We had an amazing field day today! Huge thanks to Mrs. Rand who spends countless hours organizing it all for us. It ran so smoothly and we are very appreciative. At the end of the day we made this slide show while we enjoyed our popsicles :)
Today the Bird's Hill School Run Club went to the mini-athon at Dr. Hamilton school. For the first time, grade 2 students were invited to join run club this year! Katelyn, Abbey, Jaden, Evan, Chantal and Addison have been in run club this year. Katelyn, Abbey and Evan have even run the whole time with Mrs. Dent Scarcello a few times at our morning practices! This is a great accomplishment! We had a great time at the mini-athon and the runners did a great job.
Thanks to Ms. Wasney for the heads up, the polar bear video stream in Churchill, Manitoba is live! The best viewing is from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm but they have clips from the day posted in the evening as well. Click this link to see them live for yourself!
This is a snapshot taken from the live stream!! What a neat experience THAT would have been! The polar bear is standing up on his hind legs trying to get a closer look at the people in the tundra buggy!
Last year I followed the Decorah Eagles with my grade 2 class. We usually had them streamed on our projector through the day so we could see when they hatched and flew for the first time. The livestream of the eagles is back and they have already hatched. I have recently left our classroom on mat leave so I will not be able to follow along with my class this year but I thought I would post the feed here anyway so you could follow them. Happy Spring!
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.
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":
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!
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!
Yesterday we, along with half of the other grade 1-3 students in the division, went to the Folkdance Festival to dance in the park. This was my first time going and I thought it was the best thing EVER! What better way to spend a warm day in May than with hundreds of kids dancing to loud music in a park. It also helped that it is not yet bug season, there was some cloud cover to keep us cool and the temperature was warm. - Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)
