Bubble Day-Hooray!

The boys and girls had a busy Tuesday! First, we all enjoyed the amazing Talent Show! After that, it was time to get a little bit of work done and then it was time for Bubble Day!  
Students first had to solve a bunch of bubble-related problems and when completed, it became their ticket to an afternoon of fun and silliness (and chocolate!).  

The day was a big success in so many ways, but the biggest reason for the fun was what we've always done in room 208: we work hard and we follow expectations! 

I could not be more proud...

Report Cards come home on Tuesday with the boy and girls from room 208 and I'm sure parents will find them very helpful and informative.  I worked hard to write them and I am so very grateful when my administration proofreads them and finds those itty-bitty typos that I missed!  

A different kind of "report card" came home with my students last week: their brag tags.  The kids in my class were SO excited to finally be able to take their collection of well-earned tags home.  

Brag tags tell a story...a really positive one. When a child looks at his or her collection of tags, they can literally see the progress they've made, the great things they've done and the many goals they've accomplished right before their eyes.  

Like the report card that comes home on Tuesday, there's work involved in preparing the brag tags. You'll need LOTS of ink, a laminator, some good scissors and a few other supplies.  Oh, and you'll also need to be organized (it's no fun to get the same brag tag twice because your teacher didn't realize you already had it!).  

I love watching my students flip through their tag collection and read their own story.  At the beginning of the year, tags are given out daily to really build our community and bring everyone to a fairly consistent and common level of self-regulation.  As the year progresses, they're given out a little less frequently and they're little harder to earn as expectations increase.  But when you can celebrate virtually anything with a brag tag, and you have all your supplies in place, you can turn small victories for a child into really special moments that can change their life.  

As parents read through their child's report card on Tuesday night, my hope is that they'll also flip through that massive collection of tags that came home last week. Both are a labor of love on my my end, and my hope is that the brag tags will always be a reminder of what a unique and incredible people my students are.  

Mozart and Music!

On Thursday afternoon, the boys and girls enjoyed listening to Mozart's Magnificent Voyage while practicing their multiplication skills.  Today, we worked on the seven times tables while playing the game pictured below.  

Not all children know their "counting by" songs and they're encouraged to memorize them over the summer to help develop their number-sense and memorize their facts. You can find the math songs along the top of the blog page. 

You can find a copy of the great game we played here!  Monkey Multiplication

Carnival Time!

Oh my word, what a hit this lesson was! We've had so much fun discussing the features of an informational text such as a brochure! We used resources from the Dairy Board of Canada to cover a little bit of everything.  Aside from the obvious discussions about health and nutrition, we also talked about some of the features of the text itself: illustrations, different fonts, coordinated colours, diagrams, interactivity, and bold text. I explained to the boys and girls that these same features apply to websites.  

After this discussion, students learned they would be designing their own brochure for a pretend carnival! They're asked to choose a theme for their carnival and the sky is the limit! For the purpose of my sample, I went with a cheese and lama-themed carnival (no idea where that idea came from, but my website has a nice ring to it: www.cheeseoramalama.com). 

The wheels were turning with this one!  We're going to get back to work on our brochures on Wednesday and I can't wait to see how they turn out! What a great way to end the school year: a year where there is always so much growth in terms of my students' writing skills.  

In this one exercise, we cover many important skills and answer lots of questions: 

• What's the purpose of a brochure (and website)?
• What makes a great brochure and a not-so-great brochure/website? 
• What kind of information will people want to know about a school carnival from a brochure/website? 
• How do I engage my reader? 
• What's an appropriate theme for a carnival? 
• What are sensible food prices for my menu items?
• How do bullet points work really effectively on a brochure? 
• What's an appropriate day/time to hold a carnival? 
• My carnival's website? What's an appropriate name?
• Will the website be a .ca or a .com site?
• Let's talk revenue: who benefits from my carnival? 
• The beneficiary: why them? 

I've been so thrilled with the quality of my students' writing this year. Watching them grow with each assignment is so exciting and rewarding. I hope they'll use all the skills they've learned this year to make this their best writing piece yet! 

Nothing "despicable" about this day!

On Friday, the boys and girls in Room 208 enjoyed "Despicable Me" day and it was so much fun!  Students started their day with a challenge: can you use your Play-Doh to make a minion? It was easier said than done, let me tell you!  

After that, we headed outside for some hilarious games based on the movie. The favorite was "Pop-oi". Students used the toilet bowl brushes to paddle a beach ball from one end of the field to another. In the movie, a Pop-oi is a toilet brush unicorn! 

In the afternoon, we made our "Minion-Mix" and enjoyed the movie together. Each ingredient in the mix is tied to the movie in some way, shape or form! 

The Cookie Crisp represents the cookies the girls sold. 

The Corn Pops are the moon that was stolen. 

The cheezies are for Agnes' caterpillar that never turned into a butterfly. 

The Goldfish crackers represent the sharks that swim under Vector's living room floor. 

The Lucky Charms had unicorns in them and Gru wins one for Agnes at the amusement park. 

And the mini-marshmallows remind us that "It's so fluffy!!!" 

 It was a perfect way to celebrate a year of hard work, the completion of EQAO and Miss Katlynn's last day in our class. We've been blessed to have the most incredible Junior Teacher in our room for the last four months and we will miss her very much.  

Then and Now!

What' the wifi password? 
Do you have Lululemon? 
What do you mean we have to make our own bread?

On Thursday, the boys and girls learned about "push" and "pull" factors that brought people to Canada around 1850. In addition to reviewing what we already learned about life a kid during that period, students also learned about how little people arrived WITH! Imagine living in a sod house because that's the best you could afford at the time!  


We had lots of fun watching a great video (shot here in Ontario!) about life as a pioneer kid! The video is called "Pioneer Life in Canada" and it was a really fun way to revisit the topics we've covered this year and add some new learning to our schema!  The character in the film goes back in time and experiences life as a pioneer child. 

While preparing this blog post, I found a great little booklet that parents may want to view/print out to help reinforce and explore further some of the information students have learned this term.  You can find it here.  It was created by the City of Vaughn, but many of the activities are still very suitable for any Ontario child studying early settlers.  

Can't wait 'til Friday!

Despicable Me day is Friday!
Details are in Tuesday's agenda! 

A relaxed end to a busy week!

We're getting our room ready for the last big holiday of the year: Canada Day!  It's hard to believe it's almost the end of our time together!  

The boys and girls have been working very hard on a craftivity about their EQAO experience last week. These smart cookies have a lot of great words of advice for their friends in grade 2 who wonder, "What's that EQAO all about?" We're not quite finished, but when we do, you can bet I'll post the photos here! 

We wrote our last Math test on Thursday and spent a good portion of this week reviewing those skills and and also looking at patterning, probability and transformational geometry as part of our Morning Work.  Some of that great work is coming home on Friday night! It does not need to return to school. 

As part of a very relaxed Fun Friday, we talked about an item that's been in the news lately:  banning drinking straws. We discussed the pros and cons of the matter, along with our suggestions for ways to make them more eco-friendly.  

After that, we watched a favorite movie of mine with a wonderful eco-message: Fern Gully!  It was a lovely (and funny!) way to cap off our 37th week together!