Beyond The Desk – Page 130 – The Class Blog for Mr. Hancock's Grade 5/6 Class

My Blog Post on Wild Animals and Mammals

March 4, 2008 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

This is another blog post written by a guest speaker. Here is another student from 3B to give us some interesting facts about animals.

The communication of any creature is amazing, for instance a bee dances. Before whatever kind of animal eats its prey, they need to catch its prey. Cold and warm blooded breed and then the animal baby body is born. Larva and gills can be found in fossils. In the Galapagos, many animals adapt and migrate. The vibration of the eel is slithery! You might think that reptiles don’t have any scales, webbed feet or anything…WRONG they do…LOTS! Many woodland creatures and amphibian species are nocturnal. Something I wonder maybe in a dream some anemones have antennas?

Spelling and New Poems

March 4, 2008 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

Well, it was a good day here in 3B. We got a lot done. With report cards around the bend, we are busy finishing up work and doing a few tests. Students will have a reading test on Tuesday and a Social Test on Weds.

We had another round of our Poetry Tournament today. It was “The Voice” against “Mother Doesn’t Want a Dog”. It was very close today, a nail-biter but Mother Doesn’t Want a Dog came out victorious by 1 vote (10-9).

As for the voting here on the website, it looks like “How to Eat a Poem” has continued it’s winning streak. Today, we have two other poems for you to vote on (vote is actually one of our spelling words today! Cool!).

We have “Squirrels In My Notebook” against “Listen to the Mustn’ts”.

ListentotheMustnts

squirrels

Ms. Cull was our guest poetry reader on Wednesday and gave a wonderful rendition of the poem “Courage”. She used a lot of great expression, fluency and rhythm in her reading to make her poem interesting and meaningful. Have a listen:

Courage

To finish off, I have added the permission form for our trip to Science World in the box on the right side. Simply click on the docuement and choose where you want it to download it.

Spelling

been feel

capture diary

broke history

deed dozen

exhaust sorry

inspect pear

practice criticism

expect else

vote fifth

equip yesterday

More Haikus

March 3, 2008 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

Here are some more haikus by another student in the class. Enjoy!!

Valentine is cute

Valentine is loveable

I love valentine

by.S.W

My Friends

FRIENDS I have lots of friends

My friends like to laugh out loud

My friends are so nice

by.S.W

100th day and more poetry please!

February 29, 2008 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

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.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://bubbl.us/sys/view.swf?sid=82854&pw=yaig/EznkEDRMMTl2MzRLWWZ5RlI2QQ" width="450" height="450" wmode="transparent" /]

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.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/GUHLa1qSy24" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Poetry and Spelling

February 25, 2008 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

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

Student Haiku’s

February 25, 2008 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

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

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.

Science Projects

February 22, 2008 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

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.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/47bee4375e2934bc" width="530" height="430" wmode="transparent" /]

We also had a very special visitor yesterday.

geronimo

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!

Showing Off!

February 20, 2008 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

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.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/47bbc4f138a006d2" width="530" height="450" wmode="transparent" /]

An Amazing Day

February 19, 2008 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

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!!!!

Test with New Tool!

February 18, 2008 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

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.

test

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