We had a lot of fun these past two days on our new Poetry Unit. We had the start of our tournament with our first two poem competitors. It was a no holds barred poetry reading but we came out with a clear winner. How to Eat a Poem won a decisive victory against It’s Dark in Here!

Now it’s your turn to vote! You can vote for your favorite poem in the voting box on the right side after listening to these two clips:

Itsdarkinhere

Howtoeatapoem

We also spent some time closely looking at the poems the students chose during the poetry hunt. We wanted to really see what a poem was made of; what made it tick and how an author might use various elements to create their poem. We started a brainstorm looking at these various elements of poetry. We will be using this brainstorm as we continue looking at various poems. You can see our brainstorm below. We used the service bubbl.us to create it. Click on the +/- signs to zoom in and out and move the image with your mouse to get to different areas of the brainstorm.

We also watched a neat video yesterday. The video showed 100 people from ages 1 – 100. It was to celebrate the fact that we have past 100 days of school. We were all amazed by that fact. This year has gone by so fast. It is hard to believe that we have already gone through half a year and that we only have a half year left together. It has been an amazing experience and a learning experience for both the students and myself.

Well, after the beautiful weather and the relaxing weekend, it was back to work! It was a great day. We started our new Poetry Unit! We started off with a bang and it was very exciting to see the students reading poems and sharing them with each other. Students participated in a Poetry Hunt. Hidden around the room was a variety of poems. Students went around the room to find poems that “spoke” to them. After choosing their favorite poem, students picked out the most interesting words and phrases and described why they chose that poem. Students will be creating a poetry book of their poems. Our goal, at the end, is to publish our own book of poetry.

Stayed tuned to the blog to see the results of our Poetry Tournament, hear poems read by guest poetry readers and more.

One of the parents suggested that I put the spelling words for the week on the blog. So, underneath here, are the spelling words for this week

curb            carry

subject        misspell

drug            erase

fancy           hem

dirt              voice

hurry          conquer

pare            plan

center         prove

copy            suffer

sign            market

Today’s guest blog is a student who really enjoys Haiku’s. Here are a couple of poems she wrote herself.

My Kitten

I love my kitten.

She loves to play all day long.

She is very sweet.

My Teacher

My teacher is great.

He lets us have fun parties .

He is a great guy.

By L T.

Though our building project has been done for awhile, I thought I would share with you, the parent, the projects your children worked so hard on. I took some pictures and created a nice animoto of their buildings.

We also had a very special visitor yesterday.

It was very exciting and the children enjoyed visiting with Geronimo and getting his autograph. I even got one of my books autographed for our class library.

Yesterday was our busy day moving around. The students sound like they are doing lots of interesting things in the music room. Mrs. Caswell has made Monday “Pioneer Day”! She is asking that the students bring some pioneery things to wear on top of their uniforms. They are going to be singing hymns, having a spelling bee and other neat events.

Students are also going to Vancouver for a special Vancouver Symphony event. Students have received permission forms. However, if you have lost yours, you can get one by clicking on the box.net widget on the side. Just click the top document which says GR3 Concert permission. It will give you some options after clicking.

The Smartboard has been great. We have used it for a few things already. It will take awhile before we truly become comfortable with it and are able to use it to its full potential.

We have also been doing a lot of work on friendships and bullying. Our class meetings have been focused on that recently and we had a special class meeting last week dealing with friendships. This is an important topic and one that should not be taken lightly. Please continue discussing with your child what it means to be a friend, how Jesus wants us to be friends, and things your child can do if they are having a problem with friends.

The class of 3B hopes you have a wonderful weekend!

We had a lot of fun today using our new technology. We also got a new computer that could handle the needs of the smartboard and help speed things up. We were finding that programs like Google Earth really got slowed down as the computer could not handle it. Please feel free to stop by and see the smartboard if you have time. I have made a little video to show it off. It is from a site called animoto. It will be placed in the list of links along with a soduko site we talked about this morning.

What a terrific day today! So many neat and wonderful things happening in 3B!

First of all, we got a new toy to play with. It is called a Smartboard. A smartboard is like a whiteboard but more interactive. The smartboard is connected to the computer. This allows everything that is on my computer to be displayed on the board. Not only that, but the board is also touch enabled. This means that I can just the board and move things around without having to use my computer or the mouse. It was a lot of fun to play with. We are the only class in the school that has one and it will be quite a learning experience for us.

We also got a new student. Well a new student teacher. Mr. Boydan is with us for a few days this week and next week as he observes a class. He is interested in becoming a Kindergarten teacher ( a brave man!).

There was a lot of work done today as we get to the beginning of our poetry unit. We are trying to wrap a few things up in our writing before then however. In math, the students have been talking about feet, yards, tablespoons and teaspoons. Sounds a bit like a 60’s song! The students learned that 1 yard=3feet and the 1 tbsp=3 tsps. This gives us a great opportunity to use our knowledge of the 3 times tables as well as continuing our use of the solving for the unknown skill we learned about earlier this year.

Lots of exciting things happening!!!!

Hi everyone!

Last week was very hectic and I didn’t have any time to work on our blog. This week I will be adding more content and information especially with all the new things that are happening this week. Stay tuned for a special announcement tomorrow.

Anyway, I am trying out a new tool called Gliffy.com which is a brainstorming and chart creation tool. This could be a great tool to use with the class and I wanted to test how it worked with out blog. Here is a chart I made on recorders which is soemthing the students are learning to play in music class.

3B had another busy and exciting day today. We ended the day with gymnastics. It was wonderful seeing how much the students enjoyed participating in the class. They were very excited and bouncy. I myself would not have been able to move if I had tried to do any of the stretches, tumbles, twists or rolls your children were doing. It was a lot of fun to watch.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time to do the math quiz today. So the children have another night to practice their 3, 5, 9 times tables. I have told the students that these are easy marks and that, if I was going to just give them easy marks, they should all get 100%. I have given them pages to take home to practice all the times tables. These are colouring pages with the math facts on them. When they are done, they can cut the sides of the page to make flaps. These flaps cover the answers. As they practice, they can open the flaps to see if they got the answer correct.

Tomorrow, students will being starting their paragraphs again and adding in one -ly word per sentence. Today we wrote a paragraph together on penguins adding in the -ly words as we went. I also read them a paragraph I had written on the exact same topic when I was taking the Blended Style and Structure (BSS) course.

Please don’t forget to send in your permission slip for the swim trip next week. If you have not seen it yet, it should be in your child’s planner. If you cannot not find it, simply click on the document in the box.net widget on the lower right side. You can download the form from there.

A short assembly and more work on -ly words rounded out another busy day in class. We handed out some student of the month awards. We then came back and try out our skills at using -ly words in an actual paragraph. While it was slow going at first, students quickly got into it and really began to write amazingly wonderful sentences. Tomorrow, we will write a paragraph together as a class and have students add in -ly words afterwards.

We also finished off the science presentations this afternoon. As the week goes, I will be adding pictures of the buildings with some audio clips of the students answering questions about their buildings.

All in all , it was a busy day today. Don’t forget . . . Gymnastics tomorrow! Bring warm clothes to wear over your gym stuff!

As you may, or may not have noticed, there are some new notes in the box.net widget on the right side. The first one is a copy of the swim trip permission form that was sent home today in case your child’s did not make it home. The next one is one of the worksheets your child was working on today. This one was all about -ly words which help make sentences more interesting. Actually, most -ly words are a form of adverb which help describe the action of the sentence. However, there are some, like the word lonely, which are used as adjectives.

The last note was a reminder about lunches. We have had quite a few problems with students forgetting lunches. When this happens, we usually ask the other students if anyone has anything to share. However, this then means that those students don’t get to eat all their lunch. The other problem we have had, is that some students are complaining that they are still hungry.

If you would please help your child by making sure that they remember their lunch and ask the if they are getting enough to eat, that would make sure that this problem gets solved.