A quick update!

Hello! So sorry for the lack of posts - I shall try to do better. We have a "Make Learning Visible" board in our class, on which I document student learning by pictures and reflections made by the students. For this post, I've added our most recent documentation on two new centres in our class and our thoughts on it.

  

One of the things that I love about the documentation (pictures and anecdotal notes tied to Ontario curriculum expectations, ect.), is the opportunity to look back on our learning and reflect on it with the students. So far in our centre we have practiced and demonstrated: 

• 1. questioning skills 
• 2. increased vocabulary (strong, stable, fasteners) 
• 3. mathematics concepts (smaller, bigger, stronger, wide, short, long, heavy, light)
• 4. habits of leadership (synergize, win-win, begin with the end in mind)
• 5. planning
• 6. literacy (drawing and writing the plans, oral communication as they explain their design)
• 7. Throughlines of Christian education as students have begun to be order-discoverers and servant-workers as we build things for others
• 8. Finally, obviously, learning about building - what does building mean, what are fasteners, what is a plan, how to begin a project, etc.

The following is the first time I've done this provocation and it is now one of my favourite art moments!

Students in this activity are exploring new art mediums and techniques (pastels). Drawing while laying on the floor created a new dynamic to "art" that created rich dialogue and new language. Students also learned that Michelangelo was the name of an artist before it was the name of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!

I hope you've enjoyed this sneekpeek into the classroom!

I Can...

Hello! The past several weeks have been very busy, but very good! We have learned so much, and have been practicing naming our learning - "I can ..."

Today, we loved having our Grade 3/4 buddies join us for the first time! These buddies will read with us, do crafts with us, and several other fun things throughout the year! Today, we coloured poppies, ate lunch, and explored some centres together!

LU: We love our a grade 3/4 buddies.

JE: We had snack and coloured and played with them!

We appreciated the Grade 5/6 assembly so much today, and had good reflection time after to be thankful for our freedom in Canada, and for those who give for that freedom.

We also made a puppet centre this week - we set up the theatre, made money for tickets, made paper popcorn, signs, and made our play! This is so full of rich learning - oral communication, writing, expression, planning, synergizing, fine motor skills in cutting out the popcorn, and much more!

RO:  We all made the puppet show. We made popcorn and money and signs!

We also practiced our retell skills - what happens first, next, and last in a story!

JA: At the retell centre, we had two stories. And we can tell them! This one was Don't Eat the Teacher!

We also learned: I can investigate! These are pumpkin and gourd seeds we will explain with!

We learned to use tallies to count our pumpkin seeds!

We also learned to use ten-frames as a math tool, and learned lots about the special number ten!

We can write! We began our big beautiful books, thinking about what we want to write, making one line for each word, write (somewhere along the continuum between pretend writing and adult writing), and draw - illustrate - their idea!

We have also been practicing, practicing, practicing for Student-Led Conferences! We are so excited for you all to come in and see what we have learned so far this year!