Ever since we made our gratitude jars back in the fall, each student in division 13 takes a moment, a few times a week, to reflect on something that he or she is grateful for. Doing so helps us appreciate the little (and big) things in your day that bring us happiness. Today we collaborated using the Adobe Voice app to create a movie of things each student is grateful for. I think you will agree that children understand what it means to be grateful and that their words are beautiful.
What are you grateful for today?
In the week leading up to Spring Break the learners in my class set forth on their "Counting Projects". This is one of my favourite activities of the year because it encompasses such rich learning opportunities. The project requires students to communicate with a partner, organize their work, record their thinking and practice mathematical skills such as thinking in groups, skip counting, repeated addition, place value and the base ten system.
The counting project involves identifying the total number of objects you counted, but also the number of groups you made, the “leftovers” and how the counting was done. It’s a great project! This year, I included another layer to the project - technology. As most of the students were already familiar with using the Book Creator App it went extremely well. It is great to see how comfortable the students are using technology as a tool to demonstrate their learning. The level of expertise has grown to the point that they are teaching not just each other how to use the technology, but they are teaching the adults in our class as well! As the weather warms up, we will be repeating this project again but doing it outside with items we find in nature. We had the privilege of taking part in a print making workshop offered by Arts Reach this week. It was a wonderful opportunity to be introduced to a new art form, to look at and talk about art, to think critically and create stories visually. The finished product was beautiful and each student was enthused and successful throughout the process! As you probably know the staff and students of Quadra School have been shining a spotlight on Kindness since early February. We have enjoyed watching the Kindness Tree in the front foyer grow with kind deeds, we have talked about kindness during assemblies and on the announcements and we have read many books on the topic. Today we expanded our Kindness theme to posters.
The posters we made are a result of three different lessons. On the first day we brainstormed specific acts that are kind. On the second day, students paired up and took pictures of the kind acts we had discussed. Finally, working with a partner, students learned to use Comic Life and made posters.
After Mr. Duchene and his students had gone, we spent more time reflecting on the book and the ways in which the main character demonstrated great kindness and self sacrifice. The students drew pictures based on the book then used Explain Everything to record their thinking. When each student had completed their recording, the students helped import the individual video clips into iMovie to create one video compilation.
We are all looking forward to Thursday's Math Games "Stay and Play". All year the students have practised their mental math, problem solving and strategy use by playing games and they are looking forward to teaching some adults how to play.
As it is not expected that all children will be able to bring an adult to our 'event', I have put together a package of Math Games for each student to take home. Each child's package is unique as it contains games that were specifically selected to support the individual child's numeracy development. I hope that if you are unable to attend the "Stay and Play" Thursday morning, you will be able to incorporate the games as a fun family activity on a weekly basis.
Below are some student made instructional videos on how to play a few of the games:
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Ms. Shawna WoodPassionate about teaching, learning, inclusion and kindness. Archives
August 2019
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