Lent Project Delivery

Over the past few weeks during this season of Lent, our class has worked hard to promote kindness in our school and in our community. Our goal was to spread some kindness to our local Food Bank by collecting canned food to benefit the people who live in our community. The students planned and organized this initiative in a number of ways. We started talking about doing something nice for our school during Kindness Week. We watched videos and read stories about the boomerang effect and how spreading kindness makes our world a better place.

We decided to promote this to the school by writing daily announcements and created posters to spread our message. We read a few stories to inspire us, then we created posters on Slides to collaborate with a friend and share why kindness is cooler.

As the weeks went on, our collection of canned food slowly grew. To further inspire others, students were interested in creating their own commercials and share on YouTube. We wanted to use the Green Screen to make videos to promote our project to the school so we made a plan on Slides. 

The students did a great job of following what good speakers do while filming their first ever commercials. We posted our commercials to YouTube. To view each of our commercials, follow this link to student's KidBlog accounts. Each commercial is posted to the students' blogs. Mr. Gautreau watched each of our commercials and left us a comment. Students loved to see their principal giving them feedback!

And finally, today Sylvie from the Partage Vanier Food Bank came to visit our school to pick up the boxes of food just in time for Easter this weekend. She was so appreciative of what the students did over the past few weeks to collect so much food. She thanked us and we helped pack the boxes for her to bring to the Food Bank today. It felt great to share with her that our final total was 316! We hope this helps many families in our community over the Easter weekend. We reflected on the project today during our Talking Circle. Students shared their favourite memories and what they enjoyed most about the project. We posted some of our ideas on the Padlet below. Please feel free to add your own thinking if you think there is more to share. We also added a few photos and links to reflect on this amazing experience. Well done Grade 3!!

Created with Padlet

GRA Week 5: Going Places

This week's read aloud for the Peter H. Reynolds Author Study was the book Going Places. We read the book as part of Week 5 of the project.

Going Places Talking Circle

This week students interacted with the story in many fun ways. After reading the story, students had many personal connections to share. As we chatted, we wondered what the author's message was. We decided to hold a Talking Circle to discuss what Peter Reynolds wanted us to learn or what he wanted to teach us through his book Going Places. Luckily, I was able to capture some of our student's thinking by recording part of our Talking Circle on the AudioBoom app. Have a listen to what some student's believe the author's message was!

listen to ‘going places talking circle’ on audioBoom

Peer-to-Peer Feedback

Students wrote about what they believed Peter Reynolds wanted us to learn from the story. They also added some text-to-text and text-to-self connections as well. We continue to be inspired by the messages in his stories. He continues to inspire us to use our imagination, be creative and show grit even when we feel that something is too challenging or too difficult. Going Places also taught us about the importance of working together, cooperation and to think outside of the box!

Students shared their ideas and had the opportunity to read with partners. This allowed them to share their thinking and receive peer-to-peer feedback. Peer feedback is one of our goals this year. We will be using oral and written peer feedback to help improve our writing and expand our ideas!

Students received Twitter messages from classes who are also participating in the Global Read Aloud.

e.s i learn i don.t have to make stuff the same as the others. #GRA14

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 6, 2014

@MrsCiampaClass we think @peterhreynolds message in "Going Places" was that you can, team up, be creative and do things differently. #gra14
— Mrs.Mason (@MrsMasonOCSB) November 5, 2014

.@MrsMasonOCSB @peterhreynolds TO says: the video is shows grit because thy wrct together and didnt give up . #GRA14
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 7, 2014

@MrsMasonOCSB @peterhreynolds HH says: I like the video it was nice THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! #GRA14
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 7, 2014

@MrsMasonOCSB @peterhreynolds wn:I agree with your class because it looks the same as the book going places
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) November 7, 2014

@MrsCiampaClass We compared the book with this @peterhreynolds video http://t.co/KgOyhZpMA6 - check it out. #GRA14 #GRApeter
— Mrs.Mason (@MrsMasonOCSB) November 5, 2014

One other way that student's interacted with the book this week was through a shared-Padlet with a Grade Three class we have collaborated with before. Students used the AudioBoom app to record themselves reading their connections to the story Going Places. Last year, many students became experts since they used the AudioBoom app all year long. This week, our Tech Experts helped friends who are not familiar with the app. They demonstrated their expertise and helped a friend to record, take a picture and save the AudioBoom recording. We have a number of Tech Experts in our room so we are fortunate that students can leverage their expertise to assist others to become experts on this app too. After recording their AudioBoom, we added our readings to a shared-Padlet with Mrs. King's Grade Three Class. Students in both of our classes shared their connections, predictions and thinking on various iPad apps. Mrs. King's class used Pic Collage and Tellagami on the Padlet. On Friday, we took time to read and listen to the thinking posted on the Padlet. This shared-Padlet allowed our classes to collaborate in a truly interactive way. There are so many great ways to use Padlet. Collaborating with another class provides students with so much rich dialogue and a variety of opinions about what Going Places can mean to different people. 

Created with Padlet

I am very thankful that my students have had the opportunity to participate in this amazing Global Project this far. We only have one more week to go. This project has truly inspired my students and I am happy to see how much they've grown in their learning already!

GRA Week 4: Ish & Sky Colour Connections

This week, we completed Week 4 of the Global Read Aloud Project. Hard to believe we are past the 4 week mark already. Students are very engaged in the project and look forward to seeing what new Peter Reynolds story we will read next. This week as we began reading Sky Color (spelled coloUr with a "U" in Canada), students quickly made many text-to-text connections with other books we previously read during this project. Primarily, their text-to-text connections came from the story ISH.

After reading Sky Color, students made many connections to our on-going discussion on showing grit. In the story, they said that Marisol showed grit by not giving up on creating a sky - even when she did not have any blue. We decided to see what skies can look like without using the colour blue. Have a look at our fun sky colour creations!



In Language, our current focus is writing descriptive paragraphs using adjectives. To prepare students with their ideas for writing, we had our first Talking Circle of the year. Our Talk Circle focus was on Explaining our text-to-text connections and agreeing or disagreeing with the ideas shared.

The Talk Circle helped us to listen to the connections of our peers. We explained our ideas and shared our similar or different viewpoints. Ish and Sky Color have many similarities and the Talk Circle helped us to come up with ideas for our paragraph writing. A lot of rich dialogue was shared - excellent job friends!

Students used the Talking Circle to help them write about the text-to-text connections between Sky Color and Ish. They all believed that the stories are similar. We worked hard on our paragraphs. Students are using a paragraph checklist to keep them on track. The checklist helps them to edit their work to see if they have all of the criteria. The paragraph writing format has inspired many students to write detailed sentences. Adding adjectives helps us to be more descriptive.

Some students had the opportunity to share their work with friends. After writing, we read our paragraphs on the iPad app 30 Hands. Students are learning to use this app to create slideshow presentations featuring photos and audio clips of their work. We hope you enjoy our Sky Color and Ish paragraph reading. We are wondering if anyone has similar text-to-text connections like we found? We are also wondering if anyone has different text connections than what we wrote about? Please share with us on our Twitter page!

Division and Fractions!

Students continue to work on understanding how to multiply and divide numbers. We are problem solving and coming up with different ways to solve a problem. Students are learning strategies from their peers. Excellent peer-to-peer modelling of different strategies. 

Together we are using skip counting, equal groups, array and number sentences to show our work.  

Some strategies we use to solve a math problem.

Students held a Talking circle to discuss different math problem solving strategies. We read a question as a class and decided the words we should use when explaining our math strategy (For instance, I think, I can, I use, I disagree with, etc).

It was great to hear all of the different strategies. It was also nice to see that students were visualizing the shared strategies in their head while their friends were explaining the circle. Well done grade 2! 

After our Talking Circle, students completed another question. They had to use pictures, numbers and words to solve their problem. Have a look at some of the ways we know how to solve a problem! Below is a sample math problem we solved as a class. Have your child explain what strategy they used to solve the math problem!

Can you name the strategies we used to solve the math problem?

Math Tweets!!

CW says: I learned that 25 ÷ 5 = 5 and 5 x 5 = 25. It means the same thing!!!!!
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 13, 2014

RC says: 1/3 means: The top is how many you colour in. The bottom is how many objects you draw!!
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 13, 2014

RC says: Talking Circles help us to learn different strategies!

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 15, 2014

CW says: If you need help solving a math problem you can think about it, or ask a friend or the teacher to help you.

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 15, 2014

CO says: Math is great when people help you! When people don't know what to do in math they ask a friend or read the question again!

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 15, 2014

FF says: In math we divided 20 divided by 5 = 4!

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 15, 2014

AO says: In the talking circle we talked about math strategies we can use to solve math problems.

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 15, 2014

Persuasive Open House Letters!

Taking turns in our circle to read our letters.

Tomorrow is the day! All week long we have been preparing to persuade our families to come to our Open House on Thursday May 8th from 4:30-7:00! Tomorrow is the day and we hope that we have done enough to convince you. We have been challenged by Mrs. Swan's grade 3 class...so we want to be the class winners. We hope to see you in our room 202 tomorrow evening!

Our persuasive Open House letters are complete and we have sent them home to you today. Your child is very excited to read them to you! Students have also recorded their persuasive reading on the AudioBoo app. The more we use this app in our room, the more we can see that many MORE students in our room are becoming AudioBoo app experts. Very exciting! A Tech Expert means students are able to use the app on their own AND teach others how to use it too. We look forward to showing you how much we know tomorrow.

Persuasive talking circle with the Grade 3's

Students also got to read their persuasive letters to Mme. Paradis and Mrs. Swan's grade 3 class today too! We held a Talking Circle to share our letters with both classes. All of the students had really convincing arguments and reasons. Mme. was very impressed with how well we all wrote.

You can listen to all of our AudioBoo persuasive recordings below.

listen to ‘NN open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘AW open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘dl open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘ec’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘RC Open House’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘HH & AB &WN Persuasive writeing’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘PE open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘co opin house.’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘open house ao’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘AB open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘FF open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘KI open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘open house by HH’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘open house by WN’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘MD open house’ on Audioboo

Talking Circle in French Class!

Using kind words en français in French class with Mme. Milic. What does a Talking Circle look and sound like? Students are doing a great job at waiting their turn and adding on to the thinking of others. Have a look at the link below to see our class participate in a Talking Circle!

Inferring and Talking Circles

We continue to focus on inferring when reading. Students have even inferred while reading various Holy Week stories as the week has gone on. They are making great connections and using what they already know to infer the hidden meaning in a story. Another important part of inferring is when we infer what the author's message is. Author's message is when we think about what important topic or message the author wanted us to learn after reading a story. We explored this when reading a story called "Oliver Button is a Sissy". First, students inferred what Oliver might be feeling. Next students inferred why the boys might be treating Oliver like they had in the story. At the end, we thought about what the author's message might be. What did the author want us to learn from this story? We did a Talking Circle to explore this as a class. The students had so many great ideas to share. We recorded a small part of our circle on AudioBoo that you can hear below. We will continue to infer and use a Talking Circle for class discussions as the weeks go by. We are working on being good listeners during this great talking session.

listen to ‘Best of All Talking Circle’ on Audioboo