Making juice....in Science?!

We are exploring properties of matter in Science. At the beginning of the unit, we filled out a KWL chart (What we Know, What we Want to know, and What we have Learned) about Solids, Liquids and Gases. One of the wonderings we had as a class was: what happens when you mix solids and liquids together?
We discovered that some solids don't change when mixed with a liquid, when we poured water over a wooden block.

Up next was to try and see if we could dissolve certain solids with a liquid. We found out that rice would not dissolve, but sugar would! 
Then everyone in the class got to explore with some juice crystals.

I think it’s a solid. (Gabby)

It sounds crunchy! (Evan)

Its tasty! (Sean)

Its just like orange sugar. (Kaz)

When you stir the crystals it sounds like a rattle. (Anthony)

Getting a closer look at the juice crystals.

After we added the liquid (water) we observed what happened...

Stir, stir, stir!

The water turned yellow. (Brooklyn)

It smells like orange juice. (Haylee)

The crystals are gone! (Gabby)

I think it will taste like orange juice. (Adam)

It looks yummy! (Ciera)

When you added the water the crystals dissolved! (Nathan)

After we tasted it...

It tasted awesome! (several shout outs)

Taste- testing

When the crystals and water mixed together, it tasted kind of sour, and the crystals tasted different before we added the water. (Gabby)

It’s kind of good. (Kaz)

When I was done, there were still some crystals at the bottom of my cup. (Ciera)

Delicious!

The class can't wait to continue exploring with different materials and states of matter. We will keep you posted on our next adventure in Science!

-Mrs. Chubey

Our Student Blog Journey. On your mark, get set, start with paper. What!?

We are on the Kidblog journey! Very soon we will each have our own live blogs. This was the plan all along but the plan was quickly put into motion when we had a few students head off on vacation after Christmas.
Typically when students go away I send a travel journal with a few activities for them to do while they are away that they get to keep after as a vacation keepsake. This time I decided to give them the option of a paper travel journal or doing it on their kidblog. I gave them a quick how-to and they were off. You can check out their awesome travel blog posts here. Also take a look at the conversations that were generated in the comments section. Very cool.

When I introduce student blogs there are some safety and ethics conversations that need to happen first. We start with a conversation about what exactly a blog is, what all the different parts are about and what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. Much of this vocabulary is new, like posts, gadgets, commenting, global audience and digital citizenship. The children need to make the connection between what they say to someone in person and what they say to or about someone online as being the same thing. They need to understand that just because they are posting to their blog on their own doesn't mean that what they post does not affect other people. And they need to understand that unlike when they write in their notebook which stays on the shelf, when they post to their blog it is for a global audience. All of this comes with great responsibility that they need to understand and take seriously.

Next we tackle blog design. I want them to take time to think about catchy, thoughtful titles, writing posts that have purpose and make sense and the fun things like gadgets and backgrounds. I have found that they take more time with this and can focus on it better if we do it on paper first. They create a paper blog, doing the fun design parts first, and then will write and edit their first blog post on paper. We discuss the elements and process expected for writing a quality blog post. Once that is complete we will discuss and create criteria for quality commenting and use sticky notes to leave comments on each others paper blogs.

It may sound like a drawn out process but I feel very strongly about the teaching that needs to take place around digital citizenship and using social media responsibly. In this day and age, we need to take online safety, responsibility and respect as seriously as we do in our classrooms and hallways.

I have adapted some of these ideas from @pernilleripp.

Introductions

Hello!
My name is Mrs. Chubey and I am Mrs. Dent Scarcello's teaching partner. We share a classroom and students. I teach every day in the morning, and Mrs. Dent Scarcello teaches in the afternoon.
So far we have really enjoyed working as a team at school. We have also found many things that we have in common, such as our adorable children at home. Here is my little guy, Liam!

Liam and his Elephant (21 months)

And another, with Liam's dad and me!

Mrs. Dent Scarcello has graciously invited me to post on her blog, so that I can share what our class is up to in the morning half of our day.
Stay tuned for more posts about Math, Science, and other adventures in learning!

-Mrs. Chubey

Brilliant Children

You know those moments when a young person just amazes you? We had that today.

Yesterday afternoon I was at a meeting for all the early years technology coordinators in our school division. One of the teachers shared a few links she thought were neat. There was one that I thought would be cool to try with our class and we happened to have computer today so I decided to go for it. I spent about 5 minutes or less showing the kids the basics. Click here, type your name, pick some of these and go! This is when the magic happened. They thought it was a neat website and jumped right in. Every single student in our class created a story with actions, characters and more than one page! Some added in extra details, some focused on the actions, all of it was awesome. As our time came to an end I was bombarded with proud requests like:
"How do I keep it?"
"Can you send this to my parents?"
"I want to  make another one!"
"I want to keep adding more sentences!"
Yes please! We will definitely keep exploring this one! This time we were trying it out, the students hadn't done any pre-planning about their story. Another time I will have them plan out a beginning, middle and end before creating. But sometimes it's fun to jump right in and play first.

I managed to grab a few samples to share. You can check them out by going to this link and using any of these codes:
LPP697 (Adam's story)
NWE077 (Kaz's story)
AUP417 (Alexis' story)
ADM774 (Anthony's story)
SDT043 (my story)

It's SO Cold!

We got back to school this week after our Christmas holiday. It is SO cold outside!

It's so cold that if you weren't dressed properly you could get frostbite. -Jaden

If you go outside you might get your tongue stuck to the rail. -Addison

If you were going sledding you would be going sledding once and then you would be like "I'm done" because it's so cold outside. -Katelyn

If it's very cold you should stay inside and have hot chocolate. -Anthony

On a very cold day don't walk if you want to go sledding because as soon as you get there you will want to go home because it is so cold. -Chantal

We listened to 50 Below Zero on Tumblebooks because it is so cold. -Sean

You can listen to the story here:

50 Below Zero By Robert Munsch

(retsd books)

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello's Class :)

We're Back!

Happy 2015! I am back from my mat leave and enjoyed my time with my children very much. Aren't they adorable?

Once again I will be teaching grade 2 in the afternoons and Teacher Librarian doing Inquiry Based Learning with all the classes in the school in the mornings. I love this mix very much because I still get the close connection to the students in my class and can watch them grow and learn directly and then I also get to work with all the students on a wide variety of exciting projects. I will continue to blog here about both.
I will be introducing blogging to our grade 2 class this week and we will have things to share very soon! Stay tuned!