Question of the Day :: Daily Routine

Today we learned our third activity in Daily Routine. These are math activities that we rotate through each day. Right now, while we are learning them, we all do the same one. Later, when we know the drill we will have three groups doing different things at the same time and we won't do the same thing each day. The one we learned today is Question of the Day, it's the noisiest but we like it the  best.

It was hard keeping track of all the names. To know who we asked already we write down the initials when we ask them. -Rhyann

It was easy to ask people the questions because you just have to go to them. If someone is busy we don't interrupt them, we wait. -Anthony

It was fun doing this because it was fun finding out about people that like our stuff. -Carter

We wrote down a question to ask our whole class. We thought about what question we want to ask the class. -Adrianna

When we are done asking everybody we count the initials and write the number at the bottom. -Rylee

Lots of people asked the question "what do you like better this or that?" It is kind of boring when everyone gets the same thing that they like. - Carter

Lots of people asked about pizza. Lots of people used Mrs. Dent Scarcello's example as their question. Next time we could choose different questions because it gets boring. -Carson

The other kind of question we could ask is a yes or no. Like "have you ever went to the states?" -Jace

"Have you ever gone to the Bomber game?" -Rylee

When we are done with the front, there are questions on the back that we answer to analyze the data we collected. Once the kids get beyond asking about hot dogs, pizza and ice cream, they find out some really interesting things about each other!

This is our Kidblogs

We did something REALLY awesome this week!!! - Matthew

We went to IBL and went to the computer lab. We found out we were going to start our own kidblogs. We are the only kids in the school that will have our own kidblogs. - Adrianna, Mikaela

We are SO excited because no one else has a blog. - Morgun

When we use our blogs we might be able to talk to other people. People who read our blog post might leave us a comment. - Anthony

The world can see our blog which is a good thing but we have to be careful not to share personal information. - Adrianna

We made paper blogs to understand what a blog is. We had to leave the big box blank because we still need to learn about writing a blog post. - Anthony

It will be awesome when we finally get on our real blogs! - Rylee

We are interested in learning about blogs because it is a new thing. -Rhyann

It's going to be awesome when we finish our real blogs. -Lucas

Seasonal Changes with Grade 1 {IBL}

In IBL (Inquiry Based Learning) I am working with grade 1. I taught a grade 1-2 multiage class a few years ago but my memories of September grade 1 children have faded a little. I absolutely love working with grade 1, they are SO excited to see me and are gung-ho to do just about anything I announce!! In Science they are learning about Daily and Seasonal Changes so we are focusing in on the changes animals go through in the different seasons. We talked about the seasons (no, Christmas and April are not seasons...) and some of the things they know about the seasons and then they got to use sticky notes and smelly markers (best writing lures ever) to post their ideas in each season. I reminded them that if they didn't know how to spell an idea they had, they could just write the sounds they hear, stretch out the word, etc. This was followed by some awesome ideas that the children wrote independently! There were also a few of these:

child: "I did one!"
me: "Awesome! Can you read it to me?"
child: "Umm, I don't remember what I wrote."
me: "That's ok, I think it says               "
child: "Mhmm, I think so too."
I love it.

I posted this photo to instagram the other day - such a great reminder of where these new little writers are at. :) It says "the snow is melting so we can play outside at the beach!"

International Dot Day!!

This Sunday, September 15 is International Dot Day! It is the anniversary of publication of a great book, The Dot by Peter Reynolds (great author). We started celebrating today by reading The Dot and talking about being ourselves when we work on art at school. Each piece we create is our own and should look the way we want it to look. Art is what we want it to be! We started Kandinsky Circle art, one of my favorite pieces to do at school. It always looks so amazing when they are all done and we post them all together. I love circles (and polka dots) and I love colours. On Monday we have some other activities planned and don't forget to WEAR DOTS!

Getting Started with Kidblogs! {IBL}

"It's a big responsibility, you're the only ones in our school so far with personal blogs. Can you handle it?" You can imagine the intensity of fist pumps and quiet "yessss" under their breaths.

Today the children in Room 9 are embarking on a blogging adventure. Each child will have their own blog space on Kidblog that will be all their own. I know they expected to come to the lab and "get on the blogs already" but there is a lot to talk about first. We started with, and will continue to talk about being responsible digital citizens, how to write quality blog posts and quality commenting. It is very important to me that the children appreciate the responsibility of having a global audience and also understand what is and isn't appropriate to post for this audience.
The children will be supported to write, edit and publish their work but it will be their work. Their posts will be a true snapshot of who they are as writers at this point in their lives. By the end of the year we will be able to look back and see how much they have grown in our 10 months together! That sounds pretty awesome to me.

A note about KidBlogs...
KidBlogs is a blogging platform that allows teachers to set up accounts for their students under the umbrella of a classroom account. This means that I have complete control over what is posted to each blog. Before any post or comment appears online, I receive an email and then have the option to approve, deny, or edit the post or comment. If the post or comment meets our criteria, I approve it and then it can been seen by others. I moderate everything and choose what goes live.

Wrapping Up Week 1!

This afternoon we were browsing old posts on our blog and we came across this great song. "What I Am" by Will.i.am has such a great message, we love it! I am reposting it here so the kids can find it easily from home this weekend. We had a great first week back and are enjoying getting to know each other, figuring out new routines and learning about some of the neat things we will do together. I also shared some news with our class today, I am going to have a baby in the new year! Everyone was very excited and had lots of questions. As you can imagine with 6 and 7 year olds, this was a very entertaining way to end a great first week!
Have a super weekend, see you next week!

I like how he sang. -Rhyann

The First Day of School

Yesterday was our first day of grade 2. We have 22 kids in our class. In the morning we all met on the playground. Our teachers and friends were waiting outside for us. In the morning our teacher is Mrs. Henry and in the afternoon our teacher is Mrs. Dent Scarcello.

We learn. -Madison

It was exciting to meet our new teachers. -Rhyann

We met a lot of friends yesterday. -Corbin

We made self portraits yesterday and today. -Sarah

They are made out of construction paper. We cut the parts of our face out of paper and glued them together. -Mikaela

We did a get to know you activity where we wrote things about ourselves. We will put them in the hall with our self-portraits. -Anthony and Lucas

We did word searches with all our names in it. -Sage

We made paper t-shirts. We coloured them. Our names are on them. -Jace

We got our agendas and we learned about making cardboard faces. -Carter