Kindergarten and Grade 1 Experiences at Rosser Elementary
On Friday we will be having our Terry Fox Assembly and Run. This will be followed by our annual Corn Roast. Parents are very welcomed to join us for this important event.
I will be telling the class about Terry and his journey across Canada – as well as his battle with cancer. Students will be decorating a paper ‘running shoe’. They will be encouraged to dedicate their run to someone they know who currently has cancer; has survived a bout with cancer; or who has lost that battle.
Our school has been very fortunate to receive a government grant for the purchase and construction of a new playground to replace the one that we currently have. Students in all classes (school-wide) have been working through a process of looking at all the components that go into a playground. They have been having discussions with peers in small groups as well as with the whole class.
In our division (5) we looked at the five initial proposed ‘mock-ups’ to determine which of the elements were important to our students. The students knew that they were not voting on any one of the whole pictures but that they were discussing the individual parts of the playground.
We came up with a list of items that our class felt were important elements of our new playground. Most of our students wanted: things to climb (nets, monkey bars, etc); things that spin or swing (tires, saucers); slides; bridges; and balance beams.
At tomorrow evening’s PAC meeting Mrs. Gojevic will be looking for input from the parent community. When all ideas are joined together a new ‘proposal’ will be created by the playground company. It is hoped that this process will be quick so that the de-construction of the old playground, and construction of the new one, can be completed before the poor weather settles in.
We are all excited and looking forward to this new addition to our school grounds.
We have been reading and enjoying the books by a great Canadian author – Phoebe Gilman. We began with the original “Jillian Jiggs” and worked our way through additional stories about this delightful girl, along with other of this author’s stories such as: Something from Nothing; Pirate Pearl; The Gypsy Princess; and Little Blue.
Students had many opportunities to respond to these books by: renaming one book; adding another page to the end of another book; describing their favourite part or character in other books; and designing a map to show the travels of characters – to name a few. They have created quite an interesting collection of responses in their booklets.
It has been a really busy start-up to the new school year. We had a very exciting first week in our family groupings with sessions and lessons about healthy living. Once we were settled into our class we got right into learning about each other through our “All About Me” unit. We are currently finishing up our final posters on this project and then I will hang them on our hallway bulletin boards and post some here.
I enjoyed meeting and chatting with parents at our Student Intake Interviews last week. It is always interesting to hear about my students from their parents’ perspective. Please keep these lines of communication open by contacting me via my school email account – shelagh.temple@sd41.bc.ca – or by sending me a note in the front pocket of your child’s planner.
I have updated this blog’s ‘standing’ pages including: our weekly schedule; upcoming events – as well as the ‘programme’ pages on: art, science, and reading.
Now that we are into our regular schedule and routines I am hoping to post regular updates of our happenings in the classroom.
I hope everyone enjoys a well deserved rest after such a busy school year. Have a safe and fun summer. See you all in September.
Last Thursday a few little friends dropped by to see us.
We had a great visit from insects, arachnids, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals – and their human handlers, of course. Students received a lot of information about the many different animals that Cinemazoo houses in their facility. A lot of these animals have been ‘rescued’ pets that outgrew their owner’s habitats or expectations.
Different people reacted to these visitors in very different ways. Mrs. Wall was happy to be a temporary backdrop for some furry arachnids (tarantulas) . . .
. . . while Mrs. K had a very different reaction!!
Near the end of our visit a few students got a goodbye ‘hug’ from a nine foot python.
All in all, a basically regular day at Rosser!
We had a great day today!! We left the school shortly after 9:00 and arrived at the Vancouver Aquarium about 9:40. When we had divided into our little groups we had about 2 1/2 hours to explore and enjoy the animal exhibits. There were some changes from the last time we were there two years ago. The entrance has been moved and there are some new fish tanks, but the most exciting change is the addition of their new Africa Penguin colony.
The grade 2 & 3 students from Ms. Astorino’s class who had been with me last year had studied penguins, as a species, in great detail. They had also completed partner research on a particular penguin type. Following the Ministry of Education’s IRP’s (curriculum) we study plants and animals in alternating years. As this year was our ‘plant’ year this would make next year an ‘animal’ year for my next years’ class. Hmmm? perhaps a study of penguins is predicted!?!
Unfortunately the camera reflected back on itself but you can get the idea. Students had an opportunity to complete a ‘scientific observation’ paper on these flightless birds and all who did received a certificate stating that they were a Penguin Behaviour Expert.
As the three classes were split up into little groups, each group had different experiences. Many watched the dolphin or beluga whale show. Ms. Lam received a wet ‘present’ from the beluga as she and her group were sitting in the ‘splash’ zone. Many other students enjoyed the 4-D show and got wet there!! We were amazed to see how active the squid was – as in our many previous trips to the Aquarium we have almost never seen it even move! Today it was doing rather athletic calisthetics and contortions!! It must have been feeling energetic!
All groups met at the entrance at about 12:15 and we headed to the covered picnic area and playground for lunch. Students always get extra hungry when on field trips out in all that fresh air! They enjoyed some run-around time before we headed down to the beach at Lumberman’s Arch at 1:00.
With the bus picking us up at 2:15 we had about an hour to spend at beachcombing. Most students got right into the explorations with no persuasion at all. They loved it!! Only the ‘too large’ rocks went unturned – even though some were tried!
While some students were a bit reluctant to get up close and personal with the natural habitat (and live crabs), with a bit of persuasion they were willing to experiment with holding the dead crab shells that we found.
Aside from crabs we found lots of shells, some seaweed, and a few starfish hidden under a large rock. We also had a few ‘water walkers’ who spent the majority of their time wading through the shallows.
All in all it was a very fun, and very well-behaved, field trip. Thank you to the parents who came along to join in the fun today!
We have completed a mini-unit on magnets. Students had fun experimenting with them and finding out what will attract (stick) and what will be repelled (not stick) to the magnets. We learned about the poles, how some metals are naturally magnetic, and how some can be made to be magnetic. Some of our experiments were a bit challenging due the age of our magnets and the need to get them re-magnetized! This will hopefully be looked into before they are used again. Oh, well. It was fun to play with them.
We have changed our tree to reflect our current season. We are putting real late-Spring leaves onto tag board for the last installment in our “Maple Tree” booklets. All these pages will be cerlox-bound into one complete booklet covering our year’s journey of discovery.
While some students are off at ESL the rest of the class has been working on improving their writing and developing their sense of story. Students write stories and, once they have a few completed ones, they then choose one to ‘publish’. The stories are edited by the students (and with the teacher), covers are made, stories are written on ‘good copy’ papers, an ‘About the Author’ page is completed, and the books are ‘published’. Students then get to read these to the whole class – similar to our ‘Guest Reader’ visits.
Beginning next week, ESL students will be staying in class during our Writer’s Workshop times. I look forward to working through this process with them so their stories can be added to our growing collection of student written/published books.
