Charlotte's Web Predictions

Today we finished reading chapter 4 of Charlotte's Web.  Students were asked to predict who the voice was that was talking to Wilbur at the end of the chapter.  Here are some of our predictions.

Tomorrow we will be reading chapter 5 with 3 other classes via Google Hangout.

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Writer's Workshop

Today during Writer's Workshop we worked on being good partners.  We are practicing the notice and question part of share time.  Students chose a piece of writing and met with their partner.  Their partner had to share what they noticed about their writing and to ask a question about their  partner's writing piece.  We are also working on our stamina.  We are up to 11 minutes without talking and working the whole time!  Our goal is 13 minutes.  When we reach our goal there will be a special treat for the class.  I hope we get to 13 minutes tomorrow!

Students hard at work.

Annalyse uses her heart map for ideas to write about.

Look at these authors!

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Creating Math Problems On The iPads

Today I read the "Math Curse" by Jon Scieszka aloud to the class and discussed the story with the children. I asked them to think about  problems that involve mathematics in their own lives.  (How many times do they brush their teeth in a month?)  We then took out the iPads and I asked the students to make up their own math problems with the ShowMe app.  Here are a few that the students made:

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Our First Skype Call Of The Year

Today, we had our first Skype call of the year from Mrs. Lirenman's class in British Columbia.  We are both reading Charlotte's Web for the Global Read Aloud.  Mrs. Lirenman and I introduced the book to our classes and then our classes shared their predictions with each other via Skype.  We have some new students in our class this year, so before we Skyped with Mrs. Lirenman's class, we made an anchor chart titled "Skype Norms"

Skype Norms

1.  Be still (movement is distracting to the people we are talking to).

2.  Speak clearly and loud enough for the guest(s) to hear you.

3.  Use attentive listening (eyes, ears and heart on speaker).

4.  Raise a quiet hand to answer a question.

5.  When speaking on the Skype call, state your name first before you speak.

Our first Skype call went very well, one of the students said, "it was Skypetastic!".  We are looking forward to reading chapter 5 of Charlotte's Web on Thursday with Mrs. Lirenman's class as well as 2 other classes via Google Hangout.

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A Collaborative Project In Writing

Last year, a few teachers decided to try to teach a Procedural Writing Unit at the same time.  The special thing about this project was that the teachers were not all in the same building, or city, or town, or province, or country!  Mrs. Soltauheller teaches in Northern Vancouver Island, Mrs. Kolb teaches in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, Ms. Lirenman teaches in Surrey, British Columbia and I teach in Windsor, Ontario.
We began planning at night,(well with the time difference, at night for Mrs. Kolb and I and after school for Mrs. Soltauheller and Ms. Lirenman) through Google Hangout.  We planned lessons together and talked about what we were doing in our classrooms.  Mrs. Kolb even taught our classes a procedural writing lesson on Google Hangout.

Our students' shared their writing and received feedback from the other classes via Skype and Google Hangout.
It was so successful, we want to try it again. So......

This October we will be collaborating on a Personal Narrative Unit.  We will be starting the second week of October.  If you are writing about this genre in October and want to connect let me know.  I will be teaching a lesson or two on Google Hangout if you want your class to listen in.   We will also be sharing our writing and would love some positive feedback via Skype or Google Hangout.

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Global Read Aloud 2012

October 1st marks the first day of the Global Read Aloud Project.  The Global Read Aloud project is meant to make the world a little smaller for our students and to look at all of our shared experiences.  Students from around the globe will be reading the same book and sharing their thoughts, predictions and ideas with each other.  My class is beginning to share predictions on Monday with Mrs. Lirenman's class from Surrey, British Columbia via Skype.  We will be making our predictions about the book Charlotte's Web.  

Here is an Animoto on the Global Read Aloud History created by Mrs. Ripp

All classes participating will be following the same reading schedule:

Week 1: chapters 1 through 6

Week 2: chapters 7 through 11

Week 3: chapters 12 through 17

Week 4: chapters 18 through 22

We would love to do a Google Hangout with 2 or 3 different classes that are participating at the same time.  I would love to read a chapter or 2 to your classes sometime in October and my class would love to hear you read a chapter to them via Skype or Google Hangout.  Let me know if you are interested.

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Primary Blogging Community

With the Primary Blogging Community starting this Monday, I wanted to do a little explaining on how this little project has become a bigger project.... At the end of August, I was partaking in my usual Sunday night ritual (participating in #1st chat on Twitter) when the conversation went to blogging.  Many teachers wanted to connect their classrooms with other classrooms from our 1st chat community. I volunteered to do some thinking about it and to start something.  I put out a Google Doc and asked for interested primary teachers to sign up.  The response was fantastic!  There were over 20 primary classrooms that wanted to participate.

I created an Edmodo teacher group for us where we could collaborate on ideas and I could start putting a schedule together.  We decided on the following dates and activities:

Teachers were group with 3 or 4 other classes.

October

Each week one class' blog will be the centre of attention. The other 3 or 4 classrooms will be exploring and commenting on that one particular blog.  The following week, class 2 will be the centre of attention where the other classes will comment and explore on class 2's blog and so on.

November

We are going to do some Skype and Google Hangout sessions with our blogging buddies.  This will create a "face" to the classroom blogs and will enrich the experience.

December

We will do a "snail mail" exchange that we are going to call "Winter Greetings".  Classes will send Winter Greetings to their blogging buddies.  It can be a letter, a card, a picture, or anything that can be sent in the mail. I am hopping that this will be an exciting time for our students and we will see some of their thoughts on their own personal blogs.

January

We will do the same rotation schedule and the same blogging buddies as we did in October, however, this time we will be focusing on our students' personal blogs instead of the class blog.  This will create more comments, more traffic and more enthusiasm for our students' blogs.

I am hoping if all goes well, that we will do the whole process again with different blogging buddies in February.  If you are interested in signing up for the next session, you can sign up here.

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