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!

Special Delivery!

It was just an ordinary Tuesday morning and I was in the middle of my guided reading lesson with a student. The others were doing exactly as they should-finishing up morning word work and reading independently. Suddenly, another staff member appeared at my door, Smart Board closely behind her.

“This is for you!” she said.

“For me? Are you sure?”

“Did no one tell you that you’re getting a Smart Board?”

“Umm, no!”

Apparently someone forgot to give me the memo, but who cares because Smart Boards are awesome! However, the tinge of OCD I have quickly kicked in and I spent the rest of the day pondering where I should put it. I knew I would have to completely rearrange my classroom in order to make this work. Luckily, I had an hour prep that afternoon and I spent it redesigning the place. When the kids came back from the other class they were at they were so excited. You would have thought Christmas came early by the sounds of them.

By getting rid of the laptop cart and placing the computer and LCD projector on the desk, I was able to place students’ desks behind it and they could still see.

Yay for groups!

 I also moved the rocking chair and “carpet area” to the back of the room where it’s much more spacious.

If you can recall, I had originally had them sitting in rows of 3 or 4 and they kept asking begging me to put them in groups, but it wouldn’t work because of the board and laptop cart. Now, everybody’s happy.

As for what we’ve been up to lately, academically, I thought I’d share with you our Science Board. We have finally finished up our unit on Light and Sound and this was up the whole time. It was an easy resource where I could post definitions and the kids learned quickly how to refer to it so they could include new vocabulary in their speaking and writing.

In literacy, we finished our read aloud of James and the Giant Peach (which they loved) and due to popular demand, we watched the movie on Thursday morning. And because I’m so creative and nice, I fed them peach slices and fuzzy peaches. Yum!

To go along with our read aloud, we were learning how to use elements of a story to write our own stories. We learned how to create mood, build tension, and use literary devices like similes and alliteration. All of these things came out beautifully in their stories.

Most of them had been exposed to The Writing Process before, and they enjoyed moving their names along as their stories progressed. If you’d like a copy of the story planner we used, click HERE.

When we arrived on Wednesday morning, there happened to be little power outage.

Needless to say, the kids were a tad chaotic, so I told them we were going to go to school like the pioneers (this is what I call coming up with a genius idea at the drop of a hat) and they loved it. What I loved is when the kids started discussing how we had to learn by natural light because our artificial light was unavailable. Look at them making connections to our science unit. Smarty pants.

CURRENTLY November

Looks like I missed the October CURRENTLY. That’s probably because October was a very busy month, but for once, I’m getting this done at the beginning of the month as opposed to mid-end of the month. Here goes…

Listening: We have an Apple TV so with the click of a button I can get my iTunes on my laptop to play through the TV. It sounds nice with the stereo system we have. I’m being kind of picky though and skipping through all the upbeat songs and sticking with the more calm ones. It’s Sunday night and I’m exhausted. I need something peaceful.

Loving: I love my family. I feel like I haven’t had quality time with them lately because everyone has been so busy. Last night the six of us went to an event and had a nice time sitting and chatting while enjoying some good music with longtime family friends.

Thinking: Hallelujah for the time change! Since the school year started, I feel like I’ve been on the verge of falling asleep on my drive to work each day. It’s so dark! Now it’s going to feel more like 8:00 when I leave which means I can enjoy the sunshine for the morning commute (which actually isn’t too long).

Wanting: Speaking of the time change, I’m exhausted. As I’ve told you before, I’m an old lady at heart and I keep myself on an early bedtime routine. I’m actually sleep.

Needing: Oddly enough, I feel like I need more time in my day to get everything done, despite the fact that we just gained an hour. To do all this, I will need more energy. I’ve done all I can do today so I’m hoping for more energy and progress this week.

Reading: I’m re-reading Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. A few years ago I read Gone Girl and LOVED it (I saw the movie opening night and loved that as well, just in case you were wondering). She’s one of those authors where even though I had only read one of her books, I knew I needed to read more; so right after I finished Gone Girl I went to the library and borrowed Sharp Objects. It was SO good that I went and bought my own copy the other day. I’ve been recommending it to people who have recently fallen in love with Gone Girl so I thought I’d give it another read so I could remember the details and talk about it excitedly.

Happy Halloween!

Some teachers really dislike Halloween because let’s face it-it’s a chaotic day where little to no instruction occurs. I happen to love Halloween. I think it’s a fun day where everyone can let loose and show off his/her creativity. If planned and managed correctly, it doesn’t have to be as chaotic and out of control as people may think.

Last year, my Grade One class won the Pumpkin Contest with our Mike Wazowski pumpkin. This year the Grade Threes and Fours wanted to make a minion and we created this masterpiece.

We didn’t win, but we had lots of fun making it, and received lots of compliments. Then I took him home and put him on my own front porch where the neighbourhood kids could admire it.

I’m a big fan of Halloween and all spirit days, and this week we had a lot of them. We had black and orange day (but I don’t actually own orange clothing so I had to get creative with my nails) and wacky hair day (no picture-just picture lots of pipe cleaners).

 (I know, I’m an artist)

And now for Halloween day. This year I dressed up as a cowgirl, which surprised all the kids because they were convinced I was going to dress up as a duck (which is actually a fantastic idea for next year).

I didn’t actually bring my cat to school, but this is how I greeted the kids at my own house. Zelda was a big hit!

Here’s the one thing I don't like about Halloween: the scary costumes. I know I sound like a baby, but there are some costumes that I really don’t like. The one I’m really talking about is the Scream guy. I saw that movie when I was 11 (when I was trying to like scary movies like all my friends) and I suffered from nightmares for years afterwards. So of course it was just my luck that one of my own students walked up to me in this costume. They all got a real kick out of legitimately scaring me. 

For our Halloween party, we watched Hotel Transylvania and ate cupcakes that I baked for them.

I think it was a great way to end the week; and may I just speak on behalf of all teachers when I say, thank goodness Halloween landed on a Friday!