While there was lots of learning that happened today, sometimes, from time to time... it is equally important to enjoy the sweeter things in life... Thanks for sharing! Got something cute to show me? Want to make me smile? ... send me an email here and check back to see when it gets posted :)
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Draft of tipi for Tribu Iyummmba It is always easier to figure out what we have done today with a few pictures as reminders. For the most part, we worked on our tipi drafts. Mme has the canvas' all cut out and waiting to be painted at home and will be ready to roll on these tomorrow and throughout the week. Please bring a paint smock/shirt if possible to school for this activity. We also started our unit on building things that move - using k'nex! Some groups were flying, others had a bit to get started but all seemed engaged. Tomorrow we will be cleaning desks. Math tests went home today to be signed and corrected on a separate piece of paper. Students - please make sure you are doing all of the work for the questions you didn't receive full marks for, not just providing the answer. Some of you still have a Letter to Medalta to finish. We will also be doing some creative writing about our experience there this week. Should be a super fun month! I hope to have lots of fun things planned. I introduced a historical visual journal to you as well, so hopefully your minds are racing of all the cool things you could be doing for this - even maybe youtubing it to see what you come up with ... this will be our way of demonstrating our knowledge of the early settlers to Alberta. ... on the horizon - upon learning about Head-Smashing-In today we will be doing a trip there. We will also be going to play water polo later this month! Wow! I don't know what it is?! The warm weather? The longer days? The bright sunny skies of Alberta? Or these amazing students! But the days are flying by and I can't help but think of how awesome of a job I have every day (although I am sure some days you might not see that, I do believe it every day).
Today was another whirl wind day. From the moment we got let into class (man, what an awesome feeling to have so many students excited to jump into this room every day!) We started on our pictograph stories, and well let me tell you... these were better than I could have ever planned. Sometimes less parameters gives more creativity - and you all really truly shone in this assignment of creative writing and story telling. And to think... I wasn't going to do this assignment. At your request, I have invited over Mrs. Lloyd from Hat High that taught us how to do the Dream catchers and she is so excited to hear your stories and see what you come up with for the Tipi. We also came up with some reasons why learning at Medalta was important to us - and while on the surface it is easy to say 'it was fun' or 'because it was cool' it was really Awesome to see you understand how special it is to actually get to talk to an Artist, or see where this stuff was/is made. Not every student gets this opportunity and I am really pleased with your idea webs. Tomorrow we will start writing. Once we finish our letters, Mr. Mason is going to join us in the classroom and we will share with him! He is definitely looking forward to it. Wow! With Spell-a-thon today it just flew by! Congrats to all of you and especially those that are moving on to the spelling bee!!! How incredible is that! And if you did not move on i really appreciate how hard you worked to get the mark you did and raise the funds you did! I am so very proud of all of you, you blow me away constantly!!!
Alright - so today when you walked in you saw the frame work of a tipi - you also learned that YOU will be drawing on it! How excited am I? It's possible I am more excited than you are!!! Tomorrow we will start writing our stories that we will be sharing on our tipi as a way to discover First Nations culture. We will be going through culture and heritage and your piece of the canvas will describe that part of the unit using pictographs. It is going to be AWESOME!!! Many of you need to finish your Math - Pg 45 - 52, and Francais - corrections and up to pg 34 in stories! I have posted your name on the Homework site if you should have your math and french at home and working on it tonight. There is no Dictee and spelling this week, just what you did today so please get these done in place of studying for dictee later this week! If you are not done your pointilism, this also needs to be finished!!!! We are moving on. You will be in silently at recess and at lunch if it is not done for tomorrow!!! A demain mes amis! In light of recent Healthy Habits campaign - Free Apps of the day that I had to share : eat and move - shows how the foods you eat affect your body - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/eat-and-move-o-matic/id522849906?mt=8
and SMASH Your Food https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/smash-your-food/id542351447?mt=8 - shows you how much sugar and salt and all that good stuff is in your food by smashing it in a lil machine. Wow! What an awesome experience! Today we learned about the old factory - the hycroft china factory. We saw where women sat for 8 to 10 hours a day trimming and sanding cups, we saw where men poured the sand, where the molds for toilets where, the spooky coffee room. We saw boots and shoes... as people just left for work one day and never came back and it has all been left as is. The friends of Medalta hope to fix it up over time, and use this area as the education area - where they can really expand on the industrial revolution component of Medicine Hat's role in development. We also had our Stars assembly at Medalta today which was pretty cool. I saw engaged students that genuinely were excited for their peers (not that they aren't at other times but today it just seemed a bit specialized and focused). This afternoon we got to visit two artists: Mary and Harvey. We saw how they work, what they do for a living, what they think about, what inspires them. We also learned that beyond great artists they require many other skills to be that artist. And we also learned that they are pretty fascinating people. ... alas the week has come to an end and next week I hope to start using some of the great information we have to discover more about Alberta. We will dive into our journals and pull them apart - and do some great writing. I also hope that we can start writing about what this experience has meant to us and why - further than " it was fun " since I think that will be integral to its continued success. Cheers and don't forget that we have a spelling test this Tuesday and then Thursday we will do some Medalta vocabulary - as promised. I will be away Monday and Tuesday so I hope you can take that time to recover from your packed week at Medalta. :) Oh yes and any pictures parents were able to take if you could please send them to me Discovering the outside of the kilns Well Friends! Today would not have been possible without the enormous help from PARENTS! Thank you so so so very much for the parents' help!!!! You were absolutely integral to today's success! AND every day of course! There are a lot of things I could never even imagine doing without you, and I'm not sure I can really ever thank you enough...thank you thank you thank you!! Today we had four main stations and objectives. And while the task may have been to draw something, the outcome or the objective was to be able to critically analyse that drawing/object, or to demonstrate your abilities to compare two things that are very much the same but very different. I am very excited to spend some time next week and over the next few weeks being able to use all that we really absorbed today! I saw some incredible drawings, some excellent explanations using things like arrows and things. I also saw students writing that would normally rather jump in circles! I am really proud of the amount of work these students are putting into their journals and ultimately their education. It may seem like a 'week off' to those that are not there - but to those students, I am sure they go home absolutely wiped, exhausted and mentally drained because I know how hard every single student has been working! I come back to school and think oh we haven't read this story yet or oh we really need still do this, but the reality is that these students have so much from this week. I have seen more writing in the past week that is genuine and authentic (other than the end of the day :P) than I have any monday I have asked for a journal entry. I have seen curiosity and understanding that can't be demonstrated on a worksheet, and connecting theories to real world numerous times in ways that just can't be seen or experienced in the classroom. I look forward to tomorrow!!! It will be another day of getting to know some experts! While the wind tried to get us down, we kept on trucking! Students switched activities today. It was much colder outside but they still had a blast on the hike. Saw lots of resources and were able, by the end of the walk, to really differentiate between man made and natural resources. We even identified how important all those resources are, and sometimes, how harmful they can be. We talked about finding the beauty in something that may not be beautiful at first - like the wind. On our walk we learned about the inondation of 2010 and how the water rose, and why some bridges were destroyed and why this one we are standing on was not washed away. This afternoon, we did some more work with pottery, learning about coil pots. We also learned the history of the pots, before the pottery wheel, and how the pottery wheel then came to be. We also learned about a very important decorator - Rose. You guys owned that place today! If all these students take away from this experience is the ability to journal and visual journal their experiences and their learning, I think it would be well worth their time. However... they have definitely already learned more than just journaling, although WOW is that ever coming a long ways! So while I am jumping from group to group today I couldn't help but notice some common things amongst this group of radically intelligent students. Firstly, the questions they are asking are absolutely unreal. They are able to ask relevant questions derived from genuine interest and curiosity about what their speaker is explaining to them. Normally in a classroom we say "questions?" as though there is background or further information for students to ask questions- which typically, there is not. However, at Medalta, rarely does one have to say "questions" to get questions. Students were asking questions to further be able to label their drawings, to be able to explain their drawings to a partner, and to be able to flip back and be able to understand what they had done and where they had been. Students didn't just ask questions for the fun of it, or because I asked them to (although this is how we got their initially) but really to grasp concepts that sort of just hang there if not authenticated. We learned about Simple Machines - and how they really truly made work easier at Medalta. The expressions of interest alone indicate to me that the students are hooked. There is no need to ask them to pay attention, to get on task, there wasn't even a necessity to ask them to draw - it just happened. We learned about gears and levers, and even really grasped why in the world a screw makes a simple machine, and how it contributes to a more complex machine. We learned new terms, and lots of vocabulary. Some of us went on a walk and discovered natural resources. We learned about the cotton wood. This tree was a common thread throughout our day - beginning with the brick work by M. Marshall, who coincidentally - and brilliantly identified by several students, also has done work at Connaught. Students then got to relate this knowledge even on our bus ride home, becoming more aware of their surroundings and noticing the brickwork as we headed back to school. How cool?!!! I wanted to make mention of how incredibly engaged these students were all day long. Guest speakers were treated with respect and even greatly admired. I am incredibly proud to be spending the week with this class at such an amazing historic site. Tonight - if you get the chance - check out who in the world Harry Veiner was... why is he important to our history?? |
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January 2015
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