aindrops keeping falling on my head!!! Well, welcome back to another week of wonderful learning experiences!!

I hope you all had a chance to see the videos we had up. If you haven’t had a chance to see the science videos, just scroll down a little. You can see how surprised I was when the column collapsed.

We worked really hard today. I am so happy to see how the class is really growing as a community of friends and learners. It is very exciting to see how the students are working together and getting along. As you may or may not know, on Friadys we have a class meeting where we discuss strategies and ways to deal with problems that may come up with friendships, bullies and rules. I think the class is starting to really see the benfits though we haven’t had a whole lot of time.

We also have continued in our Language Arts writing.  The students are writing everything in cursive now which the students are beginning to really get good at. We have finished with outlining and are now transferring that learning to writing paragraphs using the outlines as a base skeleton. It should be really interesting to see the creative writing that your child produces!

Have a great evening! I am looking at adding some thinking games and puzzles to the site so keep an eye out for that!

Mr. Hancock

Yesterday, students investigated what shape of column would be strongest: a rectangular column, a circular column and a triangular column. We stacked dictionaries on top of the columns until they collapsed. The students really used their learning from the arch and square experiment and accurately predicted that the circular one would hold the most. It was very exciting as you can see from the video.

This is a really neat video that sort of goes with our building unit. The students agreed that it was also like the marble tracks they play with in the mornings. The marble things have magnets that stick to our whiteboard and create tracks for the marble to go down. It involves a lot of creative thinking and, apparently, can help you create things like the one in the video below!!!

Some of the students wanted to see a picture of our dog, Belle. Here she is looking very relaxed and happy on top of the couch.

We have started our next experiment in Science today! Students are investigating what type of beam would be best for building a footpath across a river. We have looked at a built three types of beams: a rectangular beam, box girder and an accordian beam. We also watched a video on what happens if you do not design a bridge properly. The video is below and the students thought it was very interesting. They were amazed that the bridge could be destroyed just with the wind!!!

Hello everyone!

It was a great day today! The students worked really hard and we got so much accomplished. In science the students discovered that the arch shape is actually stronger than the square shape. This is because squares have corners which weakens the structure while, on the arch shape, the weight is distributed evenly.

We also talked about rights and responsibilities at school. We created a brainstorm using a site called http://bubbl.us/ It is a really neat tool. The students espcially enjoyed the exploding circles when we needed to erase something. Anyway, here is the brainstorm. Just click in the box and drag the picture around to see everything.

Here is the haiku for today courtesy of Mr. Hancock’s class:

 Winter

Winter is coming

Snowflakes falling down on us

It is a cold day

Have a great day!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I know that I got a chance to relax and enjoy the outdoors a little as well as spending some time with the family.

I know that this post is a little late today but I just wanted to let you know a couple of things that are happening. As you can see by the picture on the side, the students started their first experiment today for the building unit. They had to discover which shape was stronger: The arch or square. While the experiment was difficult to execute, the students had a lot of fun seeing if there hypothesis was correct. Most students guessed that it would be the square and stated that in their hypothesis. It was really neat to hear how many students remember what hypothesis was from a couple of weeks ago.

We also started our new home reading program. I will be sending home a little more information soon. However, students should be reading at least 10-15 minutes every night. After they have read, you should write done in their planners how long they read and sign it. Students then bring back their planners for me to check. If they finish a book at home, write down the name of the book in their planner.

As I said, I will be sending information home soon giving more details. Have a great night!!

P.S. You you want to see a neat site, check out the web-link from the comments section of the last post. It is a pretty neat science site.

Hi everyone!

This is going to be a fairly short post but I read/heard this somewhere and thought I would share it with all of you. Someone said that in today’s world, we need to change our focus from what we learn to how we learn. The future employers of the world are not going to care what you learned. In fact, what you learned in school won’t make any difference because a lot of jobs our children are going to be choosing from don’t even exist yet. Look at nanotechnology which wasn’t even around when we were children, or web page creation. How do we train students for that if all we are doing is teaching content? They need more than just content; little bits of extraneous and completely unrelated bits of information. They need to learn how to learn! If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video on our blog.

So, the title of this piece is “Did you ask a good question today?” What does that mean? When we are talking to our children about school, what do we usually ask them? “What did you learn in school today?” This sort of question focuses on content. But what if we change the question to “Did you ask a good question today?” Then we start focusing on how our children are learning: By asking questions!! What sort of response do you think you will get? Do you think our children will start asking more and better questions in class?

Let’s start asking the question!

Thursday is always a busy day for us. Music, Library, Gym… it seems like we hardly get anytime to breathe. In Bible studies we are focusing on the story of Cain and Abel. A heavy story and one that always seems to be tough for the students. If you have a chance, have a look at Genesis 4 and talk about it with your child. We have also been praying everyday. However, something wonderful has been happening. I have begun to let the students lead in prayer and it is truly wonderful to hear your children praying for each other in the class. Very uplifting. It sends shivers up and down my back!!!

We had a lot of fun today. Students got a chance to crack open their learning logs for spelling and it was awesome to see how much the students remembered of the spelling rules. You know that learning is happening when students are so eager to tell you  why we need to underline the phonogram in a word. It is just wonderful!

It looks like Chocolate is the leader in our poll so far. However, vanilla is beginning to catch up. If you haven’t had a chance to vote, do so now. I think we will keep the polls open until next Wednesday.

Students! You are an awesome group of students!! Never stop asking good questions!!!!

Mr. H