It's hard to believe that the summer break is already upon us but we have had a wonderful year learning together in room 10. Next week we only have school on Monday and until 11:21 am on Tuesday. Wishing you all a relaxing, fun, and safe summer!
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In the past few weeks, room 10 students have been lucky to have a couple of in-class field trips and special presentations in our classroom. The first event was a Teacher's Pet Creative Art Series lesson on Canadian artist Ted Harrison, and specifically his prairie inspired artwork. Students followed step-by-step instructions from the Teacher's Pet representative and created their own acrylic on canvas prairie masterpieces. We thought that these would make wonderful Father's Day gifts! To check out some examples of our finished pieces, go to the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link. Teacher's Pet - Ted Harrison Inspired Prairie PaintingsAlberta Science Network - Scientists & Engineers-in-the-Classroom- Building Things PresentationThe second classroom visit was from The Alberta Science Network (ATN) and their Scientists and Engineers-in-the-Classroom program. "Mr. T" (Also Known As Taorid Ashiru), an ALTALINK employee, presented on the topic of Building Things and the real-life applications of this unit from our grade one science curriculum. Under the direction and guidance of Mr. T, the students of room 10 took on the roles of engineers, architects, and construction labourers as they built various structures. Their first challenge was to use toothpicks and play dough to individually design and build a structure that would hold a full can of Coca Cola. In the second challenge, students had to work together in groups to build LEGO animals from a blueprint, using provided LEGO materials. New ArtPablo Picasso, our Artist of the Month for June, certainly didn't make conventional artwork and for our art this week, we were inspired by Picasso to bend the rules a bit. Check out our Picasso inspired self-portraits (under the "Artwork" link in the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery) that were made without using any circles or curved lines and pretty much any colour imaginable! This past week we began our science exploration into Building Things. We began our investigation by building bridges out of card-stock paper and then testing them for strength by putting a pile of small, hard-cover books on them one at a time until the bridge either collapsed or we ran out of books. See below for some of the students' designs. We extended our learning by building structures from Popsicle sticks and seeing if they were stronger or weaker than the paper bridges and then we had a building and design challenge. In this challenge, each student was given one piece of white paper and with that single piece of paper and only glue, string, and tape to use as bonders, they had to design and build an object or structure that could be used for a functional purpose. They had 30 minutes to plan and build their design and then they shared their creations and demonstrated how they were used with the class. They came up with some creative and impressive pieces! Please see below for some examples. Picasso Inspired Cubist Self-PortraitsWe are excited to learn about Pablo Picasso for our last Artist of the Month this school year. This week we looked at a type of art pioneered by Picasso called cubism. Cubism is a style of art where all sides of an object are shown in a single picture. We tried our hand at self-portraits in the cubist style. For more examples, check out the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link. "If you’re not from the prairie, you’ve not heard the grass, you’ve never heard grass. In strong summer winds, the grains and grass bend and sway to a dance that seems never to end. It whispers its secrets—they tell of this land and the rhythm of life played by nature’s own hand. If you’re not from the prairie, you’ve never heard grass." David Bouchard During our ongoing science investigation into the needs of plants and animals and specifically small, crawling and flying animals, room 10 students learned about the diverse plant and animal life (including insects) that live right in our own backyard and call the prairie grasses, prevalent throughout Alberta, home. We read a beautiful prairie poem by David Bouchard entitled "If You're Not From the Prairie..." and then compared farmland and commercial prairie land to natural and wild prairie grasses and plants using the book "Plant a Pocket of Prairie" by Phyllis Root. Students made wild prairie paintings from a ground level perspective with a diverse variety of plant and animal life present. They then made farmed prairie land paintings with hay bales and grass abundant but a clear absence of the diverse plant and animal life present in the prairie's natural state (check out more examples of these student paintings under the "Artwork" link in the "Spring Art" gallery). Which type of prairie landscape do you prefer? Great Books About the PrairiesAARCS VisitToday we were lucky to have AARCS (Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society) come and visit and bring some of their rescue dogs with them. AARCS was founded in 2006 and is comprised of a network of individuals and families concerned about the welfare of abandoned, abused, and surrendered animals in the province of Alberta. They work to rescue and rehabilitate these animals and give them good care and new homes. For more information, please check out their website: www.aarcs.ca. This past week our students were lucky to have some local high school students come and facilitate a sports day with various activities that they had designed for the kids to complete. Students had fun getting active and were then treated to a special lunch. We had a great day and thank the high school students for running it! Growing PlantsWe have been patiently growing some marigold plants for the past few weeks and look at how they are growing! We hope that they sprout some flowers soon. Stay tuned... Prairie ArtWe are proud to live on the prairies in Alberta and expressed our prairie pride with some pastel prairie pictures. Please check them out in the "Spring Art Gallery" under the "Artwork" link. For the past few weeks room 10 students have been working on improving their word choice during their writing. Using a weekly book with rich vocabulary, students challenge themselves to incorporate one or more of the chosen words from that book into their daily writing (in any subject area for the whole week). When they successfully use a spotlight word in a sentence, they get to put a check mark on that word on the class book poster. Please see below for some examples of the wonderful sentences generated using some of these special words.
Pointillism LandscapesPlease check out our new pointillism landscape paintings inspired by artist Georges Seurat in the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link.
We were excited to celebrate Earth Day this past week and were able to reflect on our beautiful home and how we can protect it and keep it healthy for all the humans, plants, and animals that call it home now and in the future. The students of room 10 along with the other grade 1/2 students at Richmond school, put together a readers theatre play titled "The Great Poplar Tree" adapted from Lynne Cherry's book "The Great Kapok Tree." Room 10 students portrayed three different local forest animals (eagles, squirrels, and bees) while the other grade 1/2 students took the roles of other forest dwellers (frogs, hares, birds, coyotes, deer, elk, and moose). Through this play, they delivered the powerful message to save our trees and forests as many living things depend on them for food and shelter. "Please do not chop them down!" Richmond students also collected plastic bags this past week in order to keep them out of our landfills and have them properly recycled by Walmart and turned into useful things such as plastic lumber and bottles. We collected over 3000 bags! Art From NatureAll Richmond school students also celebrated Earth Day by getting outside and making artist's palettes using things found in nature. See below for some examples. New ArtBe sure to also check out some of our new art under the "artwork" link featuring pastel birds in the "Spring Art" gallery and pastel portraits inspired by Leonardo da Vinci in the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery.
We were so lucky to have artist Debra Ward in residency with us again this year. She focused on art from around the world and each class was assigned a different continent. Room 10 students were lucky to be given Asia and under Debra's tutelage, they enjoyed making dragon boat sketches and paintings inspired by China and cherry blossom paintings inspired by Japan. See below for some pictures from the two week residency and check out our "Asian Inspired Artwork" gallery under the artwork link for some of our finished pieces. Welcome back after what I hope was a rejuvenating spring break! Since we've been back, room 10 students have been busy exploring all things spring, including weather, emerging plants, and active insects and animals. We have also been exploring responsibility and how we can be thoughtful friends and students in all areas of school. After reading the book "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears" by Verna Aardema, each student made a responsibility flower to show what they do to be responsible at home and school. Each flower was then put together with the others to make a beautiful classroom responsibility bouquet! Spring PaintingsPlease be sure to also check out our new "Spring Art" gallery under the "Artwork" link currently featuring some spring garden pastel and watercolour paintings. Room 10 students were working hard last week to research, write, and illustrate a page each for a class book. Each student began by choosing an animal and researching its features and appearance with our school i-pads and the website http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/. After, they recorded some general appearance features of their animals (colour, size, skin, etc.) and then made their findings more descriptive using word banks (for example instead of saying blue, using a word like azure or sapphire). They then took those descriptive words and wrote STRONG, not LONG sentences about their animals. Finally, each student made a pastel and watercolour illustration of their animal in its natural habitat to complete their personal page for our class book which we titled "Creature Features." Mrs. Ng will now help us turn our individual pages into a real hardcover book using her i-Mac computer and a book publishing program. We can't wait to see the end result, but we wanted to share each original page with you so you could also enjoy our book. The order below is the order that our final book pages will be in (left-to-right and top-to-bottom). Please enjoy room 10's "Creature Features!"
New Trout VideoCheck out our school rainbow trout in their new video posted by Mr. White! http://safeshare.tv/v/Rx3LHHvmago New ArtworkPlease also check out our new Georgia O'Keeffe inspired artwork in the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link. On February 24th, Richmond school students joined other schools around the country to participate in Pink Shirt Day as a way to stand up against bullying. To get ready for this special day, we made some pink paper shirts and wrote strong messages on them. These are words and reminders we can use to stand up to bullies. Rainbow Trout PaintingsWe have been so excited to watch our trout fry grow and wonder what they will look like when they are fully grown. In order to help us get some idea, we looked at pictures of adult rainbow trout and made some pastel and watercolour paintings to show our thinking. We even put up our paintings above the actual trout fry tank in our school learning commons. We had an amazing week in room 10! On Monday, we had Magnetic Mary come and show us some exciting experiments involving magnetism and we even made some magnetic toys. On Friday, we celebrated our 100th day of school this year. We have learned so much over the past 100 days and can't wait to learn much more in the coming months. Also, throughout the week we have been excited to watch our Richmond school trout fry grow and be released from the small enclosure that they grew from eggs to alevins to fry in, to the larger tank in our learning commons. We have had some interesting questions and discussions about these school visitors and will enjoy watching them grow some more before they are ready to be released into the Bow River. Check below for some picture highlights from the week and a video posted by our principal Mr. White, showing the release of the trout fry from the small enclosure into the larger tank. Magnetism In-Class Field Trip100th Day MathTrout Fry Video*Be sure to also check out our new Robert Indiana inspired artwork in the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link. Thinking about Valentine's Day coming up, room 10 students were inspired by our February artist of the month, Robert Indiana, to create some bold expressions of "LOVE". Please see our "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link, for more examples. Story MapsThis week, we also took some time to think about how to stimulate our imaginations and inspire creative story ideas by making story maps. These are visual maps with a variety of interesting settings and locations that can be used to guide or kick-start future story-writing tasks. See below for some examples.
The past few weeks we have been exploring some of Canada's diverse communities as part of our Social Studies curriculum. The prairies of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the rocky coastline of Meteghan, Nova Scotia, and the treeless tundra of Iqaluit, Nunavut were our chosen destinations. One of the highlights of our "virtual" visits to these Canadian communities, was a throat singing demonstration. If you have never heard throat singing (an Inuit tradition popular in Nunavut) please check out the link below to experience the unique art form for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnGM0BlA95I Books Related to Our Canadian Community Study Responding to ReadingActively listening and responding to group readings is an important part of literacy development. We have been working on building comprehension and engagement throughout the year and students are being encouraged to respond and make connections to the stories that we read as a class and that they read individually. Using the question "What did you like about the story?" students thought critically about the group reading of the Molly Bang book, "When Sophie's Feelings Are Really, Really Hurt." See below for some examples. Canadian Animal SketchesAs we continue our ongoing science study into the needs of plants and animals, room 10 students had the chance to try their hand at creating realistic Canadian animal sketches. In order to support them, students were given a black and white photo of a Canadian wild animal that was cut in half. They glued one half to a piece of white paper and carefully drew the other half to look like the original whole picture. They then repeated the process with the other half of the photo. See below for some examples. During the past couple of weeks, room 10 students have begun exploring magnetism and what it means for something to be "magnetic" or not. They learned that "opposites attract" and enjoyed experimenting by holding two magnets close and feeling them either attract (pull toward one another) or repel (push away). They also took a magnet walk and saw how magnets can attract other magnetic materials invisibly, through what we call a magnetic field. They did experiments testing the strength of magnets to hold weight, whether or not a magnetic force could pass through various materials (such as glass, paper, cloth, plastic, wood, and sponge), and whether or not a magnet would still be able to attract other magnetic materials under water. They also learned that the Earth is a giant magnet with two poles (North and South) and that if you look to the sky at either of its' ends you will be able to see its' magnetic field interacting with the Sun's energy creating the northern lights (aurora borealis) and the southern lights (aurora australis). This week, we also continued our study of abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky and made some colourful diamond watercolours (see our "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link). On a personal note, I will be away next week so please stay tuned for the next blog update to come in two weeks time, after my return.
Happy New Year! We were so excited to come back together this week after our winter break and begin our 2016 learning in room 10. Firstly, we were thrilled to welcome our new principal, Mr. White, to Richmond school! He has already made a great effort to get to know the staff, parents, and most importantly students, at the school and we look forward to having him as our new leader. We will miss Mr. McDougall but we wish him well in his new position. The new year and new month, also means the start of a new Artist of the Month. We have been doing an artist spotlight every month so far this school year and have specifically focused on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. The students of room 10 have made some amazing artist inspired artwork during these past four months (see the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link). This month however, we will be focusing on a different type of artist and style of artwork by learning about abstract art and one of its founders, Wassily Kandinsky. Room 10 students made some striking concentric circle pastel and watercolour artwork inspired by one of his most famous pieces (see the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link for some examples). Please see below for some examples of our creative artist inspired journey so far and we look forward to sharing more amazing artwork with you in the remainder of the school year. September - Claude MonetOctober - Vincent Van GoghNovember - Edgar DegasDecember - Paul CezanneJanuary - Wassily KandinskyWe have had a great year so far in room 10 and we can't wait to see what exciting new learning 2016 brings. Have a safe and happy holiday and see you in the new year! P.S. Check out some of our nighttime winter train artwork inspired by the classic Chris Van Allsburg book "The Polar Express" (under the "Artwork" link in the "Winter Art" gallery). This week we were pleased to have our school police representative Constable Hartman come and visit our classroom. He talked about what his job as a policeman is and how we can work to make our communities better. After reading the book, "A Leaf Can Be...", Constable Hartman helped the students make a "Good Community Tree" giving a leaf to each student to write what qualities make a community and the individuals in it better. Animal SensesThis week we also finished up our Science unit on the Five Senses by learning about how our senses can sometimes trick us (for example with optical illusions) and how certain animals have more advanced senses depending on their survival needs. After reading three books about mixing animals (including humans) to an advantage (or disadvantage), students made self portraits of themselves with certain sensory related body parts of other animals included. See below for some creative examples! Snowy DaysFinally, in anticipation of our upcoming winter break and days of doing nothing but playing in the snow, room 10 students made "Snowy Day" paintings based on the classic Ezra Jack Keats book and Snowflake acrostic poems. For more examples of our "Snowy Day" artwork, go to the "Artwork" link and click through the "Winter Art" gallery. The past few weeks we have been exploring our five senses during Science and this past week, we specifically looked at taste and touch. Room 10 students had a taste test with some foods that would target different areas of taste buds on our tongue (sweet tasted most strongly at the front, bitter at the back, and sour and salty at the sides). Later in the week, they made touch hands with various textures represented on each fingertip. We also began a new artist of the month study and made still life sketches and subsequent pastel and watercolour pictures inspired by Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne (check out some more examples of the final watercolour pieces in our "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery under the "Artwork" link).
Symbols are objects or concepts that represent, stand for, or suggest an idea, direction, group, or individual. The past few weeks we have been looking at the inuksuk as a symbol used by the Inuit people in Northern Canada. As mentioned in last week's blog post, students made soapstone inuksuks during an in-class field trip and then we went on to further explore their meaning and in turn, what symbols are personally important to us. Room 10 students made inuksuk paintings and then compared inuksuks to a personally created symbol. See below for some examples. Please be sure to also check out our new "Winter Art" gallery featuring some of our snowmen portraits under the "Artwork" link. This past week, the students of room 10 were able to experience two in-class field trips. The first one was an interactive presentation (connected to the grade 2 social studies curriculum) put on by Teacher's Pet, where students ventured to Canada’s far north to learn about Inuit life through folk tales, legends and artifacts.Students had the opportunity to write in Inuktitut, test their tracking skills, play Inuit games, and get into the storytelling spirit. They even made their own soapstone Inuksuks that they will take home next week. In our second in-class presentation, a representative from Yellow Fish Road (a division of Trout Unlimited Canada) showed the students how pollution enters local water bodies through storm drains and how it's our responsibility to help reduce this pollution. Each student got to be a different local animal and they found a place for this animal on the "river" that the presenter set up in our classroom. All mammals, fish, birds, amphibians, insects, and plants were living happily along or in the local water body, until polluted water (from human use of insecticides, soap from car washing, and littered garbage, dog poop, etc.) began entering it through storm drains which are not filtered. Eventually, the river looked like this: By making better choices and learning about how we can prevent pollution from entering our local water bodies through unfiltered storm drain water, we eventually got the river to look like this again: For more information about Yellow Fish Road and their Emerald Award winning programs, go to:
http://www.yellowfishroad.org/ This week, we continued our science investigations into boats and buoyancy and the exploration of liquids. We learned that matter and specifically water, can exist in three forms: as a solid, liquid, or gas. We also learned that matter can change from one form to another by melting or freezing. Each student took care of an ice cube one afternoon and observed what happened as it melted and turned from a solid to a liquid. Through this, they also observed that solids retain their shape, whereas liquids take the shape of the vessel that holds them (in our case a Dixie cup). This week we also learned about ice bergs and watched a video about how the free floating ice forms by colossal chunks of ice breaking off from melting ice shelves. Check out some of our findings below.
Please be sure to also check out some of our new pastel dancers inspired by artist Edgar Degas under the "Artwork" link in the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery. This week we have been busy continuing our science investigations into boats and buoyancy and exploring liquids and have also been discussing the importance of Remembrance Day on November 11. In preparation for Remembrance Day next week, room 10 students made pastel poppies and reflected on what peace means to them after reading both the poem "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae and "The Peace Book" by Todd Parr. During science, we began exploring liquids in various states and specifically talked about the importance of water to life. We also had water drop races using water-resistant oil pastels to make our race tracks. See some examples below. We were also very excited this week to have our Sound Kreations dance residency and cumulative evening performance. Thanks to all the family and friends who came to cheer on their dancers! Please be sure to check out our "Artwork" link for some Edgar Degas inspired dancer sculptures made by room 10 students (in the "Artist Inspired Artwork" gallery).
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About UsWelcome to room 10's blog. In our grade one/two classroom we love to learn. Our teacher is Mrs. Birkholz. Enjoy browsing our blog to see what we've been up to! Archives
June 2016
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