Board Games Galore!!!!!

Do you like board games?

In my personal life, I am not a board game player. But, at school...now that is a different story.

I teach using games all of the time!

When it comes to board games, I think you either love them or hate them.

My class LOVES them. I mean, they really LOVE them!!!!

I have been going to all of the local church sales lately and stocking up on board games.

So far I have 2 of Battle Ship, 3 Chess sets, 2 cribbage boards, 3 Snakes and Ladders, and many more.

I have been slowly getting students, who know how to play the game, to take on the teacher role and teach their peers how to play.

Yesterday we had our first Board Games time. It was so much fun! Every single student in the room was on task, engaged and learning through play. How can it get better than that?!?!

Here's a bird's eye view!

It was such a great learning time. Lots of learning game strategies, improving listening skills, building relationship skills, I could go on. But my favourite part? There was not a single piece of 21st century technology on anywhere! No screens. Just good old fashioned games and a lot of love for learning going on. It was awesome!

I have decided that this is going to be a weekly event for the rest of the year.

I can hardly wait to hit the next church sale and see what I can find!!!!

Cheers!

Olwyn

Friday Community Centres...

I am continuously impressed with the creativity that comes out when the students get the opportunity to choose where they want to work during Centre time. Here are some things that came out of the arts and craft table this past Friday.

 How cute are these two puppets? The one on the bottom is pointing to say "That way!" A whole bunch of kids from the community got into making paper bag puppets last Friday. Wish I had gotten pictures of more of them. Sigh...

It's hard to tell but each of these small animals are about the size of a loonie. The two girls who made them worked very hard on them for the whole hour! The top one is even stuffed! I love that they love to sew! 

And I am still dreaming of finding a coffee table that I can use to do this. Know anyone who has one they want gone? I'll take it!!!! You'd think old coffee tables would be everywhere and, if I wanted IKEA tables, that would be the case. Unfortunately, I need a table that has a frame not just four legs screwed to a top (a la IKEA) and these older coffee tables are not quite so easy to find at the used furniture stores. But, never fear, I will keep looking!

Also, looks like we'll be getting two new big arts and crafts tables for our common area. The library just got new tables and I have snagged two of the old ones. One will be near the teacher's sink and paint supply area so that we can do more painting activities and the other will house the craft supplies (that are currently in my studio). I'd like to have just the sewing supplies in my studio (and, hopefully, a sewing table for group projects if I can just get my hands on the right kind of coffee table!!!!)

Honestly, there are days when I wish I could just teach arts and crafts all day long. Sigh...

Cheers!

Ms. Hughes

Through the Eyes of a Child

You see an ordinary empty seaweed container...

But the kids see...

A bird house...

Another bird house...

A box for an ornament...

And a person or two...

How cool are the lovelies in my class who thought these up?!?!

Ms. Hughes

Just some photos...

Not much to say today. Too busy dealing with house stuff! Thought I would share a few pictures of what students have made this past week. Check them out!

A tall, tall tower using Base Ten math manipulatives



Math manipulatives? Or a farm?

 Love how they were using math concepts while playing. See all the sorting going on?

 

A base with protective shields.

 

Toothbrushes for stuffed penguins.

A Lego structure made by our newest student.

One of the girls made a sword and scabbard to fight off the enemy. Wonder who the enemy was?

Ms. Hughes

Where Do They Get These Ideas?

For the last week or so I have been letting the class have about 30 minutes of free choice at math tubs each morning. As one of the kids put it, "Ms. Hughes, this is just like Choosing time only with Math!" Yep, pretty much!

A group of students took a bunch of different math tubs and combined the contents to create the Appleberry Mining Co. For a few days, they were building and dismantling each time we had math. A huge undertaking believe you me! Then last week, I let them leave it and they have been adding to it since.

It has offices, a cafeteria, a smelter, a museum, bathrooms, a computer lab and its very own cave! There is also a railroad (run by a different student) to carry the ore to the mining company. I have no idea who came up with the idea but it has been super cool watching them all work together to create and run the mining company.

Especially interesting was how two of the head mining honchos dealt with the number of students who wanted to play last week. It started to get a little crazy with so many kids wanting to be in the same small space so, what did they do? Well, they laid people off, of course!!!! The laid off employees were sent off to find new work (i.e. play with a different math tub). Then, when one student was sad to be laid off, they promptly told him that the company was rehiring! (Oh, if only life was really like that, huh?)

Anywho, I took a video of the mining company and had them talk me through the space. So, take a minute and check it out. The minds of grade 1 and 2 students never cease to amaze me!

p.s. Sorry about the picture quality. I was trying to zoom in and out without getting any faces on the video. It got blurry in a couple place. My bad!

Class Catch Up

Each week I give the kids time for catch up so that they can get up to date on their work. Well, seems like I am the one needing a little of it today! Here are a few photos of creations done during Math Stations and Choosing Time over the last little while.

 a house for the stuffies

bunny wedding mural (still not finished and the crew that started it seems to have lost interest)

I really am not sure where the time has gone. For a little while it was positively dragging and now it is flying by so fast that it seems I never have enough of it! It seems crazy that Sports Day is only 3 weeks away!!!!

Last week was Earth Week at school. Each day we had a different theme. Things like working without the lights on, bringing a litterless lunch, walking or wheeling to school etc. Well, our class won the Sitting Lorax prize for having the most kids walk or wheel to school on the same day. The cheers when they called our name over the P.A. were deafening. In fact, some of the kids were so busy cheering that they didn't even know what we had won! Here he is in all his Lorax glory.

I was also very busy last week putting together report cards that reflect how students did in first and second term. We never wrote report cards because we were doing job action. Now we've been told we have to. I am not sure how it is helpful to parents to find out how their child was doing at school 2 or 4 months ago but on high dictated that they be written and written they were.  I am really hoping that parents will understand that a report card is a reflection of how a child is doing at that time. It may or may not be accurate a week or month later. 

It is that time of year when students start to take off. One student recently went up 2 reading levels in just under 2 weeks! Another who does not speak English at home just wrote 3 sentences by herself that I could read! Awesome and amazing things are happening each and every day. Change and growth are happening very quickly for some students now. So, hopefully, parents will not get caught up in the marks that are on the reports when they go home. More important is how their child is doing right now. As I said earlier in the year, no news is good news. If I had any MAJOR concerns about how a child is doing I would have had a meeting with the parents already.

To that end, I thought I would give a quick idea of where each grade should roughly be at this time of year.

In reading, grade 1's are aiming to be at a DRA level 16 by the end of June. This is a RAZ kids level I. They should be able to read the words (decode) and understand what they are reading about (comprehend). I would expect the average student (and remember that to have an average you have to have students who are higher and lower) to be reading at about a level 12 at this time (RAZ kids level G).


Grade 2's in reading...They are aiming for a DRA level 28 by June. This would be a RAZ kids level N to P. At this point I would expect the average grade 2 to be reading at a DRA 20 or 24 (RAZ kids level L or M). I find that what often happens is that students get better and better at the decoding of text (reading the words accurately, with expression and fluency etc) but as the texts get harder many students do not do as well with comprehension. There is, after all, more to remember! You can help your child at home by asking them to stop after a page and tell you in their own words what they just read (a Daily 5 method called Check for Understanding) or you can have them retell you a chapter or story from beginning through the middle to the end. Making them stop to think about their reading makes them better readers. 

In math we have been working a lot on basic addition and subtraction facts in grade 1. Addition has been covered extensively. Subtraction has been introduced and will be covered a lot in the next 6 weeks or so. I am finding that the concept of subtraction is very tricky for a lot of the grade 1's. We will be working with manipulatives and using different math strategies to fully understand this concept. That said, math fact practice at home is never a bad idea!

Grade 2's have been doing addition and subtraction without regrouping. i.e. 25
                          +32
                           
Again the addition comes pretty easily to all of them but some of them are getting stuck on the subtraction. In the case of the grade 2's, it is not because they do not understand the concept of subtraction but that they need to practice, practice, practice their subtraction math facts. We are moving into addition and subtraction with regrouping.
i.e. 49
    +37 

where they have to carry a 10 over to the tens column in order to solve the equation. This is a more complicated concept and having a solid base in math facts is super helpful. If a student has to spend all of their time figuring out what 9+7 equals then they often forget the next step to take to solve the equation.

We have also been learning about ordinal numbers, telling time and adding money. Though they keep telling me I need to take out all of the pennies in the worksheets! I suppose I will have to eventually but I am leaving them in this year.

May is looking crazy busy. We have Mother's Day coming up. The kids are working on a very cool gift so cover your eyes if you come into class! Sports Day is on the 17th and, fingers crossed, it won't rain! At the end of the month we are going on a much awaited for fieldtrip! Yes, I said fieldtrip!!!!! Details will be coming in the next few days. I am going to need a lot of parent helpers so I am counting on my class parents being as awesome as they have been all year.

Anywho, it is late. The Amazing Race is calling my name from the Living Room. Can't you hear it? The faint but steady sound of  "Olwyn, Olwyn, come watch me....come watch me..." Far be it for me to say no to one of my favourite shows. Catch you next time!

Ms. Hughes



Foam City

Today, during Choosing Time, 3 of the students built Foam City. Two grade 2 boys worked with one of our grade 1 girls. I was so impressed with their great teamwork!!! They spent a good 30 minutes discussing, planning, and creating. Then they came and asked me to take pictures. We decided that their structure deserved a blog post. Just check out what they built!

There is a story about the city. And here it is, right out of the mouth of one of the creators, "A long time ago in a land far, far away there was a person who accidentally broke the city's dam and the city flooded. A few hundred years later, the people turned it into a city kind of like Venice. There is a magical, invisible portal that allows you to go from the Foam City in Rome to the Construction Worker Town in Egypt."

And what is Construction Worker Town? It is the  lego structure on the red base beside the Foam City. It was built by one of the grade 1 boys and added to the city. The creator says "It is pretty dangerous on the small platform. If it breaks the whole town will probably break. The town is in a pretty dry place in Egypt." Check it out!

This kind of collaborative, creative play is at the heart of why I believe so strongly in giving the students Choosing Time. During Choosing Time, students are able to use their imaginations and create so many wonderful things. They have chances to try a wide variety of activities or create their own! They are able to practice social skills in real life situations but with an adult easily at hand to help when needed.

It is often during Choosing Time that I get to really see a child's personality come out and when I get to have conversations that help me understand the student more. I so enjoy seeing aspects of a child's personality that don't really come out during math or science time but which shine when the child is given the freedom to be creative on their own terms. It is wonderful! The play we do at Choosing Time is quite possibly the most important learning time each week. And, lucky for me, it is also the favourite time for most of the class!!!!

A Little of This, A Little of That

Things are chugging along in Turtlepond these days! It is hard to believe that we are only 9 school days away from our Winter holidays. How did that happen? Over the last few days I have taken a bunch of pictures that are completely unrelated to each other so I thought I would just share them anyways! So, here goes....

We got mail! Today we got two postcards from Beijing, China! Last week we got a postcard from Texas. If you get the chance to check out the blackboard above our book boxes you will see the map of the world I have hung there with strings going from the places to the mail we have received. We sent off 23 letters to various schools participating in our holiday mail exchange and are hopeful that we will also get more mail from relatives of the students in our class. We can hardly wait to see what comes next!

We have discovered that you can draw a picture with our felt pens and then use water and a paint brush to turn it into a watercolour! This moment of serendipity happened on a day when I just didn't have time to get out the paints during choosing and suggested a student try doing this instead. Tons of fun (and art) ensued!

Four of the boys built this very complex structure during choosing. It is an entire village surrounded by a wall with a blacksmith, horses and everything all made out of Lego. They had me take a gazillion photos from various angles which would take up about 4 pages if I tried to post them all. Cool, huh?

And we have been reading a variety of versions of the Gingerbread Boy story. So far we have read the following versions...

We have been comparing each of the versions to the ones we have read before and discovering many similarities and differences. Reading the Hawaiian version (The Musubi Man) was particularly fun as it ends in an entirely new way from the original. And today we started working on our own class version of the Gingerbread Man story that we hope to finish before the holidays and have our very own "Conan The Librarian" put it in the library for all to read!

In Math Stations we have been working on gingerbread boy patterns, number printing, addition and subtraction games and completing math assessments with me. I am discovering that quite a few of the grade 2's need to work on quick recall of their math facts to 20. We still have a lot of kids counting using strategies like their fingers, objects etc. which is fine as a strategy but really slows down their ability to do math facts quickly and accurately. We are going to be working on place value in the new year and begin doing more column addition with and without regrouping. Knowing their math facts is kind of like knowing sight words. It allows them to spend their time thinking about the question and how to do it rather than having to stop and count on their fingers each time they have to add another two numbers together. A set of math fact flash cards in each stocking this Christmas would be a very good idea!

This Thursday we are looking forward to making Christmas ornaments with our parent volunteers. Before the holidays, we will be doing a scrapbook page about the holidays for our scrapbooks. And next week we are going to be singing Christmas carols in the gym on a couple of mornings. I will let you know which days we are going. Hope that you can join us!

Fun Friday

or maybe I should say Finally Friday?!?! I've been teaching with a cold all week and the coughing every night is not making for very relaxing sleeps. As a result, my patience has not been as high as I would like. Plus, I can say for sure that the "honeymoon" phase in our class is definitely over!!!!! We are all getting very comfortable with the classroom, each other and the routines. Perhaps a little too comfortable! Nothing that a good weekend's worth of sleep and some review of classroom expectations won't fix!

I wanted to share something really awesome that happened today at choosing time. Choosing time in our class means exactly what it sounds like - the students get to choose what they would like to do. They go to lego or other construction activities (marble run, train set etc) or read books or draw or write a story or create art or....you get the idea! Making choosing time happen is a philosophical decision for me. There is so much in the curriculum that I could easily spend every single second of the day having the class doing worksheets and teacher driven activities BUT I believe that children need the free choice time to play and explore - they need student driven activities. It is during these times that they are able to consolidate other learning and it is during choosing that I get to see aspects of the class that I can't see during other activities. To me it is an invaluable part of the school day.

Today one of the students brought in a book she wanted me to read to the class. I read it during Daily 5 time and loved it! This is one book I will be buying this weekend at Kidsbooks. It is called The Rough Face Girl and is an Algonquin version of Cinderella.

It was written by Rafe Martin and David Shannon did the illustrations. The writing, the pictures, everything was just right. You know when you read a book that just makes your heart feel a little more full? That just adds a little something good to your soul? This is one of those books. I loved how this Cinderella story does not completely follow the traditional one. The main character does not just sit around waiting for a fairy god mother to appear and help her escape her life of drudgery. This character takes action - she makes her own outfit, jewelry and footwear before heading out to meet the Invisible Being to whom she ends up married. He doesn't marry her because of her outer beauty though. He marries her because he has the ability to see into a person's heart to see their true personality. He falls in love with who she is NOT what she looks like. This is my kind of book.

After reading this book, the class went to choosing. A little while later I noticed three students looking at the book. They had found fabric in the art zone and went to work. One of them headed to the library to ask Conan the Librarian for books about First Nations people. What were they doing you ask? Well, they were building a wigwam. How cool is that? These are the "leather" sides to the wigwam being decorated in symbols just like in the story. I can't wait to see what they use for the logs!

It is still in process but don't you think it is going to be awesome? Now the question is: If I had taught a lesson on First Nations people and assigned the task of creating and building a wigwam, would these students have created something like this? I don't think so. Hearing the story, having a small spark flare inside them at the listening, being given the time to collaborate and the freedom to choose materials, all of these things worked together to create this learning opportunity. And that is the reason that I will never, ever, ever drop choosing time from my weekly schedule.

Ms. Hughes