Grade 3 & 4 Teeth

Being the daughter of both a dentist and a dental hygienist, I tend to look at people’s teeth. A lot. I’ve noticed a lot of teeth of 8 and 9 year olds over the past years. Their teeth are the funniest. Their adult teeth have pretty much all come in – and they are rather large, but they just seem too big for their mouths and they haven’t really set. I totally have them in an awkward period. It makes me laugh.

This post is dedicated to the goofy toothy smiles of my grade 3s and 4s over the years.

Goofy Glasses

Every year on the first day of school I take a class picture. For the past 3 years, I’ve added the goofy glasses. I love them so much (and so do the kids). And this year was no different. Here’s to a great year!

Procedures...

in our classroom, how do we….

answer the phone? behave/sit in assemblies? go to the bathroom? get a drink? eat lunch/snacks? use agendas? use computer lab? use classroom library? listen to instructions? get dismissed? enter/leave the classroom? get attention? react to visitors? act during lit block/math block/etc? walk in the hallway? behave during indoor recess? listen to announcements? manage our lunchboxes? sharpen pencils? know where to sit/work? recycle? work in groups? make up work missed?

I went to school today. They were waxing my floor, so I cannot get in until next week probably. A little behind schedule this summer – new bricks, new walls, new paint job, new windows and SMARTboards for the entire school.

I have a lot of cleaning to do.

Doo-Wop

My life for 2 months came to an end last night. Over 85 kids involved. Painting. Constructing. Acting. Singing. Dancing. Laughing.  Amazing.

June

There are 22 days left of school. Ack!

So much to do in so little time. We started our alphabet countdown on Tuesday. So far we’ve had A (art extra), B (bonbons), C (cache-cache dans le noir) and D (dodgeball). Monday is E (English Day & EQAO)…. etc. (The last day of school is Z – zip les sacs à dos)

Things that need to happen between now and my champagne birthday (which also happens to be the last day of school this year – June 29th.)

– EQAO (3 days worth of provincial testing for my grade 3s)

– Submitting assessment data for term 3

– Our class trip to Medieval Times and the CN Tower in Toronto (with the English 3/4s)

– school Track & Field meet for junior/intermediates (I am co-organizing)

– board Track & Field meet (I am chaperoning)

– Primary Play Day (T&F for the primaries – and since I have a 3/4 split….)

– Our school production (Doo-Wop Wed Widing Hood!) – two nights (and final rehearsals and final prop/costume making!) (I am co-directing/producing/prop making/set design etc)

– Our  Medieval Fair (with the English 3/4s)

– a couple of Assemblies (including a going away assembly for Father Peter)

– a couple of masses

– I imagine there will be a talent show of some sort (my kids seem to think that they’ll organize it)

– class movies: stop-motion animations and math videos

– Father’s Day art

– one more math PD

– REPORT CARDS!

(oh, and do my regular subject teaching!)

What seems to be a crazy time of year (which it is), it is also my absolute favourite time of year. Everything comes together, the sun is shining and the kids are smarter. The end of the year is much like a giant culminating task at the end of a unit. Designed with the end in mind.

xo

Persuasive Letters

For homework this year, we have been doing weekly writing and math practice. I have homework mainly to appease parents – they don’t actually get marked on the content, but rather the responsibility. In mid-march, students wrote persuasive writing pieces for homework about how we should stop homework for the rest of the year (we are all getting tired of it). I told them if I was persuaded by 15 (the whole class) with well-written letters, I would listen to them. So far, 12 have stepped up to the challenge.

Check out some of the great persuasive letters – these are written by some of my grade 3s – unedited. It has been a long year in writing, but I am proud of them! You can clearly see that we have been working on organization and ideas (with details). We still aren’t the greatest with grammar and spelling…..

Two more grade 3 letters – Teagan’s letter and Danielle’s letter

The grade 3s & 4s came up with very valid reasons for no homework – no time for family, no time to play in the fresh air outside, home is not time to do school work, nobody to help at home in French, it’s a waste of time and it gives your hands blisters.

Once all 15 students have convinced me (I am really hoping that is soon), there will be no regularly assigned homework. Students, however, will still be expected to read nightly (in French and/or English) and are encouraged to contribute to one of our class websites (if they have Internet access at home) –Wallwisher, Bitstrips or Kidblog. I did introduce them to multiplication.com today – and they went crazy with excitement. I’ll bet many logged on tonight.

(ps. if you speak French and want to comment on our class blogs or if you just want to check out my classroom website, message me and I’ll give you to the guest password! They are just being introduced to blogging, so they aren’t so great yet….)

SMARTboards

Here it is – in all it’s glory. It isn’t exactly in the place I had asked for it, and now the kids have to sit on the cold floor instead of the warm carpet, but we’ll get over that. They sure did a number on the wall behind it though with those blotches…. but besides that…. I am in love (and so are the kids).

I’ve only had my SMARTboard for about  a month, and already it is a major part of my day. We use it for the pre-loaded notebook files like balloon popping and vortex sorting – and they love the random group generator and the applauding timer. There are thousands and thousands of lessons out there. Unfortunately (like most things in my teaching life), I have to translate the ones I like, but I am getting pretty comfortable at making some of my own. I love how my SMARTboard is hooked up to the sound field system in my room, so that when I show a videoclip or play some music, there is surround sound. I love how you can write on the board with the “markers” on any screen – especially good for working on revision and correction (and that dreaded EQAO).

In doing many internet searches on teacher blogs and SMARTboard lessons, I stumbled across a fellow grade 3 FI teacher who blogged about the wealth of support and teaching ideas that she found on twitter. Twitter?? The thing I swore that I would never use? .. .. . I decided to bite the bullet and sign up. Besides a couple of friends and three celebrities (Rick Mercer, Brent Butt, Rainn Wilson), my main followers and followees are teachers. And sure enough…. I have found tonnes and tonnes of amazing things to do on the SMARTboard. I don’t tweet about what I am doing on a regular basis (i’ll keep that to FB), I tweet questions to my teacher followers.

A couple of amazing techy things that I found via twitter…

Prezi – technically Rob told me about this, but I investigated further after reading more about it via twitter. A cooler way to make presentations. It is especially great because it is stored online.

glogster – a nifty poster-maker – thinking about having my kids make Medieval Times Glogs.

wallwisher – this is a fun little site (although slow if you use it via the smart board and kids have to wait in line – a perfect thing to put up during lunch). I posted a question at the top, and the kids add “sticky notes” with their answer or opinion. I will probably eventually incorporate this somehow into other subject areas, and have them post stickies on a computer, rather than the touch keyboard.

dropbox – I love my macbook pro, but I don’t really want to unplug my thinkpad from my smartboard to plug in my mac to show something cool. I downloaded dropbox on both my mac and my pc at school and I save all of my files and bookmarks easily – no burning CDs and no memory stick. Bliss.

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I have been letting my kids stay in during recess to play with the SMARTboard and get used to it. I also shared some hilariously fun sites with them. They love to visit places around the world.