Christmas Cheer

Seeing as how it’s almost New Years, I figured I should get crackin’ and post my entry about Christmas. It truly is the busiest time of the year (aside from report cards).

We really enjoyed our time with our Elf on the Shelf, Jackie. I made sure I took pictures of all her funny hiding spots and I ended up putting them into a collage and giving each student a copy. Now they can look back and think about their beloved elf whenever they miss her.

 Can you believe she went onto my phone and took a selfie?!

 I guess elves have a hard time on Mondays too.

 It turns out Jackie is good friends with Twinkle (an elf that belongs to a girl in my class) and they had a sleepover at her house!

Jackie’s last day was spent relaxing in a marshmallow snow bank

Jackie left after school on the last day before the break. The kids were devastated, but maybe they’ll see her again next year…

I didn’t get around to making any ornaments this year but it was because I was so busy with our Christmas project. As you might remember, last year my Grade One class learned about the Goshen School in Uganda. The kids wrote letters to students at this school and raised money to help them have a nice Christmas. The project was so meaningful and taught so much about empathy that I knew I had to do something like this again.

I didn’t want to do the exact same thing though.  After Remembrance Day, my class was really interested in learning about the war. This got me thinking about current soldiers who are away from home, involved in the war overseas. With some help from the Canadian government website, and suggestions on teacher groups on Facebook, I was able to figure out a plan.

Each student wrote a letter addressed to Any Canadian Soldier. They each wrote a very thoughtful letter introducing themselves, asking questions to their recipients, and letting them know that even though they are far away from home over the holidays, many people are thinking about them and feeling grateful for all that they do.

I wish I had pictures of some of their letters. Sadly, I didn’t take any. I then took all these enveloped letters, put them into a larger envelope (to save on 26 stamps) and mailed them all off at once to a base in Belleville. From there, our letters will be sent to the soldiers. Maybe we’ll have some mail once we get back!

To go along with this theme, we sang So This Is Christmas by John Lennon in the holiday concert. My hope is that after discussing the meaning of these song lyrics and talking about those who aren’t with their families at Christmas time, I have taught my students that material gifts are not the most important things to have at Christmas time. I also hope they have gained empathy for those with different situations.

When we weren’t engaged in our Christmas project, we were having some good old fashioned fun with Christmas books and elves. I repeated a fun craft I did last year with my Grade Ones and had my Threes and Fours Elf Themselves! Click HERE for the link.

I leave you now with some of the books I read to them over the last few weeks. These are great Christmas stories to add to your holiday collection.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and has a Happy 2015!

Area Math Game

We started a unit on area and played some fun math games. Two colleagues of mine drew my attention to this game and I put a Medieval Times spin on it. Each rectangle is a castle!

What You Need:

-1 grid (in page protector)

-2 dice

-1 white board marker

How To Play:

-Each player rolls the dice (example: a 4 and 6)

-That player draws a rectangle 4 units down, 6 units across

-Player writes his/her initial in the box

-Player uses multiplication to calculate the area of the rectangle

-The next player does the same thing

-If you cannot fit a castle on the grid, you skip your turn

-The game ends when no one can go

Differentiation

-Students can roll two dice and build the castle however they’d like as long as the area matches the product of the dice

-For beginning multipliers, use one dice and always multiply by 2

Now, let’s see what Jackie the elf got up to this week.

We have a rule in our classroom that Base Ten blocks are not for building structures. The kids just couldn’t believe that Jackie was getting away with breaking a rule!

 She could see everyone from up here…

On Friday, we usually have a Free Write. Can you believe Jackie snuck onto the photocopier and sabotaged my morning writing activity?! I caved and let the kids respond to her instead. Besides, look at the hilarious answer she got!

I wonder what she'll get up to in the week ahead...

Currently December

Listening: The Apple TV Radio App has a Christmas station called A Christmas Special. You can find it under the Adult Contemporary list. We’ve been playing it non-stop.

Loving: It goes without saying that I love Christmas time and the whole holiday season. The music, the lights, the tree, the decorations, the overall cheery atmosphere everywhere you go…what’s not to love? Maybe the mall on a Saturday afternoon.

Thinking: I need to be productive this weekend. I have a TON of marking and feedback to get through and I need to start wrapping gifts. This weekend is going to fly by.

Wanting: Here’s a confession: I’m a present snoop. That’s right. A few years ago I confessed to my parents that I had been snooping for my presents from the ripe age of 6 (at least that’s my earliest snooping memory). They were horrified. I’ll admit it has backfired on me a few times. Like that time I was convinced that the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD I found was for me and it ended up being for my brother. Talk about disappointment. Anyways, Rob is well aware of my ways and knows better than to hide my gifts in the house. Now I can’t snoop and I have absolutely no idea what he got me. It’s killing me.

Needing: A few weeks ago, one of my best friends had a beautiful baby boy named Jackson. We’re finally going to her place tomorrow to meet him. I can’t wait!!!

Giving: Last year I set the bar really high with my Grade Ones when we did a big Christmas project by helping a school in Uganda. The kids also sang Do They Know It’s Christmas Time in the holiday concert. Read all about it HERE. I wanted to do something meaningful again so we are getting into the giving mood by giving a friendly Christmas letter to Canadian soldiers who are currently stationed overseas. More on that to come in a later blog post.

Thanks Oh Boy Fourth Grade for the Currently!

Elf on the Shelf

We have a special new friend in our classroom! We came in on Wednesday morning, and what did we see on the whiteboard ledge? An Elf on the Shelf! Last year, I made a wish to Santa and asked him to send me an elf and my wish was granted!

We read the book as well as this special letter she arrived with. We keep it hung up on the board so all the kids can come up to read it.

We also used the name ballots she came with to come up with a name. There were some great entries like Twinkle, Snowbelle, Bella, Snowflake, etc. After a draw, the winner that came out was Jackie. So our elf’s name is Jackie.

The winning ballot!

Our certificate also came with a letter from Santa but I forgot to take a picture of it. The kids want me to photocopy it so they can take it home to show their families. Too cute.

On Thursday some of the kids didn’t even take off their coats and boots before coming in to see where Jackie was hiding.

Friday was the last day of Movember and our school celebrated by having a Moustache Day. Jackie appeared on Friday morning with a moustache of her own.

She even left our class a little gift (she must have run out of nice Christmas ribbon).

I had to create a little mailbox for her because the kids love writing her little notes. I peeked in there and I also saw a Dorito and a chocolate chip cookie hahaha! Jackie ate it all and even wrote a letter back, answering the many questions from all those notes!

I think Jackie’s arrival will make the next three weeks a ton of fun!

Cookie Mining

One of the Grade Three social studies units is called Living and Working in Ontario and part of that is learning about natural resources, the industries that are available for jobs, and the impacts various kinds of land use have on the environment.

“B2.5 evaluate evidence and draw conclusions about some of the short- and long-term effects on the environment of different types of land use in municipal regions of Ontario and about key measures to reduce the negative impact of that use” (Social Studies Curriculum 92)

When I was in university, I had a professor who had us do this activity that demonstrated the effects of mining. It’s called the Cookie Mining Activity. Here’s how you do it.

The kids LOVE it. For tools, they used toothpicks and a straightened out paper clip, and they were so careful. At the end, we counted up our chips to see how much “gold” we mined.

The following is a video I found on YouTube of the same activity. Click HERE to be redirected.

I love hands on activities to teach (what I consider to be) a rather dry topic.

And of course, I bought an extra box so we could enjoy a cookie once everything was tidied up!

Welcome to Medieval Times

Grade Fours everywhere long for the day when they get to learn about medieval times. Since the recent social studies curriculum change, the Medieval Times unit has been changed to Early Societies, so we will eventually get into ancient civilizations as well. But since they were all dying to learn about kings, knights, and battles, we thought it was best to start off with medieval times. When you think about it, there is A LOT to cover in the Early Societies unit. My grade partners and I decided it would be best to make it a research based unit and give it a strong literacy focus where the kids would study features of non-fiction texts and synthesize their research into a summary paragraph.

Our “mini learning goals” that were more specific to what we were doing that day.

I did this on our beautiful new Smart Board…so handy!

Our colour coded timeline will help the students understand when these early societies existed throughout time

We started by learning about the social structure of the Middle Ages. It’s important to understand how society worked in order to understand other aspects of medieval life.

Again, the work of my  wonderful grade partner

The social studies curriculum has a strong focus on the inquiry process, so this is our question we will return to as we continue to learn about early societies (I can’t take credit for this; it is yet again the work of my fantastic grade partner).

As you know, I teach a Grade 3/4 split and I haven’t found it too hard as of yet to deliver both curriculums. It’s pretty easy to teach math and literacy to both grades because the expectations are similar. A different teacher teaches my Grade Three science, so science is easy to teach; the Grade Threes just listen in and learn the Grade Four content. Here’s where it gets tricky: social studies.

The Grade Threes are learning the Living and Working in Ontario unit, so what I’ve done is I’ve divided up the day. The Grade Four medieval times content is being taught through our literacy block (the Grade Threes LOVE that they get to learn about it a year earlier), and the Grade Three Ontario unit is taught in the afternoon. Does it mean my Grade Fours have to hear Grade Three content again? Yes. However, since we are aiming to make these units researched-based, eventually we will get to a point where the Grade Fours can work on their own projects while I work with the Grade Threes. Furthermore, there will be moments when we can mesh our early societies research with our Ontario research. For example, next week we will be learning about jobs in both the Middle Ages and in Ontario. We will be able to return to our inquiry question and consider how early practices have evolved or disappeared over time.

Next week, I’ll talk more about what my Grade Threes are doing. I have a fun plan lined up for them on Monday.

Enjoy the weekend!