THE UNBELIVEBALE MOST COOLEST T.W.A.S.

Hey people that are reading this blog I want to tell you about MY week at school.

This week at school we got a new kid in our class on Monday named Tysin. The only way I knew how to spell the name Tysin was Tyson so I learned something new from him, YIPPEE! In our class we all have numbers and when Tysin came had had no number But on Tuesday we figured so nobody would have to change their numbers up one his number was confirmed as #27. I'm just glad that we didn't get bumped up one number because I like the number 8 and that's my number of course!

we also had a Patrol party and all the bus patrols were allowed to wear their pajamas! I am a bus patrol of course and I did wear my pajamas to the party. We got popcorn and we had to bring a spill proof drink.The party didn't go for the while day but it went for 4/1/2 periods and that was including recess! The movie we watched was Santa Claus. I was a okay movie for me but I'm not sure if anybody else liked it but I bet someone did.

We did a art project! It was a finger doodling project. When I mean "finger doodling project" I mean you put paint on your fingers and you make pictures. Well we made finger snowman so we put paint on our Thumb, our pointer finger and our pinkie finger. I will now tell you how to make finger snowman.

1. you get all the supplies you need. you will need: white paint, small pieces of paper, one large piece of paper, a sponge and SOME FINGERS!!!!
2. next you dip you fingers in the paint.
3. dip you r fingers on the paper in this order: thumb, index and then pinkie. the now have your snowman!
4. wait for it to dry then draw your snowman's nose, eyes, mouth, arms and accessories. (optional)
5. enjoy your snowman!

We had a hackysack tournament. It was supposed to be for high school kids but we got lucky! The first person that I versed was Ricky who beat me. Kirstyn which I beat. The next person I versed was Katie which I also beat then I met Peyton who sadly beat me :'(. After all the tiring games it was eventually over!


Hope you liked my TWAS and ya.

-Rachel :0

Special Vistitors

Today we had two teachers from Sun Valley just to get ideas for their iPads(they are getting twelve). Their names are Mrs. Morisson and Mrs. Leclerc. As you may already know our class has 3 iPads and 5 iPods. Each iPad/iPod was assigned one or two apps that you could show. So the app on the white iPad was Book creator and the black iPad was comic life and iMovie. For
Mrs. Dents Scarcello's iPad was phoster where you could make posters and the other app you could go on was puppet pals where you could make a puppet show. The game for the blue iPod with the stripes was Rush Hour or Unblock Me. Rush Hour and Unblock Me are the same games exept one is with blocks and one was with cars. On the black iPod it was Word Abacus and Jumbline. Word Abacus is a game where you try making words and Jumbline is a game to help with spelling. On the white iPod you could play Sums Stacker and Math Bingo. For the blue iPod with the diamonds you could play Skill Builder Numeracy and Zoom. For the grey iPod you could play times table and coins.

-Brooke & Peyton!

T.W.A.S

This week at school we started hand writting. I like hand writting but I am not very good at it but I still like it. When I do hand writting I allways mess up on doing the letters right. The good thing is that the words that we do are pretty easy so it is better. I have a trick though I hold my pencle down lower so it is easy to get the letters and it is is easy to read. Oh and I allmost forgot to tell you last year in Ms Davises class we did hand writting and we hade books that we had to try to finnish it by the end of the year and I only had 7 padges left. And that is good because Jada,Ashleigh and me were a cuple of the only people that were almost done so that is a ood thing.

This week at school we had me to we club. This time it was a little different because what we did is we brought our lunch to room 29 that is the old computer room we ate our lunch then we started making cards and hampers. You are probably wondering what that is well I will tell you.For the hampers we got boxes witch I was the only one that brought a box good thing our libraryon had extra boxes so we took a box and wrapped it in wrapping paper then what we are going to do is people are going to bring in unwraped toys and boxed food. And for the cards we took a plan caed with no cover then we could eather do thum pain , spunge pant or just paint it then we aregoing to sell them at our cristmas concert.

This week at school we had gym.In gym we did dodge ball but not just and dodge ball we did fitness dodge ball. For fitness dodge ball we play a dodge ball game and if you get hit you find a fitness staition the we do what it says. But if he blows the wistal you run a lap then find a different staion then you keep playing dodge ball. We also payed ringette Wich I loved so it was a fun week of gym I hope we do it next week and for a lot longer because it is really fun.

This week at school we had social studys. We are working on the history from a long time ago so right now we are working on how all the cultures lived so we are learning about that. But when we are done we are going to buld dieramas we will be in groups our group will be peyton, brooke, jada and me Emily. We are going to do the Artic wich is the igloo but did you know that there is a mud house that is used for a stable house the igloo is for when you are on a hunting trip or you are travling cool hay.

Hope you liked my twas.
-Emily

Vow of Silence

"We won’t stand by while children are subjected to exploitation, poverty and the denial of their basic rights. Every day, millions of children are silenced by these abuses. But we can take a stand for children everywhere."
-http://www.freethechildren.com/vowofsilence/

I got an email last night explaining to me that one of the students in our Me to We Club, Madeline, was going to take the Vow of Silence today. I was impressed because this seems like a very difficult task for a young student. When we were at We Day, one of the speakers was participating in the vow and did his entire speach with posters. The entire crowd of 16 000 children and teachers was silent. Absolutely silent. It was moving.
Today Kaitlin came to school and had decided to take the Vow of Silence. As she came in silently, other students were wondering what she was doing. Some thought it was silly and others jumped on board with her right away. Kaitlin's brother is a part of a Free the Children Club at his school and many of the students in our class are a part of our Me to We Club. After the Vow of Silence was explained to the class and we watched a short video clip about it, 22 out of our 26 kids are participating (and 2 are absent!). Next door in Mrs. Tresoor's room the exact same thing is happening.
Awesome.



"The Vow of Silence is Free The Children’s annual awareness-raising campaign that engages tens of thousands of participants to stand up for children whose rights are not being upheld."
-http://www.freethechildren.com/vowofsilence/

Student Blogs on Kidblog

Today we were finally able to get started on our student blogs and everyone is excited! The student's first posts were their weekly TWAS tasks. Among other posts, we will write our TWAS as blog posts instead of paper letters. Parents, friends and family members are asked to respond to TWAS as a blog comment istead of writing a comment in your child's duotang as in the past.
You can view all of our student blogs by visiting www.kidblog.org/mrsdentscarcellosclass/. This link is also posted on this blog along the right-hand side and is called "Student Blogs".
We look forward to your comments!
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

More Time Chilling With Nanuq!

Today was one of those days that remind me why I love being a teacher.

We tuned in to Edmodo and Polar Bear International's webcast live from Churchill hosted by our new friend Andy McKiel. You could have heard a pin drop in this room if it weren't for the scratching of pencils on paper as the students madly wrote their facts and reflections about what they were learning. Everyone was totally engaged in the webcast and the learning that happened, the discussions that were sparked, was priceless. I have included some snaps of our reflections and discoveries that were recorded during the webcast in the animoto below. I wish I could post them all! Some kids even filled the back side of their paper, it was like their little minds were exploding with new information! This week we will be starting inquiry projects about severe weather and climate change, I am guessing there will be a lot of inquiring around our fresh interest in the Greenhouse Effect!
After watching the webcast, we read some of Andy's blog posts from his experience (awesome) and talked about his question, "If polar bears could talk, what would they say?" We also read "Winston of Churchill" which shares a lot of "polar bear opinion" to get our minds working. We had some great ideas about what polar bears would say and extended that to explain WHY they would say it. We posted our ideas as comments on Andy's blog and he replied to all of our questions! Check out our ideas and his responses.

Here are some of our facts, reflections, thoughts and sketches from what we learned today:

The topic of the webcast today was "Polar Detectives: Living In A Sustainable World" which talked a lot about climate change, fitting perfectly into the end of our weather exploration in Science! Below is the recording from today's webcast. Skip ahead to 9:25 for the beginning of the webcast. All of the webcasts from this week are embedded in the video page of Andy's blog if you would like to take a look.

The song that plays as you wait for the webcast to start is "The Polar Bear Song/Bjorn's Song":

Webcast (skip ahead to 9:25):

Watch live streaming video from tundraconnections at livestream.com

 

It was a great day in grade 5!

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Skyping with Mrs.Malkoske's class :)

Today we tried out Skype for the first time as a class. We had a call with Mrs. Malkoske's grade 1 and 2 class down the road at Dr. Hamilton School. We are going to Skype regularly as reading buddies for Read to Someone during our Daily 5 time. After we all had our chance to see what Skype is all about, Rachel and Ricky had a chance to read to two students in their class. I love using Skype in this way whether it is with same-age students or Little Buddies like this. The students are totally engaged in it and able to model being good readers for the youngsters.
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Today I was the first person to skype with Mrs.Malkoske's class. I skyped with Jayden, I read her If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and she read Dolphins. I think both books were awesome!It was pretty fun being the first one to skype with someone. This was my first time. I hope I will get to skype with her again.

BY:Rachel :P

Congratulations!

At Bird's Hill School we participate in the Boston Pizza Home Reading Program. If students read at least 20 times for at least 20 minutes, they get a free kids meal at Boston Pizza! Thanks to Ms. Wasney for coordinating this for us.
Congratulations to the following students who got kids meals for their October reading:
Rachelle
Matt
Kirstyn
Kaitlin
Jada
Ashleigh
Jessica
Maxel Mae (who read so much she could have earned 3 meals!!)
Emily
Nick S.

Way to go and keep reading in November!

Chilling With Nanuq

A digital friend of mine, Andy McKiel, has been invited to join an amazing adventure. He has travelled to Churchill, Manitoba to spend a week studying polar bears and their habitat. He will be working along with Edmodo, Polar Bears International and a team of scientists from around the world to share the fall polar bear migration with the rest of the world!
This adventure started on the weekend and today they will start broadcasting at 12:00 CST. We will be following his adventures through his blog at http://chillingwithnanuq.blogspot.com/ which includes his stories, photos and the video feed.
Andy will answer any of our questions as we leave them as comments on his blog.
Enjoy :)
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Rememberance day

Today Nov 10 we had our Remembrance Day assembly.  Before we started we sang O Canada and had a minute of silence.  We had 4 special guests.  We had 3 veterans and one lady named Angie that was alive during world war II.  She told us about when she was a little girl in grade 5 and about all the war an bombs.  She was on the Holland side and against the Germans.  One day the Germans put her in jail.Then we sang a song called Thank a Vet and bless our troops with the whole school. The grade 2’s and 3’s gave postcards to the 3 veterans.  After the grade 4’s sang a song.  Then our class helped clean up the gym and put the chairs away.  Our Remembrance Day assembly was great.  
Emily and Rachel. 

Peace Feels Like

This month the students in our school all read "What Does Peace Feel Like" by Vladimir Radunsky to start conversations about peace. The book discusses what peace feels like, looks like, sounds like, smells like with ideas from children.

Many classes also created art work for Remembrance Day. Here is a video of our art for the Remembrance Day assembly.

Plastic Bag Roundup Final Count

Are totall of plastic bag is 9410 plasic bags. I wish we could get more plastic bags but it is over so we can'tget more. If we reched are plastic bag gole of 10,00 plastic bags we mit get the plastic bag bench.It dupens if we have more plastic bags then some school. I think even if we dont get the plastic bench we can
-Kirstyn

Grade 5 did an amzing job with the Plastic Bag Roundup this year. We planned and advertised more than any other class I have had which made a big difference. Some students even made posters to post in the community at places like their post office box and Sobeys. I know for certain at least one person brought a giant bag of bags to our school because he saw the poster at Sobeys. He didn't even have any children in this school! Everyone was very tolerant of the constant mess of plastic bags floating around in our room and did a good job of working around them. We had one final delivery of bags today and some friendly grade 3 and 4 students helped count them at lunch while my students were at volleyball practice.
Our final count was 9410 which is JUST below our goal of 10 000. Last year at Bird's Hill School we collected 4800 so we nearly DOUBLED last year's collection. THIS IS AWESOME! That is a lot of bags we are keeping out of the landfill.
While the Plastic Bag Roundup is done for this year, that doesn't mean you should throw out your bags. Most grocery stores have a big plastic container at the front door where plastic bags are collected for recycling. Or, if you have a LARGE closet, you could save them for Plastic Bag Roundup 2012!
Oh, and our frisbees were delivered today! Each student in my class who participated in the project will get a frisbee and the rest will go to classrooms and the Phys Ed program.
Thanks for all the support!

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Bird's Hill School Me to We Club

Today a group of kids from our Me to We Club were invited to attend the Media Literacy Week kickoff event at the Manitoba Museum. The theme of Media Literacy Week this year is Digital Citizenship and how we can use digital media with children in a positive way, how we can use digital media to make the world a better place and to create change.
You can see more about our Me to We Club and our video presentation from today at our BHSFreetheChildren blog.
Here we are being interviewed by CBC!



-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

TWAS

This week at school we did a big project my partner was mason he was a good partner. He helped me with a project. The project was a wind vane and it was fun. We had a fun time together and I hope we do another project. But I think we had a lot.


I gym I had a lot of fun because we had a gusset teacher his name is Mr. Wood. He is a nice teacher but he is a little mean but not a lot. He was super nice to me and he is a sub for a gym teacher. I hope he will come back and sub for us. We played volleyball and my partner was Emily. Emily said I was really good at volley ball I was super at playing agents the other component.

In music I did a really fun time doing the computer job. Instead of doing singing part of music. In music we sang all about Remembrance Day. Our songs were about assemble for our gussets.

Plastic Bags

At school we finished the plastic bag round up. Are total was 8910 plastic bags. We worked really hard on this BIG project. We had 30 garbage bags full of little plastic bags. Every day people kept bringing in bags to our room. Our goal was 10 000 bags. We were so close! We needed 1090 more bags to reach our goal. It was very fun to work on this year.

Madison and Jada

Free the Children

This year Bird's Hill School is one of the lucky Winnipeg schools that gets to be a We School. This means that we get to take 13 children in grade 6 to We Day at the MTS Centre on November 23. We will also work as a Youth in Action group of grade 5 and 6 students throughout the year who are interested in making the world a better place for children everywhere. Our Free the Children Club will be starting it's own blog and using digital media to raise awareness, spread the word, share our progress and gather feedback through comments. Stay tuned!

This Week at School

This week at school…

In science we watched more videos on YouTube. This time we were watching videos about air pressure.  There was a guy in Mexico and he had a watch to measure the pressure. He was down at sea level and the pressure was… I can’t remember sorry. When he was on the mountains there wasn’t that much pressure because it takes all the pressure away that you had on the beach.  

In Gym we did lots of volleyball. It was about learning how to bump and today we learned how to volley the volleyball. We played different volleyball games. Like: backyard clean up and keep up with a partner. Today Me Matt, Dawson, Nick M, Nick S, And Cam.

In Art we did silhouettes. STEPs: you colour the paper with paint in order yellow orange red purple blue black. Then you let it dry while it is drying you cut out your black shapes. When your picture is dry you glue your black cut outs to your paper and that is it. And that is how you make silhouettes.

This week in Math we did our math quiz. I think I did really well because on the pre-test I got it all right and I studied hard. In math otherwise we did estimates. It was hard because you were always trying to get the right answer. It was different

Mason

Sharing With Voki

Brooke finished her TWAS early and was exploring Voki. She created this clip about our day.



Halloween Silhouette Art

This week we created Halloween silhouette art as seen on ThatArtistWoman's Blog. She has so many fantastic ideas and explains them all step by step. After I used the Artsonia app to load our artwork to our student art gallery, I created an Animoto video of our art work using the Animoto app on my iPhone. It was so easy to do, the only hiccup was that I couldn't rotate the photos so some of them are sideways :( Check out our video...

Planning for 10 000 Day

Today we started planning for our 10 000 Day to celebrate having over 10 000 visitors to our blog. We brainstormed our ideas using linoit again. We are still looking for suggestions, leave us a comment with your ideas!
Here is what we have so far:



Last year's 100 Day shirt with 100 tallies



100 Day is always one of my favorite days to plan and have with young students. Everyone loves the activities that are all about counting, exploring 100, learning and having fun at the same time. I was disappointed to think that celebrating 100 day in grade 5 probably wouldn't happen so it was really exciting to discover we could have 10 000 Day. 10 000 is a totally different number to work with than 100, I don't think making a 10 000 Fruit Loop necklace would be a feasable as one with 100! And I won't be able to make a 10 000 shirt like I have for 100 Day with buttons and ribbon tallies. We will have to be creative, which makes it all the more interesting. In math we have been talking about large numbers and are now talking about estimating with large numbers which might come in handy when we are writing a story with 10 000 letters or words! Stay tuned to see how it all turns out!

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

We Have Hit 10 000 Visitors!

I just noticed that we have reached 10 000 blog visitors! YAHOO! We are going to celebrate with a "10 000 Day" - stay tuned for details.
How do you think we should celebrate 10 000 blog visitors? Leave us a comment below with your suggestions.

Plastic Bag Assembly Production

Tomorrow we will be having an assembly and sharing our Plastic Bag Round Up project with the school. They know it is going on because we have talked about it, advertised it and sent notes home but we thought we should share our progress.
Last year my students and I created a video for this same purpose. When I showed it to grade 5 to kick off and explain our plastic bag project this year, they immediately wanted to make one of their own. I thought this was a great way to introduce Animoto so that the students could use it on their own in the future.
We took photos and video clips during each of our bag counting days and started putting the video together as a class. Today, we did some more detailed planning using linoit, digital sticky notes, which allowed us to organize our plans as we brainstormed. Here is our final linoit product.

Before we got to this point, we had brainstormed all the things that needed to be included in our video production. Once we had all the ideas down, we were able to move them into the order we wanted them incorporated and decide who would like to be recorded saying each one. Once this was done, we grouped the notes to show who would record whom and talked about video recording skills. (Boy, when I put it all down in detail, we got through a lot!) The students recorded each other on our Flip cameras and voila! Our production! (Well, not quite just voila. I am finishing it off in Animoto due to our deadline of tomorrow.) We will post the video once we have shared it with our school community.

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

More and More Bags!

Today we counted plastic bags for the second time. We have the system down to a science now which is great! One of our students had brought in five giant bags of bags that she had collected from a few sources so we were predicting whether or not we would have as many as we did last week (2600). The general consensus was "no".
After about an hour of counting we came to a surprising 2880! This brings our grand total to 5480. Wow! Keep it up.
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

The Faces of Five

I just added a photo to the right side bar of our blog. Since it is a little hard to see, I am posting it here as well. I made this using a very cool tool called Shape Collage which is exactly what it sounds like. A shape that is a collage of photos!
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Publishing With Book Creator

This week i finished my frist story in daily 5. So I got to publish it on the ipad. The ipad is from a group that Mrs.Dent Scarcello is in. I got to publish it on a app on the ipad called "Book creater". Book Creater is where you get to type your book, when you are publishing you get to put pictures in your book. Its very cool and when you are done your book it goes strate into "ibooks" (if you have it) but if you dont have it, it just stays in book creater. Book creater is a great way to share your storys and to get your friends to read them. I  love doing book creater and I can't wait to finish my other book in daily 5.

- Jada :)

New Netbooks!

Our school got all new computers last week including a mobile lab of 30 netbooks! We are the lucky ones that get to try them out first because our teacher got them organized. We are each going to comment on this post from our desks in our classroom!



- Mrs. Dent Scarcello's Class :)

The Big Black Fire.

There was a big black fire. It was by the Perimeter hwy off of Gunn and Redonda by the train tracks. It was grey from where I could see. I could only see the top of it. Now I will tell you a scary story of it. So kick your shoes off grab a snack and get comfy. Ready? Ok here I go.

On October 8th 2011 there was a fire. A horrible fire. We where leaving to go to chocolate factory( It is where you get to make chocolate stuff and eat it) When my brother said "what is that grey stuff over there?"
We all looked and it was smoke. So we said to are dad "can we go see?' So we had to put are windows up so the smoke wouldent come in.

We drove until the trains tracks.The rest of the road was blocked off. We saw a little path and fire cruse there. We looked up and saw BIG PUFFY CLOUDS of black smoke. Behind us was an abulance coming to the fire.There was a little office infront of the fire. They had to evacuate very soon before the fire got worse. Well there i said it, The fire got worse. There were people walking there to see what happend. People riding bikes there to see what happend. People in there cars to see what happend.

So we left because it was getting late. We went to the bank to get money and listen on the radio to see what happend. We can still see the fire. They said on the radio that they started to wrestle the fire at 5:00 in the morning and they said they have been fighting it for 8 and a half hours and they are still wrestling it. Wow that was a big fire.

We were driving home from the factory and got home at 5:30 in the afternoon and the fire was still going on. We had to leave to go somewhere else. We got back at night and the fire was still going on. They said on the radio the fire started with a gasoline truck tipping over. They wrestled it for like 10 hours and gave up. They were just going to let it burn until it was done. It was the biggest fire I have ever saw. It was very windy and it was blowing the fire the opposite way than us. But if it was blowing the way to us. We would have to evacuate.

That was my story about the fire. I hope you enjoyed it. And i have a question for you. What was the biggest fire you have ever seen? Thank you and have yourself a good day.

-Katie

My Fantistic TWAS

This week at school I got taught a new game called Banana grams. Banana grams is a game that 4 or 5 people can play and righ now I’m going to teach you how to play.


Step 1: flip over all tiles and then pick 21 if 4 but if 5 15.


Step 2: say “split” and the game starts and you are trying to make as may word or long words.


Step 3: say you have a Q or a V you can say “ Dump” and put the Q or the V goes into the pile and pick 3 new tiles but you don’t want to say “dump” all the time or you will end up with to much tiles.


Step 4: when your tiles are all gone you say “Split” then you win 
That is how you play Banana Grams

This week we did a french paper on Famous people. You had to cut Famous people out of magizene or on the computer. I cut people out of a magizene and i took Justin timberlake and Karry underwood.

But lots of people forgot to bring in pictures but Brook saved the day because she had a teen magizene so every buddy took pictures from brooks Book. anyway then you had to glue the pictures on the paper and write their names.

This week we started a plasic bag round up. Its when you have to collect all the plastic bags you can.

anyway me and Emily were parters so you have to take a bag and turn it inside out of no food or receipt or in the bag. Then you have to line them up in a row of 10 and Mrs. Dent scarcello puts a tally on the white borad. We have 2600 bags so far then round up ends on October 27 so bring all the bags you can. Adress #3950 raliegh St.

In daily 5 i am so close to be finshed my book on the ipad. My book is about my dog bening a super dog and his real sister Emma. My dogs name is Jumbo and he is a dashound i love my dog. I took pictures of my dog around my house on my ipod i also got pictures off the computer. Also in Daily 5 i am reading a book called Dork Diraies and its number 4. It came out on Tuesday afternoon. I just got it on October 13, 2011 or yesterday. I am really enjoying the book so far and i am on page 55.

By: Jada



Awesome Plastic Bag Round-Up

Today all the gread 5 class in mrs.dent scarsello class did the plastic bag round up in the class room. Im really glad that we got to do the plastic bag round up.What we are trying to do is get 40 or more plastic bags to make a frisbee for the school.Every 40 plastic bags is 1 frisbee for are the school. There are other schools doing the plastic bag round up. And the school that gets more plastic bags then us gets a plastic bag bench that got ricicled. the whole school gave us plastic bags from stores,home,antys,uncles gramas grampas and any one else you know.We all got up to 2600 plastic bags thanks to the people is birds hill school.The class tryed to gess the closest anser or the right anser to how many bags we got. And the one who was closest was jada was  the closest to the right anser. And what they are doing to the plastic bags is thay are recicleing  them all into frisbees.I hope we can do this a nother time Because it was really really fun to do at school today. We are not done yet, we still need your plastic bags!
-Kirstyn

The Manitoba Fires - How Big is it?

This morning Kayla brought in some info to share with the class about the fires that are burning in Manitoba. This sparked some interesting conversation and even started a little investigation we will share more about later. We are going to figure out what 18 000 hectares really looks like! So far we know that 18 000 hectares is the same as 18 000 000 meters squared. We drew 1 meter squared on the board so we could have a visual.
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

There was a fire that started in Nopiming provincial park.They say it started with grass brushing together but my tic toc Oma said that one of her friends said it started with lightning. I don't know whether to believe the global news on the computer or my tic toc Oma. I can't believe whats happening. But the wind is pushing it so it's spreading fast.

At first it was heading to beresford then the wind switched so now it's going the other way.There are 2 helicopters and more than 40 fire trucks . Right know we have allot of memerys in the cabin and pictures. My family is really worried about the cabin and uncle Walters cabin. Because he is re building his cabin.we were just there for thanks giving it's scary.

But if you type in fires in Nopiming provincial park you can find out the information I found out. The fire near bassette has grown to 18,000 hectares and is about 40 km long and 6 km wide.
-Kayla

PS - Kayla typed all this on my iPhone Blogger app! Way to go! She said her fingers are sore!

Video TWAS

This week since while we were doing TWAS we decided to try out our new video cameras to make a mini video TWAS! I compiled the video using iMovie over the weekend but in the future, students will be able to do this themselves using the iMovie app we have on our iPads and iPods.

- Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

My Amazing TWAS

This week at school our class had LA.  We did word work in daily 5.  We learned a new game called banana grams, it's where you get 21 letters and then someone says split and you flip over your letters, then you try to make as many words as you can make out of your letters, if someone says dump they put a letter that you don't want in the bunch and pick 3 letters.  When you can't make any more words you say bananas then the game is finished.  It is really fun!

               This week our class had art, we did pointillism.  It's where you can only make a  picture out of dots only.  But you can only do a picture of a tree.  You have to use Q-tips to paint. I really like pointillism!

          This afternoon we will be having a assembly.  I will be introducing the people coming from Winnipeg Harvest.  I will be speaking with Emily and Jayda.  I'm a little bit nervous because it is my first time speaking in front of the school.  It will be super fun!

              This week at school our class started the Plastic Bag Round-up.  If we collect the most Plastic bags out of  all the schools participating we could win a bench made out of resycled plastic.  We will also get frisbee's for each class.  They look really cool when they are done.  I really really hope we win the bench.  After we get to clean out the bags and then we have to put them inside out and pull them to make them thin.  Once we get ten we have a tally chart and we will put a tally.  Each tally represents 10 bags.

-Ashleigh

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

image by Jonathan Mak

As you have probably heard, Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. He was 56 and he had cancer. I am sharing the link to his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address below. Take 15 minutes today or this weekend to watch it if you have not already. Here are some quotes from his address that I found meaningful:

"You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something...because believing that the dots will connect down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference."

"Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith...You've got to find what you love...Do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

Exploring Weather with Steve Spangler

In a comment on our blog, Mrs. Malkoske told us about a Scientist, Steve Spangler, she thought we should check out. He posts videos of experiments including one on creating a cloud in a bottle. This is a little different than the one we tried but, it works! Here it is:

Our reflections:
It was really cool how it turned all white. It was because it got all pressured and when he took the thing out it went "poof", like it turned white. -Rachel

It was cool when the could appeared because when we did our experiment it failed but when they did theirs it secceeded. -Kaitie

The cloud and smoke disappeared inside the bottle when the pump changed the pressure. -Michelle

How does it work? Explanation from Steve Spangler Science
Even though we don't see them, water molecules are in the air all around us. These airborne water molecules are called water vapor. When the molecules are bouncing around in the atmosphere, they don't normally stick together.
Pumping the bottle forces the molecules to squeeze together or compress. Releasing the pressure allows the air to expand, and in doing so, the temperature of the air becomes cooler. This cooling process allows the molecules to stick together - or condense - more easily, forming tiny droplets. Clouds are nothing more than groups of tiny water droplets!
The reason the rubbing alcohol forms a more visible cloud is because alcohol evaporates more quickly than water. Alcohol molecules have weaker bonds than water molecules, so they let go of each other more easily. Since there are more evaporated alcohol molecules in the bottle, there are also more molecules able to condense. This is why you can see the alcohol cloud more clearly than the water cloud.
Clouds on Earth form when warm air rises and its pressure is reduced. The air expands and cools, and clouds form as the temperature drops below the dew point. Invisible particles in the air in the form of pollution, smoke, dust or even tiny particles of dirt help form a nucleus on which the water molecules can attach.


We also checked out the "Mentos and Coke" experiment which is not connected to what we are exploring in Science right now but was awesome! We discussed what this experiment might be about before we watched it and we thought the mint in the Mentos would mix with the carbonation in the Coke to create a reaction. Peyton told us what a geyser was, "like a volcano but with water coming out of the ground." This really helped us imagine what the reaction might be. Here it is:


Our reflections:
When the Mentos went in the coke bottle the mentos were fizzy so they shot up. -Mason

When it shot out the bottle it almost used all the pop! -Brooke

It amazes me how Mentos makes the coke squirt out like a geyser. It is because the coke is carbonated and the Mentos coating is chalky. -Ricky

The Diet Coke worked better because it went higher when it mixed with the Mentos. -Michelle

How does it work? Explanation from Steve Spangler Science:
Water molecules strongly attract each other, linking together to form a tight mesh around each bubble of carbon dioxide gas in the soda. In order to form a new bubble, or even to expand a bubble that has already formed, water molecules must push away from each other. It takes extra energy to break this "surface tension."In other words, water "resists" the expansion of bubbles in the soda.

When you drop the Mentos into the soda, the gelatin and gum arabic from the dissolving candy break the surface tension. This disrupts the water mesh, so that it takes less work to expand and form new bubbles. Each Mentos candy has thousands of tiny pits all over the surface. These tiny pits are called nucleation sites - perfect places for carbon dioxide bubbles to form. As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy.
Couple this with the fact that the Mentos candies are heavy and sink to the bottom of the bottle and you've got a double-whammy. When all this gas is released, it literally pushes all of the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast. You can see a similar effect when potatoes or pasta are lowered into a pot of boiling water. The water will sometimes boil over because organic materials that leach out of the cooking potatoes or pasta disrupt the tight mesh of water molecules at the surface of the water, making it easier for bubbles and foam to form.

My Funky Dunky Twas

This week at school we went to are book buddies on Friday. Instead of reading we painted. Well I didn’t paint, my book buddy Karley painted. She did this cool fall painting. She painted a tree with a couple of leaves. The rest of the tree was branches. It was pretty cool to see grade 1 and 2's paint. I always thought it was so difficult to paint with a paint brush. Especially with wet paint under your arm, so if you put your arm down you would get paint all over your arm.

Also this week at school we played silent ball. You stand on a chair and you pass a ball without saying a word. That why it is called silent ball. If you don't catch the ball then you sit down. But if the other person throws low and you don't catch it then they are out. It is fun to play because you get to stand on your chair. But what if you fall down. You would get a big boo boo:(

This week there was a big run at Birds Hill Park. Some people went but some people stayed. It was only for the people for run club. One girl in are class came in 2nd. That is pretty good for a girl in grade 5. The class was quiet and empty. It was cool though because we had lots of room on the play structure to play because some of the grade 4,5,and 6's went to the run. They called it the Turkey Trot. It is such a funny name.

Last but not least... an experament!!! At school we did a experament that took so long to do. We were trying to form a cloud but sadley it failed:( We got to go in the staff room. Kayla kept on saying there is a secret button for a hot tub because every staff room has a hot tub.YA RIGHT!!! Mrs.Dent Scarcello got a pie plate full of ice. Then she got a jam jar half way full of hot water. Then she put the pie plate over the jar to form a cloud. But all it did was fog up.

Well that is it for my Twas. Thank you for reading it.

-Katie

Quality Blog Commenting

Today we discussed quality blog commenting. A quality comment involves:

1. Read the post you are going to comment on.
2. Compliment - Say something nice, leave a compliment related to the post. 
3. Connection - Make a connection to ourselves or our lives. 
4. Question - Ask a question related to the post. 
5. Leave your name, first name only. 
6. Re-read your comments to check for mistakes.

All comments go to Mrs. Dent Scarcello for approval keeping our blog community more controlled and safe. Our inspiration for this discussion stemmed from our conversations and experiences as well as a blog we follow, Mrs. Yollis' Class. They created a video about quality commenting. I think this is something we will explore next week during our Writer's Workshop in Daily 5!
After our discussion and reviewing how to leave a comment on our blog, we moved to the computer lab so the students could practice. Each child left a quality comment, following our criteria, on one of the posts on our blog. If they had time, they visited our virtual friends over in Mrs. Malkoske's Class to comment on their posts too.
Now, over the weekend, students are going to teach their families about quality commenting and leave a comment on our blog together! On my weekend I am going to teach other teachers about blogging at the MTS Fab Five conference! Mrs. Malkoske and I will be presenting "A Window to the World: Blogging in the Classroom". We will also be presenting two sessions at the SAGE (formerly SAG) conference in October. I am very excited to share the world of blogging with other teachers so that they will be inspired to start blogging with their students. I think blogging is a very empowering experience for children because they learn that what they think and write is important and worth sharing with a global audience.

Have a great weekend!
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)


Here is Mrs. Yollis' video:

How to Compose a Quality Comment! from yourwonderfulteacher on Vimeo.

My Awesome Twas

This week at school we started spelling. This isn't the kind of spelling that you study words and have a spelling test at the end of the week, it's called "making big word" and this is how it works. First, Mrs. Dent Scarcello puts a word on the smart board and it is all mixed up like this week it was Millions and she mixed it up so it looked a little like this iiollmns and it looked like  2  3   4    5     6      7+. Then we would find as many words as possible and we where trying to find the big word. After a few minutes where up, she would say "Times up" and we would add up our score and there where awards for our weekly draw witch where first person to find the big word, Highest score, and Most words. I didn't win any but my score was 29.

Another thing was Me, Jada, Emily, Brooke and other people from our class. For recycling club, every Monday after lunch we take everyone's recycling bin and dump it into a bigger one. The bigger ones got dumped into an even BIGGER one. Then the recycling truck picks it up and takes it some where. When we are dumping the recycle bins, we all picked partners and of course, I picked Brooke.

On Tuesday it was the Terry Fox Fun!!! Now now don't get your hope's up cause it was raining and we did it IN DOORS whatever. For the (so it was said) Terry Fox run, we started in a corner and had to run around the gym twice and when we ran around twice we would grab a popsicle stick.Two popsicle sticks would represent one province. so you needed to run around the gym 26 times to run across Canada.

On Wednesday we had to run club in the halls because the weather was poor outside. We ran in the halls for A total of ten minutes all together. I know that I ran a bunch of laps but i didn't bother to count at all.The good thing was that there was a bunch of water fountains scattered along the school. Then at the end we did a sprint.

Last but not least we had Social Studies. In Social Studies we are learning about the history of Canada. So Far, where Just doing paper work on printing the meaning of seartian words in the glossary. I think I'm doing a great job on all of the Social Studies. The best part of Social Studies is Reading in the text books!!! -Peyton :)!!!

Class Edit - Math! Math! Math! Sharing Our Learning

After Brooke and Rachel wrote and self-edited their blog post to share their learning we used our SmartBoard to edit the post all together. We think they did a great job being the first students to write a "sharing our learning" blog post. Here is our edited version of their post.

Yesterday we learned about ones, tens, hundreds , thousands ect, in math. So Mrs.Dent Scarcello taught us anything times 10 you would put a zero in front of it like 10x10=100! We also talked about when you move to the next bigger place value it always gets 10 times bigger.We got twelve 100 paper squares and cut them up and taped ten of them together to make 1000. We had to find a way to make 10,000 with our table neighbours, one group had 5000 and the other groups needed 1 or 3 more people. We ended up with two groups of 10 000 and one group of 5 000. The total was 25 000 little squares. We took them out to the hallway and taped them together. We counted every single one of them and then we took a pretty picture from one end to the other. We destroyed it after, IT WAS FUN :) !!!!!!
- BrOoKe AnD rAcHeL (edited by grade 5)

Math! Math! Math!-sharing our learning!

Yesterday we learned about ones, tens, hundreds , thousands ect, in math. So Mrs.Dent Scarcello taught us anything times 10 you would put a zero infront of it like 10x10=100! Then we got twelve 100 paper squares and then we cut them up and taped ten of them together 1000. So then we had to find a way to make 10,000 with our table neighbours and one group had 5000 the other people needed 3 or 1 more people. Then we took them out to the hallway and taped them together and then we counted every single one of them and then we took a pretty picture from one end to the other and then we destroyed it after IT WAS FUN :) !!!!!! - BrOoKe AnD rAcHeL

Options, Options, Options in Daily 5!

So far I am really like daily 5 the writing is super fun. I used to hate writing because we always had a topic. now writing is super fun because I get my choice of a topic -Jessica :)

I really like daily 5 beacuse you get to write its so fun. In grade 2 i did not like writing at all but now i LOVE  writing. Right now I'm writing a story about  my dog bening a super hero i think its a pertty good story -Jada!

daily 5 is a great way to start the day because a couple years ago i always thout writing was boring but know it is fun because i have topics to write about.-Mason :o

i like daily 5 because you get to write about whatever you want its awesome.Kayla

Daily 5 is really awesome because we get to pick what we want to do. So far we have learned read to self and writers work shop. For read to self it's explains it's self you just read to your self. For writers work shop we can write a story, graphic novel, novel, poems, comics, song, or whatever you want!!! -Peyton :P

daily 5 is really fun because we get to pick what we want to do. Like we could read first for a while then write in are book it is really fun!;) my favorite type of writing is graphic novel and comics!;)-Brooke!!!

Diving Into Daily 5

This week we dove in to Daily 5. I used Daily 5 last year in grade 2 but it is brand new for our grade 5 class. Launching Daily 5 for the second time and in an older grade is a totally different experience too. We are having great discussions and everyone is quickly on the same page.

Our first choice is Read to Self. We have all agreed on the expectations and the kids were able to follow them amazingly, right off the hop. I am so happy that we seem to be a naturally engaged group of readers! I basically have to pry their books out of their hands when time is up.



Since Read to Self came so naturally and the kids were independent with it so quickly, I introduced our second choice this week as well - Writer's Workshop. This is one of my favourites because last year I had such a fabulous group of writers. They LOVED to write and we had so much fun exploring new ways of publishing. Once again, I am in luck! Our grade 5 community loves to write as well!

First we discussed expectations, brainstormed topics to write about and forms of writing. Today I released the authors and they dove "write" in. Again, when time was up it was music to my ears to hear the moans and groans because they didn't want to stop :)

Once again this year, I am really enjoying using the Daily 5 program and it is so neat to see that the students love it as much in grade 5 as they do in grade 2. Next week the students will post their reflections on the process of starting Daily 5. Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

My Fun TWAS!

This week at school our class went to library. Then I found out that we now have a couch in library its pink! I picked a book called "dog lost" it is a really good book. I also  had to get a book for my little bro. It is called "Alligator baby by Robert Munsch" you probably heard of it or maybe not?

We also did our portfolio covers. Mine is a wordle about school, subjects, etc. I think mine looks awesome! This year my portfolio's white. Usually it would be black but not this year it's different. I also put a A+ just to make it look better! Wink wink!

All of us in the class were doing the writers workshop. I am writing a story about a girl who wanted a dog i call it "Puppy love" cute hey?! Writing is also my favorite subject i have fun writing. We would always do writing in the morning for daily 5.

In science we are studying about the weather. We also have this temperature chart. And the weather person (its one of the jobs we have) would go on the smart board and search up what the weather is! Ok and this is my favorite part about it is we get to do our own weather video! And we get to meet a real weather girl!

By: Brooke

Reflections of a Grade 5 Student

We have had a great first 2 days of school. For most of the students in our class, this is the first blog we have had so, this is our first blog post! Now that we have spent some time together and started a few routines and activites, we are taking time to refelct on what we think of grade 5 so far and what we hope will come of it.

I hope we get to do some of the times table. Because I like to  learn math. -Emily

I'm looking forward to grade 5 because most of my friends are in my class and we will be doing lots of projects this year! -Brooke

I like my classroom this year a lot because there are a lot of my friends in my class this year! -Jada

I hope we do lots of writting and reading because I like to write and read. -Ashleigh

i liked the first day of school because i got to see everybody and we had gym on the first day. -mason :)

I hope we learn alot about animals because I LOVE animals and alot of them are very cute like dogs and hamsters! -Peyton

I felt sort of short for grade 5 but now I'm getting used to it. -Rachel

I feel to young for grade 5. But I will get the hang of it. -Katie :)

Already grade 5.It feels awesome! -Ricky

I like our class pet Sushi (hes cute) -Jessica


grade 5 feels to soon! -Kayla

First Day of School Traditions

Since I was little, I have always had a first day of school photo. Since I have been in school ever since (except for one year while I was skiing), I have continued that tradition and brought it to my classroom as well.

Jeff and I on the first day of school.

Our classroom community 2011-2012, grade 5 :)

Welcome Back, Welcome to Grade 5!

The behind-the-scenes work of a teacher during summer is over now, tomorrow is the first day back! It will be my first day as a grade 5 teacher and as the Technology Coordinator for the school. I am very excited for both parts of this year! Although I will miss so many things about grade 2, I am really looking forward to exploring technology through the eyes of a ten year old. I think we will do great things together. I am also very excited to finally get the chance to work with a SmartBoard, directly and in my classroom.
I hope you will continue to follow us here and you can also follow me on Twitter @5dentscarcello and @lesliedent. Have a great year!

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

iClassroom {phoster}

As I continue to wrap up things from grade 2, I thought I would post our Phosters that were created by students at school. This is another easy to use app that the children used independently after one demo. Select a template, add your image, change the text and presto, a phoster!

Goodbye Friend, We Miss You!

Our friend Araya moved to Vancouver Island this month. We really miss her. We recorded these video clips on her last day using my iPhone. Alyssa P put the video together using the iMovie app. Hopefully Araya will watch this and remember us and maybe even call us on Skype!

Goodbye Araya from LeslieDent on Vimeo.

iClassroom {iMovie}

I can't believe I forgot to post this! This video was created on an iPod using the iMovie app. It is incredibly easy to use and then share. The video was all taken using my iPhone at Dance in the Park, enjoy!

Dancing In The Park from LeslieDent on Vimeo.

portfolieos and the last day of school

this week we are getting redy for the last day of school!!there are 3 more days lerft!! we will have a party!!!! we probly have snacks!Mrs Dent Scarcello took down lots of stuff.it looks bare in the classroom.for our portfolio it normly takes a week.but we only have 3 days!


Anna