Sea Crows

Sea crows

This lesson has become a favourite tradition at the Annex.  We start the year with an amazing field trip to the beach to scavenge for found treasures to build our own sea crows (scarecrows of the beach!).  After reading a wonderful story, Sea Crow by Shannon Stewart, we plan and design our own sea crows at school and then head off to the beach to create real sea crows.  The big idea in the story is that the main character has worries and she is able to overcome them using her own strategies.  We use this story because it is so easy for all of us to connect to it.  Connecting is one of the most important reading comprehension strategies that we can teach our students.  Connecting happens when you find yourself saying, "This reminds me of….. and I understand how the character (s) feel because I felt like …"  Division 4 is working on making connections while they read or while they are being read to.  

"In a galaxy far, far way," a school blogger has finally escaped!  I have no excuse for not keeping Div. 4's blog up to date so after reflecting on the goal-setting process with the students in division 4 this past week, I set my own goal of getting the class blog up to date.  That's my first step.  After that, I will try to post something once per week.

Sonobe cubes

Math and art go beautifully together!  These are

modular origami cubes.  Each face of the cube is

folded in the same manner and then all the faces 

are fitted together to form the cube.  While folding,

the students noticed the 2D shapes that were

appearing in the paper:  rectangles, triangles,

parallelograms and squares.

Building numbers

During math time, we make numbers in many ways.  One way is with our "Power of Ten" cards. These cards are designed so that children can create visual images of numbers in their minds.  As you can see, there are 6 tens and then 5 units or ones in a visual shape that the students can subitize (see at a glance without really counting).  Subitizing is a building block of math just like phonemic awareness (being able to hear and manipulate the sounds in words) is a building block of learning to read.  At the Annex, we all know that we are teaching math differently than we learned it.  You are always welcome to come in and ask questions about what we are doing differently in math.

Schools say Thank-you! – Ted Harrison

My friend Barry was very close to Ted Harrison.  A while back, he called me to see if all of the students at the Annex would be interested in a new colouring and story book that the Ted Harrison Foundation had designed.  I immediately said, "Yes!" and Barry packaged up a box of lovely books-one for every one of our students.  My students know it's important to say thank you to people when they are given things so they all wrote thank-you letters to Barry, which many of them illustrated in the style of the book.  Barry was thrilled to receive them and sent some along to the Ted Harrison Foundation.  Take a look at the link!

Subject: Schools say Thank-you! – Ted Harrison

http://tedharrison.com/blogs/news/89303107-schools-say-thank-you

Happy cookie factory employee

This is one of the best days of the year!  Cookie Factory in December!  Busy "elves" along with all the other students in the school get to make cookies that we package up and sell as a small fundraiser.  Each class comes in and makes their cookies. This event is absolutely LOVED by the students and teachers alike.  Without our fantastic parent group, it would not be the joyous event that it is as the parents not only bring in the dough, get the tables set up, they also bake all the cookies and do all the washing up and keep the "factory" running smoothly.