make a ‘rap video’ that we could post on our classroom blog.

The students got into groups and were assigned parts of the song.  They had to choreograph a basic move to go along with the lyrics of the song.

After 2 days of practicing, we put it all together. 

Room 5 presents “The Rules!”.

http://blogs.wsd1.org/mulvey/files/2012/10/IMG_1560.flv

 

The rules, the rules, the rules of the classroom (2x)

Follow, follow, follow directions. (2x)

The rules, the rules, the rules of the classroom (2x)

Feet and hands, feet and hands, feet and hands to yourself (2x)

The rules, the rules, the rules of the classroom (2x)

Small voice inside, tall voices on the playground (2x)

The rules, the rules, the rules of the classroom (2x)

Take care of your things and keep your classroom neat and clean (2x)

The rules, the rules, the rules of the classroom (2x)

Work together, get along and respect each other (2x)

The rules, the rules, the rules of the classroom (4x)

Yeah!

We are learning to read and write!!  It is so exciting to see the students working hard at learning  the sight words we have learned in class thus far.  A big thank you to all the parents/guardians that monitor and assist their child with their homework assignments.  As a parent myself, I understand how busy it gets after school, and so I appreciate your support in spending a few minutes with your child with their homework which validates their education is important!  I love seeing those “Yellow Duotangs” come in like a wave on Fridays, and the students enjoy getting them back on Mondays to see their earned sticker for doing their work! The extra practice at home is making a big difference!

Welcome to first and second grade, where the basics of reading and writing are introduced!  Reading and writing go hand-in-hand, and therefor we do both at the same time!

In class, we have been learning to put words together to create a sentence.   In the photo below, students stood in a line with words, while another classmate re-arranges the words so that it makes sense! Other times, the students had to re-arrange themselves among their classmates to create a sentence.  It was fun discovering whether words that were put together made sense or not.

We started with simple 3 word sentences, and students embedded drama into the lesson by acting out some of our sentences.

Then we putting together 4 word sentences.

Once we created several sentences, we went straight to writing them out! We made sure there was an uppercase at the front,  spaces in between words and punctuation at the end.

We also made sure our letters and sizes were correct! Once they got the hang of it, students got to create their own sentences.

I introduced “word families” this month. These are words that have similar endings, and usually rhyme.  Learning word families enable students to take what they already know or are familiar with, and use it with something new.  For example, if they know how to read and spell “am” (one of their sight words already learned), they can read and spell ham, bam, ram, etc.

One does not need to know all their alphabet sounds to read, however, when it comes to writing,  knowing the alphabet sounds is helpful in most cases. Emergent writing, writing out the sounds we hear in a word, is the main focus in class. At this time, we are not concerned with spelling as this sometimes hinders a child from writing out their thoughts because they are stuck on spelling everything correctly. However, I do expect that the sight words that we have learned thus far be spelled correctly (as it is up on a wall for them to copy).  When we do our journals, I look for evidence of the  sounds they hear in a word when they write it down.  The students of Room 5 are getting better at each journal entry showing the sounds they hear in a word!  :)

Learning the alphabet, remembering the shape and formation of letters,  the phonetic sounds, understanding that a group of letters make a word, that there are spaces in between words, that an uppercase letter is always at the beginning of a sentence,  that there is always punctuation at the end of a sentence, and to read and write from left to right —  is a huge undertaking in the reading and writing process.  I commend the first and second graders for taking risks in their first/second year of writing and trying their best at attempting  unknown words to spell while trying to remember the “rules” of writing at the same time.  We have not even touched learning diagraphs, that is, when 2 or more consonants are grouped together and a single consonant sound is produced (For example: /ch/, /tch/, /sh/). However, as the weeks progress, I am seeing more letters on the pages they write on which tell me they are hearing the letters (sounds) that make up a word.  I am very proud of their progress so far!!   Keep up the great and wonderful work Room 5!

September has come and gone! How time flies! Here’s a sneak peak at September’s class activities.

In English Language Arts we started to practice correct letter formation and how it looks on lined paper.  The students learned the importance of the “top line”, “bottom line” and “half life” when printing letters. They understand that neat printing allows others to read their thoughts and ideas.

We also went straight into learning sight words and high frequency words. Sight words cannot be easily sound, and therefore it is beneficial to learn the words by “sight” to help with fluency with reading. High frequency words are words found most frequently in a book.

We played a game called “Tap a Word”, where two students challenge eachother to find the word first using a pointer. As the weeks progressed, more learned words were added to this game.  We are currently at 20 high frequency/sight words!

The students in Room 5 enjoy taking turns playing “teacher” when we read our Sight Words Poems.    We have finished reading Poetry Book 1 and it has been sent home for students to share their reading with their families and guardians.  It’s exciting to see the students so proud of themselves when they see they can read!

In Math, we explored different strategies and manipulatives to help us understand the concept of number. One of our focus this month is to explain our thinking, or how we see things.  Verbalizing our thinking helps with oral skills and organizing our thoughts.

Making friends and playing with our peers help make learning math fun! In this photo, the students are using a rekenrek to represent number and do simple addition and subtraction.

Oh the Power of 10!  Subitizing (this is, the ability to see the amount  without counting) is an important skill in math. It helps with re-arranging numbers in our head and seeing different patterns.  We use 10-frame cards in this game.  These cards also help show compatibles to 10. (9 and 1, 8 and 2, etc). The students are getting better everyday with subitizing!

The students of Room 5 are still practicing writing numbers and making sure it’s not backwards.  We are also learning place value – that is, how many tens and how many ones make up a number (up to 99).

I have such a wonderful bunch of students this year and very happy to be working with each and every one of them.  Each one holds a unique gift, and together – they  make up an amazing class. Thank you room 5 for trying your best everyday, being kind to one another, and making my job enjoyable!  You guys are the best!