We are a class from British Columbia, Canada. We are a class of 19 very curious and excited students that enjoy a wide range of activities (although gym always seems to come out on top!). We are interested in technology and how we can use it in the classroom to connect with our families and other people around the world.
Hope everyone had a great weekend! It was very nice and relaxing for us. The calm before the storm! With our baby being expected around the 23rd of March, I know that there will not be many relaxing days left! As a friend just told me the other day, when it comes to children, 1+1 does not equal two! Anyway, we are very excited for the new arrival.
Here are the words for this week followed by the Spelling City link.
Here is the link to the Spelling City page. Don’t forget! If you complete the spelling test on the Spelling City website and you bring it in to me, I will give you an extra mark on your spelling test on Friday!
Next week, students will be going on a Field trip to the Planetarium. The field trip is being planned for Feb. 9th and permission forms went home today. Permission forms need to be brought back by Friday!!! If you need another copy of the permission form, you can download one from the box.net widget on the right hand side of the website.
Another reminder about the Speech Meet! We will be holding the try-outs next Weds so please help your child have their pieces ready and memorized. Students have already been telling me that they have been practicing which is fantastic.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank You! for all the help you give your child at home!
Just a reminder that tomorrow is a casual day . . . . but you have to bring a loonie!!! We are collecting money for our missions trips over the winter break. We are making one last push to raise as much money as we can! If you do not want to wear casual clothes tomorrow, please wear your uniforms!!!!
It’s been a busy week and thus the blog posts have been few and far between. My apologies and I will try to be more regular with my posts.
First of all, there is no spelling list or memory verse for this week due to the shortened week. We will continue with the spelling and memory verse next week as per usual. After this next spelling list, we will be going back to review past spelling words and start doing more work with them in sentence form.
You may have noticed that your child brought home a poem in their planner (or pocket as the case may be). It is that time of year again and we are preparing for the Speech Meet which is held annually in Abbotsford. This is a big event for us and we always do very well. However, this year is a little different for us as we have a winter break between now and the day of the Speech Meet, which will be held on March 5. As we want to get our entries in before we leave, we will be choosing the students who will be going on February 10th. Participation is optional and if your child did not bring home a poem or memory verse that may mean they did not want to do it. Please ask your child if they selected a verse or poem to practice. Poems or memory verses must be memorized. We are also working on adding expression and proper standing postures to the recitations with students standing nice and straight with no hands in their pockets and their eyes on the audience. Adding expression is always hard for students but we are looking for students who can recite with confidence using a proper volume and with excitement in their voices. On February 10th, we will hear all the students from our class who chose to do a recitation and I will pick students from there. We are allowed to send 1 poem reader and 1 memory verse reader from the Grade 2 and 1 poem reader and 1 memory verse reader from the Grade 3’s in my class. If you have any questions or you need another copy of the poem please let me know!
Science has been a frantic, “let’s finish it up” time with students trying to get all their projects and papers done and in order before the deadline. Looking at the budgets from each class, all students were able to complete their projects on time and within budget. Luckily the storekeeper was very kind and gave some great deals towards the end of the projects. Projects will be going home tomorrow, but you can see them right now by watching the video below!
Our next science unit will be on States of Matter where students will be taking a close look at the properties of air, water, and gas.
In Language Arts, we have been continuing with our Daily 3 reading program. It has really been great to be able to work with small groups of students at the same time. As I work with the students in these small groups listening to them reading and working on certain aspects of their reading and comprehension skills, the other students are focused on sharing reading with a partner, reading on their own or reading along with a Cd. It has been a great program. For our writing, we have moved into organization of stories with a focus at this point on story beginnings. We have talked about how a story beginning needs to draw in readers and make them want to keep reading. One of the students today said that it is like writing the first part of a story and putting a “to be continued” at the end of it. It makes the reader interested in how the story is going to resolve itself. We took some common events from throughout the year, and drew a picture of ourselves doing that ordinary, everyday activity. However, the students added something interesting into the pictures to make it more exciting. Now, they are working on taking the picture and crafting it into a story beginning. At the same time, we have also talked about how we need to make our first sentence interesting as well, which is always a hard thing for students to do. We talked about how they can use beginnings like “One day . . . “, “It was a warm and bright . . . “, use conversations to start a story or use a book to find a beginning that you can adapt and use in your own story. We have already been getting some very interesting story beginnings. From there, we will work on the middles of stories and endings. I also told the students that I had a crazy idea for putting all those story beginning, middles and endings together into one story but I would tell them later. I will give you a clue though:
Speaking of Oliver Jeffers, if you haven’t read any of his children’s books, I highly recommend them. They are lots of fun and the illustrations are beautiful! They have also made one of his books into an animated video, which you can see a preview of right here:
I have placed some new links on the side. You should see a link to the Reading A-Z site where students can read books online and have them read to them as well! I have also put a link to a neat site where students can make regular maps and treasure maps to play with and print out. The last link is to a neat free program where students can make cool mindmaps of anything they want. It is free but annoying pop ups to buy to program come up every once and awhile.
Sorry for not getting this on earlier. Here is your spelling list for this week:
Spelling N7 Also, don’t forget to log-in to Spelling City where you can practice your words and print out your certificate. Bring the certificate in to me to receive an extra mark on your spelling!
Your memory verse this week comes from Psalm 25:2 and is the continuation from last week’s verse:
Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.
I am showing some of the teachers how to add video to their blog and thought I would add this funny video about math. See if you can figure out what they are doing wrong!!!
I found this interesting post the other day on some ways to help your child with their writing. Whether they are writing a thank-you letter or writing their own little stories at home, you may be wondering if there are any ways you as a parent can help them while not taking over the writing for them. Here are the tips:
How To Help Your Kid’s Writing Without Fighting – Grades 3-5
Here are a few tips that might aide all parents who want to become their kid’s editors.
First of all, ever wonder why it is much easier for your child’s teacher to edit their work than you? We are their teacher, not their parent. The boundaries to our relationship are totally different, so the resistance that you see rarely appears in the classroom. In this case, we have the easy job.
– Don’t stop them to edit when they are on a roll. If they are “flowing”, stay out of their way. Correcting them as they go along is going to kill their process. Let it roll and stay clear. Go make yourself some coffee and be happy to have a few moments of time to yourself.
–Edit with care. Remember, it’s their piece of writing, not yours. Proofreading their work is one thing – changing their ideas is entirely different. Putting in periods, paragraphs, capitalization, and proper spelling are musts, but don’t mess with their ideas. Encouraging them to develop their ideas is one thing, changing them is entirely different. If an ideas isn’t clear ask questions. Help your child to think through anything that is unclear without telling them how it should read.
What helps?
Three ways to help kids to improve their writing are through the use of periods, spelling and paragraphs.
–Almost all of my students, and many adults for that matter, write sentences so long that they could cross the entire country and back. Encourage your kids to cut down sentences. Chop them up and add periods. A shorter sentence usually means that their ideas will be more clearly communicated.
–Kids in upper elementary should be able to spell many of the 100 most commonly used words. Print the list and tape it to their desk so they can use it as a reference. Circle words they misspell and do one of two things: either teach them to look up words in the dictionary or show them how to spell them (depends upon your patience level). Add these words to the list so they can use it as a reference. Alphabetize them, organize them by topic, length, whatever works for them. But don’t just throw the new information away. Use the words they learn as reference for future writing.
–As for paragraphs, I find that the sooner kids learn to separate their ideas by using paragraphs, the better their writing becomes. Also, they become more willing they are to develop the ideas about which they are writing. Pick up any book and show them that ideas are separated by paragraphs.
–Capitalization is a must. All of my students are expected to use the basic rules of capitalization. Using capitals (or uppercase) at the beginning of a sentence, a proper noun or name and always capitalizing the letter “i” when, as I say, it “sails alone”. No ifs, ands or buts – it is a must. Again, pick up a book in your home and show them that this is what published writers do, whether they are writing newspaper articles, books or reports.
–And lastly, should they type their work? I encourage kids to type their writing on a computer because at some point, they are going to have to learn how to do so. Does this replace the need for good handwriting? No way. Word processing makes editing much easier and teaches a skill that they will need in the future.
These are just a few tips that will hopefully help you to help your child become a better writer.
Thought that you might be interested in these tips. I think they are good general tips to help students out with what is a very difficult process. Writing is one of the hardest skills a student does at school. Whether it is knowing where to put punctuation, remembering to start a new paragraph, coming up with a new idea that fits with the last idea or even knowing how to convert those ideas to letters on a page; writing involves the combination of a number of different processes having to work together. I hope these tips give you some ideas of ways to help when your child comes to you asking for help.
We have many things going on this week. First of all, I don’t know if you know or have been keeping track, but we passed 8,000 website hits over the Christmas break! I think that is amazing! We are now going for 9000!
Don’t forget! If you go to Spelling City and complete the quiz, bring in the certificate and show Mr. Hancock and you can get an extra point on your spelling test this week. If you can not get the certificate to print, just get your parents to write in your planner that you have completed the quiz and I will give you the extra point.
Our memory verse for this week is an easier one. It comes from Psalm 25:1:
To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God.
I have placed the link to the Reading A-Z site on the side where the links are. Students can use this site to read, listen and answer questions about books from home. They can also record themselves reading the books so that they can hear their own reading. It is a very neat book and the students have been using it at school during our Daily 3 time. Check it out. The students know what the password is!
Friday is a busy day with Gymnastics happening. For the Grade 2’s, please send clothes for them to do gymnastics in to school with them. Students will change at school as there is more room here.
Friday is also Pajama Day at Highroad. Students may come to school in their Pajamas. If they do not wish to wear pajamas, students can wear their uniforms as usual. Even Mr. H will be wearing his cuddly, fuzzy pajamas!
Well, it’s the weekend. I don’t know about you but that first week back fairly flew by!! Anyway, it was a great week back and we got lots done. Next week will see the end of the science building unit so the students will be starting a brand new Science unit. We also have lots of other great things planned. Thanks for all your kind words and support!
Here is a video I found. For Art students have been learning basic drawing techniques using a great resource called Art Attack. The students learn to draw neat little pictures using perspective, shading and other techniques. The gentleman who created the series had a T.V show a long time ago and I was able to find them on YouTube. They are quite old but lots of fun!
I was looking around the web this morning and came across a Science program showing the building of a bridge in China. Not just any bridge! A bridge that has only been seen in pictures. It isn’t around anymore because the bridge was made out of wood. One guy in China decided to see if he could figure out how to build it and build a real one. He teamed up with a couple of other people in the United States and together they tried to rebuild the bridge in the exact same way as the picture. The problem? They can’t figure out how they built the bridge. The bridge looks like it has an arch in it (which you know is curved) but the bridge uses straight pieces of wood. How do you build an arch bridge with straight pieces of wood?
The video is quite long but very interesting.
When you are done, play the “Bridge Game” to see if you know which type of bridge would be the best one to use. Click on the picture below to start playing.
Starting this Friday, the students will be going on a series of field-trips to the Chilliwack Gymnastics club. We will be leaving at 12:45 for a 1:00 start and arriving back at the school at 2:15 on each of those Fridays. For clothing, students will be wearing their regular uniforms and changing into their gym clothes at lunch recess. For the Grade 2 students, they will need to bring a change of clothing to wear. Grade 2 students can bring a t-shirt and a pair of shorts they can use for gymnastics. Sweats are not ideal as they get warm too quickly. Jeans will also not work as they are not stretchy enough. If you have questions please come and talk to me.
I found a neat site a long time ago that has great games on it that you can use on your blog. However, I could not figure out how to get them on the blog properly. Yesterday, however, I figured it out. Enjoy the fun game. I will add more as the year goes.
Here is the link to the Spelling City page. Don’t forget! If you complete the spelling test on the Spelling City website and you bring it in to me, I will give you an extra mark on your spelling test on Friday!
