Math Game called Who Has?

Today we played a game in math called Who Has? It is where the teacher splits the class in to 2 teams. She has cards for the 6 , 7 , 8, and 9x's. After that she hand everyone one card some people get 2 cards, then say someone started with 54, then they would say Who Has 6 x 4. The next person would be like I have 24 Who Has 6 x 7. Now I think you get the point and we have to do the 7, 8, and 9's too. After the team with the lowest time wins that round.  The team that won was Team 1 but I was on team 2.  AND THAT IS THE GAME CALLED WHO HAS?

-Ashleigh

Wacky Picasso Oil Pastel Art

This week we did a art project call Picasso! Its where you have oil pastels, but you'll need a pencil first and you draw half of your portrait side and half of your profile side. Then when you are done you outline everything with black oil pastel. Then you go on the the wacky oil pastel part, you can do whatever colour you want and the cool part is that you can put a under layer like I did. Like I put all the light colours there were on my portrait side with dark blue on top it looked cool. On my profile side it was all the neon colours underneath dark green. After you are done you take a Popsicle stick and scratch off what ever kind off design you want I did swirls, then you take more oil pastels and colour the background. Then you take the black oil pastel and outline  everything again then its done!! When they are done they look awesome and here are some pictures of them to prove it!

-Ashleigh

Expert Projects

We learned a new daily 5 choice it is called expert project!!!!!! It's were you pick a topic and I mean ANY topic. Then you pick a way to present it so here are a few examples of ways you can present, Prezi, Comic Life, Poster, Powerpoint, speech, audio clip, voki, wordle, tagzedo, and videos and movies. Then you present it to the class. I picked giraffes as my topic and I am doing a poster and a powerpoint.

-Ashleigh
 
(You can see more details about our projects on the "Expert Projects" page of this blog.)

New Teacher (and student) Bloggers at BHS!

There are 2 teachers on the classroom blogging train at Bird's Hill School! Mrs. Tresoor's grade 5 class and Ms Wasney's grade 3/4 class. Check them out and leave them a comment!

An Awesome NHL Opportunity

Last night I went to my first Jets game. Unfortunately they lost but it was still fantastic to be there. My mom and I noticed that when the Jets came out, a little girl carrying a flag skated out with them, skated around and stood on the blue line for O Canada. We immediately thought, "what an awesome opportunity!"

When I got to school this morning, Ms Wasney told me that there is a contest kids can enter to be that person! The program is called the Scotiabank Skaters Program and hockey players between the ages of 7 and 14 can apply HERE. You could be that kid!!
You can also check out the experience one boy had being the Scotiabank Skater at this Winnipeg Free Press page.

Instagram + Animoto = An Awesome Team!

Since I got an iPhone last year, instagram has been one of my very favorite apps. It can easily be used on an iPod as well but photos will be uploaded once you are connected to the internet. Instagram helps you apply fabulous filters to your photos, add comments and share them with your instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc networks. Many other web 2.0 tools have started connecting with instagram allowing you to easily use your instagram photos for other things. For example, Blurb is a photobook creator that connects with your instagram account to create a paper book of your photos. When the various tools talk to each other it just makes things easier.
I noticed today that Animoto, my very favorite slideshow tool now connects with instagram to create videos! It was easy peasy. Here is a video of my Holiday Instagram Photo Journal.

Publishing Tools

Just as we are getting back at it, 2 great links came my way via my Twitter network. Both relate to some great new ways to publish student work that we are going to look at this term. These come from GlennW and Mrs Ripp. You can check out their full posts by clicking their names. Some of the most exciting ones in my eyes include:

• Flipsnack - A free site with Premium features, Flipsnack will quickly convert uploaded PDF documents into a cool virtual magazine with flipping pages and it’s easy enough for even adults to figure out. You can view and share the online version in a variety of ways including Facebook, Twitter and html embed codes.
• Issuu - Issuu is another tool that kids can use to upload almost any document format and create a virtual flipping book. Like Flipsnack, you can share or embed whatever you upload.

Mrs. Ripp's post was about alternatives to a "book report" and more interesting ways students can be accountable for their reading:

• Blog about your book; reflect, ask questions, see if others have read it.
• Create a wordle about the word associations you had with the book
• Sell the book to your classmates, how can you get them to read it - written or oral - try this even if you did not like the book, can you still convince others?
• Write a letter/email to the author (even if no longer alive). Tell them what you thought of their book.
• Create a VoiceThread discussing your book's message.
• Pretend you are the author on a Voki and tell us about your newest project.
• Use Shelfari to post the book and then explain why you chose to post it.

A Proud Teacher and Welcome 2012!

Welcome to 2012! We all had a fanatstic break that came just in time. Yesterday we talked a little through the day about the good things that happened over the holidays. In some cases, I already knew what had happened for my students because they blogged about it over the holidays :) Nothing could have made me more proud and satisfied than to see my students wanting to write about authentic life experiences on their holidays! This makes the time and effort that goes to setting up and maintaining tools like student blogs worth it. Yesterday we got another surprise when Mason put through a post about his trip to Palm Springs. It was a surprise because I didn't know he was away but more so because he made an Animoto of his trip! Another proud moment because he is a) blogging on vacation, and b) using a tool (Animoto) that I have shown him but not necessarily used with him. He remembered it and figured it out on his own.

My holidays were fantastic, so much happened! I love it when Christmas is right at the beginning of the break because it leaves a whole 2 weeks for travel, visits and projects. This year it was visits and projects. At our house we are doing a big renovation and our whole main floor has been gutted! This means no kitchen and no bathroom, yikes! I was also able to spend time with my 4 nieces and nephews from Kenora snowmobiling, skiing, skating and at the circus (at the Manitoba Museum). Mixed in with all of this were some visits with friends and quiet mornings (away from the renos) with my new Steve Jobs book. It was great to come back to school feeling refreshed and ready to get going with some new ideas.

Have a great 2012!

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)