Thursday, January 31, 2013

What's Your Awesome?



Kid President has a message that is good for all of us, kids and adults. So, after watching, please comment: what are you going to do in your life that is awesome? What are you going to do that makes the world a better place?

An Important Man in Our History

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Book Trailers!

Inspired by the work of Teacher Librarian Michelle Harclerode at www.booktrailersforeaders.com, some of our students jumped right in and made their first book trailers. Here are a few of them. More to be added soon!

Book Trailer by Claire



The Paradise Trap by Catherine Jinks
Book Trailer by Gavin!

Book Trailer by Linnea!

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins
Book Trailer by Phoebe


Please comment! 
Tell us what you think of our first book trailers.
Does one make you want to read the book?
Is there something we did particularly well?
Is there something we can do better next time? 
Thank you!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

December

December was another great month in room 12!

Students continued their mastery of fractions concepts in math, spending most time on comparing fractions and finding equivalent fractions. Students should now be able to compare fractions to one half as well as compare fractions to each other by changing to equivalent fractions that have the same denominator. Right before break, students began adding subtracting fractions with like denominators. In January, we will wrap up this fractions unit with reducing or simplifying fractions as well as dealing with improper fractions ("You naughty fraction!" - ask your student) and mixed numbers.

Our literacy time was used to strengthen students' skills with identifying sequence of events and making inferences. We also finished Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel. Hopefully, students will chose to read the 2nd and 3rd books in the trilogy: Sunwing and Firewing. Our librarian introduced the class to this year's Sasquatch Award nominees and the Young Readers Choice Award to prepare them for the Sasquatch Super Bowl. Teams have formed and intense reading has begun!

We continued our science and social studies work with Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association's Students For Salmon curriculum. The students are now quite familiar with the Water Cycle, with Watersheds, and with the 5 species of Pacific Salmon. We will begin looking more closely at the Salmon Life Cycle and local salmon habitat in January.

Enjoy!

To play music with the slideshow, hover over the bottom of the slideshow. Then click on the speaker icon to turn it on. 

Friday, January 11, 2013

Help With Multiplication Facts

Students studied basic multiplication in the fall. Some students have a rough time learning their basic facts. It makes it tough to do more complex multiplication or work with fractions. So we took some time to make these videos to try and help students picture AND REMEMBER their basic facts. Thanks to all the students who finished putting these together!

Here is x 3:





Here is x 4:



Here is x 7:



More to come soon!

Please comment! What did you do to learn your basic multiplication facts or "times tables" (as they used to be called)?