The Monster

We have had a very eventful week:

Our monster is done and it is scary (you can see the picture) - Kylie
Our monster's  name is Puffle - Rory
The tail of our monster is long - Daniel
Building the monster was fun - Nick
It took a long time to make the monster - Kaydince
We had so much fun building the monster - A
We like our monster - Lily
We put alot of work into the monster - Keiran

We had baby Lauren and she layed on her back - Devan
We had fun with baby Lauren - Mimi

We had an assembly and we sang Halloween songs - Abi
We had a Halloween party - Morgan
We had Halloween gym - Maki

 

Our Monster

Enjoying our Halloween Party

The first half of our monster building

I am sure most of our students' families have by now heard something about the monster building project.  I discovered it this summer while exploring different ways to connect with other classrooms around the world.  There are 42 different classrooms participating and each class was tasked with selecting and describing one part of our monster.  I pre-chose the legs and together as a class we described them as:

3 legs, blue, green, gold, 3 feet long, 1.6 feet wide, squishy, scaley, stripes, and glittery

This means each of the 42 participating classrooms with have a monster with 3 legs.

Back in our class, pairs of students have been given a body part to work on and the description of what it should look like.  The pairs must then decided what materials to use and work together to make their part. (Special thanks to all the families who donated various materials to our project, we greatly appreciate it.)   

But the teamwork doesn't stop there.  Each group must also work with the a joining part's group to figure out how to attach the pieces together (for example, the foot group has to also work with the leg group and the toe group).

We hope to have a chance to skype or e-mail some of the other participants, or visit their blogs to see how they are constructing their monsters.

Below is a slide show of our class sorting the body parts to see which ones connected to which, and then us building them.  Also included are two videos of students explaining their plans.

Ms. Nairn

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Our short week

It was a short week at school this week, but we got alot accomplished.  We did not get a chance to write a end of week post as a class because we have been working hard on our monster project and everyone is busy with their piece of the puzzle (I will write more on this later this weekend).   

We also had a visit by our community outreach police officer who talked with all the grade two and 1/2 classes about bulling.  I am seeing our students put in to practice the lessons she taught us about sticking up for each other and standing up for yourself.  Every day I see evidence of what a caring and empathetic classroom community everyone has helped create.

We can now do 20 minutes straight of writing and students are getting opportunities to share their hard work with the rest of the class.  It is a delight to see students taking such joy in their writing and I am seeing a lot of growth, our class has come along way in two short months.  As a teacher there is nothing better then seeing students get excited about something, especially writing.  One student this week came up to me after his guided reading session and said "Ms. Nairn, I hope I didn't miss writing".

I can see each child in our class gaining confidence, and getting excited about the new discoveries and connections they are making.  Keep up the great work Venus 1!!!

Ms. Nairn

Some of the students enjoying work on writing:

Our first step in our monster project was to get our creativity flowing by designing our own monsters on paper:

 

Today was crazy hair day and here are some of the fashionable hairdo's:

Writing a letter for our principal, Mr. Code

This term Venus 1 is learning to write friendly letters.  We have been working on our first letter together so that every understands all the elements of a friendly letter.  Below is a description of the process in the students own words.  Our next step will be to write letters as small groups, and then individually to our university writing buddies.

We wanted to tell Mr. Code that he is a nice prinicpal and we are learning how to write friendly letters.  As a class we wrote a letter for Mr. Code

To write our letter first we brainstormed some ideas we could use  to write as a class.

We wote a rough copy to get our ideas out.  Then we crossed out some words and put new words in to make it better and to make more sense.

 Then Ms. Nairn used the edited copy to make a new one, using her best writing.

The we sent it to Mr. Code

Mr. Code liked out letter and he wrote back.

 Written by Ms. Nairn's Class

Photo of Mr. Code taken by Josef

Math games and the police officer!

We went to Computer and we played a math game by 2s,5s,10s,and we had fun at are blog  and  we saw a sign that said Happy holidays from room 14. we had so munch fun at class. We had computer on friday. we had the police officer come today and it is Tuesday!!!

Written by: Kaydince and Christian!

         

Photographs taken by Christain

Work on Writing

This week we have been building stamina in our writing.  I have seen lots of growth in all of the students.  they are working hard to writing longer stories with interesting details.  Here is what some students had to say:

We are having fun - Rory

We are writing about our monster project - Maki

Working on writing helps you learn more words - Nick

I hope everybody made a long sentence - Abi

I wrote a story about dolphin vs. shark - Nolan

I wrote about a dog vs. a puppy - Zane

I wrote about my two guinie pigs yesterday and the day before - Lily

I wrote about surfing - Max

Writing is fun - Josh

I wrote about games -  Devan

My next writing about bay blades - Keiran

I wrote about dog vs. cat - Christian

We don't talk while we're writing - Morgan

We have fun writing - A

We like to write at work on writing - Sarah

I wrote about I went to my cousins - Daniel

I hope everybody worked hard - Mimi

No yelling during writing - Noah

We build stamina - Aidan

I like work on writing - Ethan

We do hard words and we try our best - Kylie

Ms. Nairn's Class

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving fellow bloggers and followers,

There was not a lot of posting this week as I was out at some workshops and students had Friday off school.  On Monday we said goodbye to two of our students who are moving to Ms. Matsumoto's class, they drew us a picture and as a class we created a tree with leaves the shape of our hands for fall.  You can see both the picture and us creating our tree below.

I hope our Venus 1 families have a great Thanksgiving.

See you on Monday,


Ms. Nairn

This free slideshow design made with Smilebox

Roots of Empathey

the baby is cuite.    Her name  is Lauren.    We  got   to  sing  too  the  baby.    We got to tuch  her feet.    she opened  her  eyes.      she  was  hungry.   she sucked  on  her  hand.      she cryed.     her moms  name is krista.      Roots  of  empathey is fun.     we  mesherd   her.   we  Layed  her  on  a  blackkit.    ms .burns  helps  out.

Written by: Nick and Rory

Some Art!!!

A week ago, Mrs. Koehn our guest teacher did some art with the Venus 1 crew.  She placed a reinforcer on each student's papers and everyone had to incorporate the circle into their art.  Here are the results...

Coming Up Next....October

October will be an exciting month in our classroom:

- We will be participating in the Global Monster Project, along with 42 other classes around the world including classes from New Zealand, Russia and England.

- We will continue building stamina in daily 5 and add Word Work, Read to Someone, and Listen to Reading into our daily choices.

- We will continue to correspond with our University of Manitoba writing buddies

- Our whole school will be collecting money for UNICEF by participating in dress up days such as crazy hair day and sports day (stay tuned for fabulous photos)

- We will have new places to sit in our classroom.

- We will continue to study position and motion, with the end goal of creating our own cars.

- In math we will continue looking at patterns around us and learning new addition and subtraction strategies.

- We will get to meet baby Lauren

- We will continue blogging with our class buddies Mr. Hobley's grade 4 Hobloggers from Birmingham, Michigan and Room 14, our grade 1/2 bloggers from Richmond, New Zealand.


Ms. Nairn