Literacy Centers This Week

This week students became more independent as they explored their interests during our Literacy Centers. Students are getting the opportunity to chose a center that they are interested in and practising a skill or an activity that we are doing in class. Many students mailed letters to Santa this week. They went to the Writing Center to write a friendly letter to Santa telling him what they want for Christmas. They learned how to address an envelope so that he receives it in the North Pole. We are hoping to receive a reply back before we go for holidays. 

Using Tagul, a few students in our room created Word Collages. They are interested in making pretty collages with words that describe Christmas.  A few friends used the Tech Club to work with some Grade 4 friends to create Christmas Word Collages for our upcoming Birthday  Party for Baby Jesus.

Our elf Tallulah kept us busy with many silly antics this week. The students love coming into the classroom each day to find her hiding somewhere in our room. Tallulah inspires our students at the Word Center. We played a making words game using letters in her name. We are writing letters to her and imagining what it would be like if we had an elf of our own. Students got to design their own elf and write about what they would do if they were an elf. 

We help our friends with questions about their KidBlog accounts

Finally, students are really enjoying being experts at using KidBlog. We are blogging from home and during our Literacy Center time. Students are learning how to navigate the website. They are creating blog posts and sharing them with their friends. We are also learning about the comments feature. This week, many students wondered how to comment on a friend's blog. We are currently teaching our friends how to comment and how to write an appropriate response to a friend's post. I am encouraging students to offer effective feedback with a follow-up question. The follow-up questions are meant to encourage more dialogue and authentic conversations. We will continue to work on this in the new year. 

Thank you to all families who blog from home with their child! It is wonderful to see your child excited to blog..and also for you to write together AND comment on your child's writing. This is wonderful for their learning!!

Tallulah made us laugh this week. 

We learn about Christmas eve and we have a class elf her name is Tallulah.DS. CC

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) December 11, 2015

😇 Today I had so much fun learning about Tagul at Tech Club. By: EB

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) December 11, 2015

Anti-Bullying Week

This week was Anti-Bullying week. As a class we read stories, watched videos and participated in a kindness activity to put our actions and our words into perspective. The paper doll kindness activity helped students to understand the impact that their words and their actions can have on their peers. 

To begin, each student worked hard to colour a picture of themselves. They were told to make it their best work and to make sure that it looked just like them. Then, we sat in a circle and had a discussion. Students were told to tear, rip, scrunch and mark up the doll of a classmate with crayon. Each rip, scrunch, tear or mark represented a hurtful word, a tease, or an unkind action. Students learned that every time they make fun of someone, tease, kick, or exclude a peer they are leaving a mark that cannot be erased or fixed so easily. After the activity we had a long discussion about how the tearing and ripping made us feel. Students used adjectives like disappointed, surprised, tongue tied and heartbroken. When we talked about how it feels when a peer kicks them, teases, laughs or excludes them, the adjectives they used to describe were very similar: sad, sorry, hurt, angry and upset. We made a word collage to represent how we felt during both activities. The paper doll kindness activity and the word collage are now posted outside of our classroom. The students are eager to share with the school what the activity taught them and how they can stop other from bullying or being unkind to their friends. 

This activity was a springboard to our poster project. Together with a partner, students used what they learned this week to make a digital posters to promote kindness. They had to share how bullying makes someone feel and how we can be better friends. They did a great job of capturing their learning and sharing their ideas on Slides. Students have asked to print their posters and they will be posting their work around the school next week. We hope that students in our school can learn from our digital posters. We hope students will stop and make better choices instead of being hurtful friends. 

Remembrance Day Visualizing

In class today, we talked about Remembrance Day to prepare for our mass on Monday morning.  We started by reading the book A Poppy is to Remember.  We learned about the war from a long time ago.  We talked about why soldiers had to go to war.  We talked about peace and freedom and what they mean to Canada.  Ask your child about what they learned about peace today.

After reading the story we wondered: Why do we need to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day? Below are our word collage answers:

We also watched a video that shows how the soldiers who were Canadian in the war are heroes... here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsCVlM1CSPU

We also read the poem In Flanders Field. The students were not shown any photos of the poem but used their imagination to visualize and picture what the poem might look like! When we visualize we picture in our minds what a story looks like. We recorded AudioBoo samples to share what we visualized. Follow the links to hear our visualizing pictures!

CW: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713213-cw-visualizing

EC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713210-ec-visualizing

FF: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713205-ff-visualizing

DL: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713181-dl-visualizing

CO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713178-co-visualizing

MD: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713169-md-visualizing

RC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713166-rc-visualizing

HH: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713168-hh-visualizing

AO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713157-ao-visualizing

WN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713159-wn-visualizing

AB: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713146-ab-visualizing

NN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713155-nn-visualizing