Beyond The Desk

As it was a short week, we didn’t get to hear much from this amazing group. However, it was a group I really wanted to highlight especially since my choir had sung one of their songs a couple of years ago, which was what introduced me to this group.

The group is called Rajaton and they are an a capella group from Sweden. They are absolutely amazing and we talked a little bit this week about how hard it is to sing a capella because of how difficult it is to stay in tune without any instruments playing with you. The singers have to sing in perfect harmony, in the correct key and make beautiful music without the help of any instruments. I think the students enjoyed the group and appreciated their talents. Here is the song my choir sang, done much better by Rajaton.

And here is one for Mr. Neudorf, who I hear enjoys this song.

We are well into our Science unit on Habitats and Communities. We have been doing a lot of learning and having a lot of fun talking about animals and all the different habitats around the world. We have been focusing on the main habitats including:

• deserts
• rainforests
• forests
• oceans
• arctic tundra

We are just now finishing off a major projects where groups of students each worked on researching and creating a poster about a specific habitat. Following that, students research an animal that lived in that habitat and created a snapshot of that animal with information about the animal. This snapshot will be added to the poster. The posters look wonderful and I will take pictures to add to the blog shortly. Our next adventure will be to learn about food chains and food webs. We will then have students creating their own habitats, which is always fun to watch.
Once we are done learning about food webs and food chains, students will be having a mid-unit test. Study notes will be put on the blog to help students prepare.

Yesterday, we watched a Bill Nye video on wetlands. The wetlands are an unique habitat that we didn’t get a chance to study. So, instead, I thought we would watch Bill Nye. It’s been awhile since Bill Nye was on TV but his videos are still great and lots of fun to watch while being educational.

And just because I love Bill Nye so much, here’s another one on space and the recent exploration of Jupiter.

In gym, we often warm up by stretching our muscles. While we do that, we talk about the muscles we are stretching and why it is important to stretch them. However, it’s really kind of hard to explain how our muscles work. While I was surfing around, I found this great graphic which shows exactly how the muscles work and interact with our brain to create our movements.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten.

I was not at school today due to the fact that I was giving a couple of presentations in Kamloops on Technology in the Classroom, which I happen to know just a little bit about. 🙂

However, I did not forget about Music Fridays! This week we did La Boheme. La Boheme was an extremely popular opera by Giacomo Puccini. It remains very popular today among opera houses around the world and is probably the only opera I can say that I truly like. In fact, as I was telling the students on Monday, I was actually in the production of La Boheme when the Edmonton Opera performed it. I was in the boys choir at the time and they needed boys to perform the roles of the street urchins and the more well-to-do boys. I auditioned and got one of the street urchin parts. The music wasn’t too difficult, I got to run around the stage in a costume and I got paid for it. It was a lot of fun and I still have fond memories of rehearsing and performing on the big stage. In fact, I still have the program and music from that production. Anyway, that was our music for the week and, I have to say, I was very impressed by the student’s reactions to it. They really understood that, even if we don’t like the music, we can still appreciated the work and creativity that goes into doing something like this.

Here is a clip from the Madrid production. I am not in this one. 🙂 If you watch all the way to the end, you might find a couple of other surprises!

We have a couple of short weeks happening so we will have a bit of a change in the usual way we do things. For spelling and memory verse, we will be doing the test and memory verse on Oct. 17.

Here are the spelling words for this week:

Spelling 0-2 by ihancock

Here is the link to the Spelling City list. Remember to bring me your spelling practice test for an extra bonus mark on your spelling test.

Our memory verse for this week is from Psalm 139:7-8
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

Did you get the pun I just made???? Didja??? 🙂

Anyway, I thought I would start something new that I hope I will remember to do every Friday. 🙂

I love music. It is a very important part of my life and I enjoy a wide variety of music. I have sung in choirs or conducted choirs every year since I was in Grade 2. And one of the things I found when I started teaching was that children were not often introduced to the full range of music that has been created, composed and performed over the centuries. Thus was started the Music of the Week. Each week, I will introduce a new artist or style to students in the hopes that it will expand their ideas and appreciation of music and what it can be.

Update: I did this post after a long week. Please excuse the errors in the post which have now been correct. Even I make mistakes. 🙂

For Music Fridays, I will share one or more videos, if I can, of the artist we have been listening to in the week prior. This week we listened to a group named, They Might Be Giants, who did created a brilliant and fun album of songs all about Science. Here are three videos from their album:

Bonus Video!

I saw this today and thought it was a lot of fun.