Wild Wednesday!

This Wednesday was Wild! We had so much fun getting messy with our learning!

In math we estimated how many seeds are in a pumpkin! We had 9 pumpkins in our classroom and we got to dig all of the seeds out and compare our estimates and our actual seed numbers. Before we cut into the pumpkins we had to draw the pumpkin that we picked and write out our estimates. Here are some pictures of our manic math adventures in pumpkin seed estimating:

    

  

Unfortunately, despite Miss Kolb and Miss Klem's best pumpkin diving efforts there were some rotten pumpkins. However this did not discourage anyone from getting elbows deep in pumpkin guts.

Miss Kolb picking out the best pumpkins for our class!

  

We had some fancy "designer" outfits for this activity, courtesy of Designer Miss Kolb. Luckily we had our two student teachers to help us for this wild activity.

  

 
We had to decide with our table group the best way to count all of the seeds. Some groups counted by 10s and some groups counted by 1s and some groups counted by 5.

   

At the end of the day we did a pumpkin draw and there were 9 lucky winners who got to take our pumpkins home.

At recess we got popcorn and it was delicious! 

We made recycled bottle art that was super cool! We used bottles and tissue paper to design our own original pieces. We made these bottles for our Remembrance Day Assembly. We will display the artwork we have done for the school to see. We wrote haikus about peace in our writing books and we are going to cover our bottles in our haikus. It was a very gluey and tissue papery mess and we had glue everywhere!

  

 

We even had a dance party on Wednesday because everyone was here! What a day! 

Week 7

As our Remembrance day assembly is quickly approaching we have been learning about peace in our classroom. This week we talked a lot about why peace is important and how we can be peaceful at school. We then wrote about what peace means to us and coloured on a small piece of paper with water colour pencil crayons. Next we put water on the pencil crayons and blended the colours to make beautiful pieces of art about what peace looks like to us.

Ms. Gunderson has been working with us on our Remembrance Day assembly. She is telling us about the peace assembly and we are singing a song called "May You Dwell in Peace."

Safety is really important to us at Colonel J Fred Scott School. We like to talk about safety and be prepared for emergencies. This week we had a fire drill AND a lock down practice, we did an excellent job on both. We are getting really good at not talking during emergency drills.

We did a math test this week on our number sense unit. We got bonus papers in math when we finished our tests to challenge us and practice our skills.

Speaking of assessment! The grade 3's continued to write their Student Learning Assessments (SLAs) this time they took the assessments on a computer.

Mr. Collins came back to the gym on Monday after being away for two weeks following the birth of his son Dominick, congratulations Mr. Collins! We know he will be a great parent to his now TWO kids and a great teacher to us because we saw his fantastic juggling skills in the gym this week. He is helping us become juggling masters. We have practiced with scarves, bean bags and balls. On Friday we had Friday FunDay!

We had a dance party because all of the students were here for the first time! Sadly, Miss Kolb was away sick that day and was sorry to have missed out on showing off her moves.

Friday's are always fun in room 7 & 8 because we get to do Free Writing and Free Choice! Its the cherry on top of a great week!

Until next week,

Love,

Room 7 & 8

Week SIX

We won the Golden Garbage Cans this week!! We kept our room so neat and tidy that Mr. Thelmo decided we were deserving of the Cans and Miss Kolb and Miss Klem couldn't be more thrilled! Good job room 7 & 8!

In math we continued to learn about expanded form. We learned a new way to show it. We also used bigger numbers, into the ten thousands place! We played a game called "Roll it!" where we got to use dice and roll out numbers that we had to expand afterwards. We got to work alone or with a partner or a teacher. It was an awesome way to get numbers to expand.

We had our last week of Sound Kreations with Keston this week. This week he rapped for us and even did 2 back flips and it was sooooooooo cool! Some of our parents came to watch our last day. They were brave enough to join us in dancing Bollywood at the end of our show case, they were great!

We talked a lot about peace this week. We are learning about what peace means to us and why it is important and we will be sharing this at our Remembrance Day Assembly in November. We have also been learning a beautiful song in music with Ms. Gunderson that we will also be performing.

We have been doing a great job with our classroom jobs and our school job which is collecting paper recycling from all of the classes around the school to ensure that all of this recycling goes in the right place.

In science this week we have been working very hard with our small groups to create and write a script about one of the recycling bins in our school.

Mr. Southworth was gracious enough to spend almost an entire afternoon with us teaching us about filming. He came in and taught us about filming because in the coming weeks we will be making our own movies about recycling. They will be so good thanks to the tips that Mr. Southworth shared with us. We learned about tucking our elbows into our sides so that we have a steady shot and to hold the camera with two hands. We were also told "DO NOT ZOOM, DO NOT ZOOM, DO NOT ZOOM!" Mr. Southworth was very clear about this (and also kind)! We also learned about "head space" and "lead space." While learning about filming perspective, Mr. Southworth turned Miss Kolb into "Kolbzilla" by filming her crushing a small math manipulative town from down below. This made her seem much bigger than she is and it was so funny!

 

Mr. Southworth sharing his expertise with us.

Excellent collaboration was happening among our groups during our filming lesson. 

(This is an optical illusion, she is not standing on a table....) A great example of a tight and steady frame! 

Practicing giving our subject "lead space" in a video. 

"Kolbzilla" an original film.

The grade 3's started their SLA exams this week. They did a Math test and a literacy test. While the grade 3's were working hard on their test the grade 4's got to practice their writing skills in their free writing books. They were given picture prompts of many interesting scenes from National Geographic and got to write creative pieces on them. Some of them were very funny and some were a little more on the serious side and very factual.

Ayub put on his thinking cap for his SLA this week. 

Our grade 4's being very flexible and sharing their writing with each other in the hallway while the grade 3's used the quiet classroom for their SLAs. 

In our school we have an advisory group. Every classroom has a representative that goes to a meeting once a month with Ms. Paull and Mr. Southworth. At these meetings the advisory group is learning about peace, and the difference between bullying and being rude. They are also going to be sharing their learning with us in room 7 & 8 so that we can build our problem solving strategies.  Our 2 advisory group members shared a video that is posted on our school blog called "The World is Ours" it is about practicing peace and we had a great discussion about not judging people by the way they look and we saw some ways to help others and spread kindness.

Until next week,

Love,

Room 7 & 8

Week 5!

We can't believe it's already been 5 weeks! Week 5 in Room 7&8 was short but we still managed to learn about lots of cool things!

We learned about expanded form in math this week! Expanded form looks like this: 

2075 looks like this when we expand it, 2000+0+70+5 = 2075 

It means to break apart numbers by their place value.  

We are learning about the different types of recycling bins we have in the school. We are going to try to become a garbage free classroom. We will have to sort our "garbage" properly into the appropriate recycling bins because almost everything can be recycled!

We have a blue paper product recycling bin:
Paper, News paper, scrap paper, construction paper, soft plastic, cardboard, aluminum foils, sand paper and plastic containers can go in this bin.

We have a green organics bin:
Pizza boxes, apple cores, orange peels and fruit, vegetables, tea bags, food wrappings, food scraps, paper plates, paper cups, napkins and paper towels can go in this bin.

We also have a yellow refundables bin:
juice boxes, glass bottles, plastic bottles, and pop cans can go in this bin. They are called refundables because when you take them back to a bottle depot you can get some money back for them.

We learned about Latin dancing this week in gym with Keston. The dances and moves we learned about came from Columbia and Dominican Republic. One of the dances we learned this week was the salsa, can you imagine just how good we looked!

We talked about what Respect means for your teacher, your classmates, your learning and our classroom. 

We talked about how it was important to listen to your teacher while they are talking as well as how important it is to listen to your classmates when they are sharing ideas.

Respecting your classroom means taking care of the materials and not vandalizing the schools property.

Respecting your classmates means giving compliments and encouragement not complaints.

Most of all it is important that we are nice to each other and take care of each other.

We have parent teacher interviews this Thursday and Friday. Miss Kolb and Miss Klem can't wait to meet all of the parents and talk about our learning!

Please comment!

Until next week,

Love, Room 7 & 8