Week Four

Friday we had art in the morning, the grade 3/4s are all working together on a really cool project we will debut at parent teacher conferences next week! 

We had our Terry Fox run this week and Orange Shirt Day. After we ran the Terry Fox run we got freezies! When Terry was only 18 he found out he had cancer in his leg and that he would have to get his leg amputated. He decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research for the Cancer Research Society. He unfortunately did not complete his goal of crossing Canada because he discovered that he had cancer in his lungs. He hoped to raise 10 million dollars for cancer research and since he has passed away we have continued to run his marathon of hope and have raised over 500 million dollars. We watched a short video called "I have a Dream" to help us learn some background about Terry Fox and his generous ideas. 

  

We wore orange shirts to show that we believe every child matters. We read a story called "Stolen Words" that talked about some of the history of Canada and our First Nations population. We learned a little bit about residential schools and that not too long ago children were taken from their homes and were not allowed to speak their language or practice their beliefs. The orange shirt idea came from one of the residential school survivors who remembers getting a brand new orange shirt to go to her new school. When she got there her new orange shirt was taken away from her, along with all of her other belongings and she never saw them again. This goes against the rights that children have and that was signed by Canada in the 1940's. We wear orange shirts to show our support and to remind everyone that children and their rights are important. 

We started to learn about our rights and responsibilities as children. The United Nations created a list of children's rights so that children are treated fairly and have what they need to be healthy and happy. Almost every country has signed and agreed to this list of children's rights. We learned that all children should be able to practice their religion and speak their language and these rights apply to all children no matter where they come from.  This linked well with Orange Shirt Day this week because it reminds us of how important it is to remember that we are all the same and should be treated fairly. 

 

We also started learning about rocks and minerals! We were very interested in the topic and asked lots of really deep questions! We learned we have a lot to learn about this topic and that we are learning about it because we live on a big rock! We learned that there are 4 layers to the earth, we live on what is called the crust and underneath us is the mantle, the outer core and the inner core, they are super duper hot! The inner core of our earth might even be hotter than the sun! Check out this video we watched:

We had buddies this week. We got to go on the computers together and teach them how to log on and get onto iris. It was fun to get to hang out with our buddies. 

This week we WON THE GOLDEN GARBAGE CAN!!!! Miss Klem and Miss Kolb are so thrilled that we had the cleanest classroom in the whole school!!! WOO HOO!!! When our names got called we cheered so loud they could hear us all the way in the office!!

Until next week, 

Love, 

Room 7 & 8

Week 3

At last our beautiful brand new carpet arrived in the classroom! We were thrilled to see it all laid out and it feels like a living room! We love it!

This week our classroom was filled with art! We got to do a technique in painting called "marbling"! It was so cool, we used acrylic paint, saran wrap and our notebook covers. We used 3 or 4 colours and we had to squirt some all over the place on our covers and then we put saran wrap on top and squished it all with our hands. Then we carefully took the plastic wrap off to reveal a masterpiece!

Another cover we worked on this week was our math book covers. We used water colour paints to decorate them. We got a white crayon and drew things on the paper and then we sprayed it with a little water and then we got some paint and then painted it with water colour and waited for it to dry. They also look pretty cool!

We also worked on finishing our social book covers. We used to tempera paint to mix colours. We chose two complimentary colours from the colour wheel and mixed them together. We also coloured and drew inside lightbulbs that will go over our heads. We drew things that were important to us or something that we wanted to learn more about.

This week was picture day on Thursday. We all came to school looking our best, quite a dashing group we all are!

Usually at the end of every week we have the opportunity to earn free choice. This week we did not have free choice. Unfortunately we had a difficult time as a group making respectful and responsible choices this week. We had to have a few class meetings to talk about what respect means to us, what it looks like and what it feels like. Hopefully we will have free choice next week!

In writing this week we got to do some free writing as well as some creative writing using a picture prompt from National Geographic's photo of the day. This was the picture we wrote about, ask me what I wrote about!

We went to the learning commons this week to get new books and visit with Ms. Luzzi. She says to remember to keep them safe in our new plastic book bags and take care of them at home. We will exchange the books in 2 weeks.

Most of us are all caught up on our work, however we got so many new friends this week there are a few that will continue to work on catching up. We got 9 new friends in our classroom this week! What a wild time it has been to get to know everyone. We played a "get to know you" game called "Remember Me?" Miss Kolb brought a blanket from home, a big thick, cozy one you couldn't see through. Each class sat on either side of the blanket and we had to quietly choose who was going to sit in front of the blanket then Miss Kolb and Miss Klem counted to three and dropped the blanket. The first person to say the other persons name won a point. Room 7 won both times, but it was a close game both times!

Because of the changing weather we got to stay in for a recess and two lunches! We watched a movie with Ms. Melba called Bolt! We also started Aladdin today.

There is no school tomorrow (booooo hooo/ wooo hooooo!).

We loooooooooooooooooove comments! Please leave us a comment to read and reply to!

Until next week,

Love,

Room 7 & 8

Week 2

We continued learning about and working on some new art techniques to cover our work journals. This week we got to rip up a bunch of colourful paper and glue it to the journals in any way we wanted to. They look so cool, we can't wait to show them off at parent teacher conferences in October.

On Wednesday we had our first visit from "It's a Crime not to Read" (ICNR). It is a program run by public libraries in Calgary that partner with the Calgary Police. A police officer comes in to visit with us and read to us. We will meet with our police officer once a month and get to choose two library books a month to read and take home that we will then exchange at our next meeting. The police officer that we met was Constable Kim. She was so cool! She showed us everything on her police belt but we did not get to see the gun because she isn't allowed to take it out at school. She told us that she has never had to use her gun, which is pretty cool! She told us that her most important tool is her voice.

We got onto computers this week! We logged into iris and posted our goals for the year. Check them out here:

iris.cbe.ab.ca

When we had finished writing our goals we got to write them onto a paper leaf that we will be adding to our classroom wish tree!

In writing we made a "Writer's Checklist" and made a list of all the important things to include that make a good piece of writing. Here is our checklist:

We started free choice this week! Free choice is when we get to have 30 minutes to play games with our classmates, draw pictures, or do anything we want in the classroom. You have to earn free choice, so only those of us who finished all of our work in class time get to have free choice. Those of us who didn't finish all of our work have "WOW" time (work on work) to finish our activities from the week.

This Friday was also Pancake Breakfast! Yum!

Until next week,

Love,

Room 7 & 8

Our First Week Together!

Tuesday September 5th was the first day of school! We were all nervous, but mostly excited, to meet each other. We walked in to the classroom and started making friends with each other right away.

Wednesday September 6th was Miss Kolb's birthday! What a special treat it was for her to get to spend it with all of us! We sang to her and gave her lots of hugs and happy birthdays, even some lovely cards and gifts! She feels very lucky to have such nice students in the classroom.

Together we all made some class rules that we think are important in making sure we have a great year together. We put them on a big piece of paper and got to sign it and mark it with our fingerprint in paint!

We started learning about the Calendar this week. We watched a brainpop video about calendars and talked about what we use calendars for. We learned how many months there are in the year and what order they go in. We talked about the days of the week and how the first day of the month is not always on a Sunday. We made a large classroom calendar together and added all of the important events for the month on it.

In gym we have been playing cooperative games to learn how to play nicely and by the rules with each other. It is also good practice for us to learn how to work together in gym and in the classroom.

We will be practicing our art skills and learning new art techniques by decorating all of our notebooks for the year. This week we started designing our optical illusion art for one of our notebook covers. They are turning out really cool!

On Friday we got to meet our little buddies! We are paired up with Room 11a/b and they are in grade 1 and 2.

In math we have been working on some "Math About Me"! We have been sharing numbers about ourselves and using a cool template to show information about ourselves in numbers! We talked about what room we are in, how many letters our name has, our birthdays, how many members are in our families and what our favourite numbers are!

In writing we started learning about the elements of writing a friendly letter. We wrote letters to Miss Kolb and Miss Klem. Ask me what you need to include in a letter.

During the week when we are doing our jobs in the classroom Miss Kolb and Miss Klem hand out tickets that we get to put into a glass prize jar. Every Friday the teachers do a prize draw and pick 2 names out of the jar. They get to pick an awesome prize from the super cool prize bin!

It's only week one and we have already started learning so much and we have made lots of new friends so far this year! We are looking forward to having lots of fun while learning about the world in room 7/8 this year! Our classroom looks pretty great too!

Until next week,

Love,

Room 7 & 8