Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Thanks for being patient!

As I tell my students, I myself am a learner! Thank you for your patience while I explore and begin to understand the workings of iMovie and YouTube. I realized that the videos I have posted today and the Egypt video from the post before were not public videos and thus, families could not see them without signing in. (I do not wish for you to have to create accounts to view anything). My mistake! They must default as private. I have corrected that and the videos are now public! Please let me know if something I post is ever not working... I probably don't realize that it isn't and will fix it right away! Thank you!

More iMOvie Fun!

On Friday, Team 24 completed a very authentic writing piece! After reading the book, The Important Book, we used the text to springboard the following writing project. We wrote about our beloved secretary! Enjoy!

Below is the second song written by Heritage teachers and Harmony Parent- a catchy song about short and long vowels!

Another great morning at swimming! Stay tuned for pictures!
~Team 24

Sunday, 28 April 2013

Journey to the Underworld

Well, finally! The project I had first planned to post is ready! Again, this song was written by Mr. B, Mrs. Waters, Mrs. Shabaga and myself with the help of singer- songwriter Harmony Parent! Although introduced to students 2 weeks ago, when we concluded our study of Ancient Egypt, students request to hear the song daily and now families can hear it at home. Enjoy!

We look forward to meeting with Harmony again when she visits our class in May to work with Team 24 to write and preform an original song integrated into our study of the Growth and Changes in Plants.

Harmony also worked with Mrs. A. Lockhart, Mrs. Marschall and Ms. Price to create a Vowel song! I am working to put together a video to post for that song as well!

This weekend, I assessed students spelling inventories, or spelling check-up, as I refer to it with the students. The spelling inventory allows me to see which word patterns students have mastered and those they need to focus on. Through this assessment, I was able to group students in homogeneous teams to learn and practice their appropriate developmental word pattern (short vowels, digraphs/blends, long vowel and complex vowel patterns). New teams will start this week. These will be the final teams of the school year!

Hope everyone enjoyed the warm weather this weekend!
~Ms. Burland

Friday, 26 April 2013

Mapping Unit

For the past 2 weeks, students of Team 24 have been submersed in a study of our world- in particular, the continents and oceans. We often warmed up with an interactive website on the SMART board, which I have added to the blog under Our Favourite Websites (right sidebar of the blog). Through this website, we identified the continents and then the oceans. We came up with a few tips and tricks to remember a few. For instance, we noticed that Asia is the continent with the shortest name, but is the largest continent. In my best Australian accent, I would say "Down under mate!" to remind the class that Australia is UNDER the equator. The Indian Ocean we discovered was the ocean surrounded by for As: Australia, Antarctica, Asia and Africa.

We had a couple of favourite songs and poems to help us out as well! The following was a poem I introduced about the oceans. It helps to remind us of the names of the five oceans. Take a listen!

We also had a catchy tune to help us learn the continents! I discovered it on Youtube and it was a hit!

It was a short, but exciting unit! Up next? Growth and Changes in Plants! Yahoo!
~Ms. Burland

Volunteer Tea Performances

I have been fiddling, a little obsessively, with adding videos to the blog. After more failed attempts, I have figured out how to post videos on YouTube. It seems I have an account on YouTube because of my account with Google for the blog.

Check out the dress rehearsal performance and the real performance on the following links!




Enjoy!
~Ms. Burland

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Swimming!!

Again, swimming lessons went SO well yesterday! I was very much the "proud mom" snapping pictures constantly! I barely sat down! It seems it is hard to keep excited swimmers still for poses (tee hee), so some were blurry and  I had to delete them. Enjoy! Remember to click on the pictures to enlarge them.
   
Special spectators! My dad and nephew

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

I forgot to mention....!!

I am just realizing that I forgot to have students write in their agendas that library is tomorrow! I am hoping a few families will get an email when I post this, so: LIBRARY tomorrow!

Grade 3 families: I couldn't have asked for better behaviour going to and at the pool! I barely sat down, I was busy trying to capture all the fun learning taking place. I will have pictures posted by Wednesday evening. I am looking forward to another get lesson next week!

Good night!
ps. I see a full moon and am hoping that was the cause of some silly, unkind and disruptive behaviour on Monday. Today (Tuesday) was an improvement and I hope we only get better as the week goes on! :)
~Ms. Burland

Monday, 22 April 2013

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day everyone! Today Team 24 spent the day engaged in Earth Day learning activities. Through three discussions throughout the day, we discussed how Earth Day is a day to remind ourselves why and how we care for our Earth, but that caring for the Earth is something we must do everyday! This was the message of our first of two poems that we read throughout the day.

Tomorrow, we are going to take a look at the amount of garbage we produce during lunch, in order to think about how much a class produces in one week, all year and as a school of 8 classrooms. This may prompt the increased use of reusable containers for drinks and snacks.

Within a look and find, students identified 7 sources of litter:

Here students are using the letters of EARTH DAY to create as many new words are they can:

During the Earth Day math game, students reviewed place value and worked to create a larger number than their buddy. They then had to record their numbers using the greater than and less than sign, which we pretend was a hungry alligator eating the larger number.


Students using recycled magazines to create a ripped collage of the Earth. Look for these coming home.

Today, many students had difficultly choosing respectful behaviour, even after many reminders. This prompted a class discussion about expected behaviour at this point in the year and the message our actions give. For example, continuing a behaviour an adult has asked you to stop is telling the adult that you do not care about what they asked for and that your behaviour/want is more important than the need of the rest of the class. As a consequence, we did not play Earth Day bingo and some students missed out on Earth Day cupcakes and pencils.

I hope that tomorrow is a much better learning day!

Tomorrow is also the start of grade 3 swimming. Students were reminded that they are to wear their bathing suit underneath their clothing in the morning and bring with them a reusable bag with their underwear, towel, plastic bag for their wet bathing suit and a comb.

Needless to say, if students are not able to demonstrate safe and respectful behaviour at school, I will not feel that I can trust them to behaviour appropriately and positively represent our school out in public. They will remain at school with the grade 2s. I hope that this does not happen. 

I am very excited to go with the students tomorrow!

Look for a post following our first swimming lesson!
~Team 24