Grand Tour

Tomorrow is Library, and this is your weekly blog post reminder.

Interviews were, as always, fascinating. It's always great to hear how the other half of the student day looks and I got some pretty interesting tales out of school.

For those of you who skipped this round, I thought it might be good to give you a peek into what the classroom looks like of late:

Here are the mittens we made using oil pastels and watercolours to highlight patterning. It works both as an art activity and a mathematics one:

Here, students are showing the numbers 1-10. Of course, these are SKs so many of them already know 1-10, but numeracy has so many facets. An activity like this is good practice connecting numbers to objects and looking at the relationships between numbers as well as building counting skills.

Many of our numeracy activities came to a head on 100th Day. In this display, you can see the finished products of several students' 10 charts, as well as some of our practice working with patterns and tally marks in groups of ten. It's important to show students that ten can look many different ways in order to help ground the number concept. 

You can also see the reflection students wrote together answering the question: "If I could have a hundred of anything, I would want..."

Many students said they would want 100 diamonds or jewels, but there were some less expected answers too. My favourite was Felix's 100 Salmon (I think they were for eating).

You can also see the 100th Day vests students worked hard on posted up in the hall: 

We've posted a selection of photos from the Scientist in School Magnet workshop day. Students are fascinated and excited to see themselves at work and (hopefully, just like this blog) it helps them remember the learning as well. 

Although some students have insisted that their mommies really do need these photos at home.

The interest in maps continues as well. This display shows student work and highlights the features that maps contain. Students continue to draw their own maps and put together puzzles of different maps as well.

This student made a map by using plasticine to create the outlines of the countries 

Our Amaryllis is blooming nicely:

One bloom on Wednesday

This morning, there are four

And, as you've seen, our drama centre has become a space station. The feature attraction is this amazing giant box, which is slowly becoming a rocketship:

Students looking at images of the sun.

We covered the roof with tin foil, cut out some portholes and a door. 

Construction creates opportunities to solve problems. Creating the roof of the rocketship required many trials and errors. I started out thinking of it as a cone, when we should have been thinking of it as a square based pyramid. The somewhat messy result was covered by a funnel and aluminum foil.

As teachers, it's important to model these kinds of open ended problems because it helps show that not all problems have simple answers. (At least this is what I tell myself.) One of our biggest goals is to help students become resilient in the face of challenges. Solving open ended practical problems like these provides many opportunities. 

When possible we try to let students take the lead. Today, they solved the problem of creating the handle for the rocketship's door by suggesting hole punching the tubing and tying the string so that the handle was more sturdily attached.

It's not pretty, but it works. That handle isn't coming off.

We also provide opportunities for students to answer their own questions. This experiment was the result of a student asking why there are craters on the moon. Students played with dropping marbles into flour from various heights and observed the results. 

This post has ballooned somewhat, but I think it's clear that learning is happening in Room 202.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

P.S. Another result of the interviews is post-dated inspiration. I've been trying to think what our next cooking activity should be and, although we've missed Pancake Tuesday, I think Pancakes are great anytime. If there are parents who are able to volunteer to support this activity, please let me know your availability.  With a griddle and some squeeze bottles, it should be quite easy to manage.