Everybody Needs a Rock - A Farewell

I came across the book "Everybody Needs a Rock" by Byrd Baylor while at the Millennium Library with my son. Knowing that I was leaving my classroom very soon to go on maternity leave I instantly thought of an activity that I could take part in with my class in reference to this book.

For those of you who have not read this story I highly recommend it. It takes children on a journey of how to thoughtfully select the very best rock for them by following 10 simple rules.

This is how I used this fantastic story with my students:

1) We read the story

2) Students sketched and wrote about the qualities of a rock that they would look for

3) I brought river rock from my house to have students select 1 to keep as their own

4) Students then painted their rock in a way that was meaningful to them

5) We had a conversation about since this rock was taken from my home and if they ever felt upset, lonely or missed me when I was gone that they could hold their rock and we would be connected again!

Here is a picture of the rocks after my students had painted them:

Each year that I teach I become so invested and so deeply connected to my students and this year was no different. Each student has taught me something about myself as an educator, as a mother and as a person. Thank you Room 6 for an amazing 8 months!! You will forever be in my heart🎔🎔🎔

Until May 2018...

Nicole

Authentic Writing in 1, 2 and 3

Writing has always been a personal passion of mine. Whether that is writing poetry, short stories or memoirs, and this is largely in response to my fantastic grade 8 English teacher who showed me how to fall in love with the art of writing. Since becoming a teacher I have always enjoyed teaching writing above everything else, even at the expense some days of math😀. 

This year I had the fantastic opportunity to use some of my professional development time to connect with other teachers within our school and work alongside my writing mentor Mr.K (that grade 8 teacher who changed my world in terms of literacy!!)

There was a large focus on getting kids to write about themselves, their feelings and their experiences, thus having them write in the most genuine authentic way. Many people are under the assumption that students in the early years can only write a sentence or two from the prompt or sentence starter given by a teacher. This is simply not the case. Students even at age 6, 7 and 8 have experienced things that are powerful, things that have affected them deeply and lived through experiences that they can transform into a high quality writing piece.

Here is an example of a writer's workshop journey I was on recently with my students...

We started by reading stories about people moving away or about relatives who have passed away, many students and adults who work in the room have shared their experiences with loss and it seemed appropriate and relevant to let my kids know that these emotions are real and to feel comfortable to share them.

We then wrote about a person, or pet that we miss. I shared how I miss my mother-in-law who passed away in 2012 from cancer. I feel it is important to always share about what I am writing about and about my life to give the students the sense that I am willing to be exposed through my writing with them.

To take this a step further we then wrote about what we would say to that person or animal if we could see them again....all I can say is WOW! The response I received from this was incredible. Tears were shed, we ran out of Kleenex and we had many students show a lot of courage by sharing these intimate feelings. Here are a few examples of their writing...

H.C-R. wrote about his Grandma who passed away.

L.C. wrote about his beloved cat who has since passed.

S.M-T. Wrote about her Lola's sister who she does not see often.

B.K. wrote about her uncle who has passed away.

This writing demonstrates so much to me in terms of my students, first, that they have the ability to write strong, powerful writing pieces, second, that they feel comfortable sharing this writing with me and finally that they feel comfortable sharing this writing with each other.

How do you structure your writing time with students? What are your challenges? What are their strengths?

Until next time...

Nicole and Room 6

We are the Readers.

Read a louds are an important daily aspect of every early years classroom and our room is no different. As the teacher I make a consistent effort to be reading a book to my students each day. This can be either a picture book, novel or poem. It is such an important time where we can all gather together on the carpet and be lost in the world of a book. It is one of the rare moments in the day when nobody needs to move or talk, such simply enjoy and listen!

Recently, the students have expressed an interest in reading to the class at the end of each day. This was a time I had previously designated to reading a chapter book to the class. Since we have recently finished a novel it seemed like the perfect time to switch gears and have the students start to read. I started causally asking students if they would be interested in reading a book to the class. A few names came forward and after the first few students went it was a positive domino effect of student interest. We are now going heading into our second round of everyone reading and it has been more successful then I could have ever anticipated.

Here are some images of students reading and the rest of the class fully engaged in their classmates:

Another aspect of this student read a loud time is that after each student has finished reading the class then brainstorms 5 positive things that each student did while reading, some of the comments were so amazing and thoughtful such as:

"You were so brave!"            "You picked a Good Fit Book"         "You knew when to ask for help"

            "You used a lovely reading voice"            "That was amazing to listen to!"

Each student then takes this paper home and can share it with their families. A few families have even contacted me to share how much their child appreciated this activity and how they as their parent loved to see this positive feedback coming home!  This will definitely become a daily routine in our classroom!

                 What are some of the traditions and routines that you do everyday with your classes?

Nicole and Room 6

Student Led Conferences

Twice a year we formally invite the families of our students into our school. It is an exciting time for the students and their families, one that I look forward to! It is VERY different then the parent teacher conferences that I remember from my childhood. These interactions were filled will high anxiety and stress on the part of myself and my parents. I had one particularly terrible experience when I was in grade 2 and honestly the memory of this experience still haunts me today. However, it is also the reason I vowed to NEVER have a parent or child leaving conferences feeling the way that I did or how my parents had.

This is why in Room 6 we conduct student led conferences, these experiences are full of positive sharing, guiding their parents through their learning and end with a positive strength based conversation with families.

For the first conferences in November we decided as a class to take our families through a basic week in room 6 with a focus on our math workshop. Students played a math game with their parents (one they had to teach them how to play), created a piece of math art, looked through their independent work duotang and played a math computer game. Families were also challenged by taking home a problem solving activity, to shared and worked on at home. There was so much positive feedback that for the second round of conferences I wanted to follow a similar structure of the students guiding their parents through their learning. However, this term the focus shifted to literacy and connecting families from our classroom together in a meaningful way.

One of our literacy favourites in the classroom is our daily quick writes, this is a time each day when students write about various topics for only 5 minutes! The hope and goal of this writing is to trigger the really deep ideas that may eventually become a full writing piece. So naturally the students wanted their parents to complete a quick write! The two options were:

 -Write about the day your son/daughter was born...

OR

-Make a list of the things you enjoy doing with your son/daughter, just the two of you!

I was so incredibly moved by the honesty, and pure/raw emotion that many families put into this activity that I had to share a few (the names have been removed).

 These just warmed my heart and being pregnant had me shed a few tears...Thank you families for sharing❤❤❤

Another part of our student led conferences that I wanted to share was our Manitoba Map activity. We have been learning about our province, looking at major cities, towns and places within our province. So we created a large map and had our families come and write their names besides all of the places that they have lived, visited or travelled to within Manitoba. It was great to see families excited to share and talk about their experiences. This is what our final map looked like:

What do you do during parent teacher or student led conferences??

Until next time...

Nicole and Room 6

Field Trippin' Part 2

There are many different field trip locations that we can take our kids in Winnipeg...the zoo, to a local farm, the forks etc. and all of these places are great! The kids look forward to going and always have a great time! Our second field trip this year was to a favourite place amongst many kids, The Children's Museum, it has so many key elements that make a field trip great: open space, a water element, physical play and so on and so on..

Field trips are a great way for the students to get out of the school and experience different stimuli then they are used to, as well giving them the opportunity to work and play with students from another classroom. This year we have been teaming up with a grade 1 class from our school on several field trips and its has been great to see the students all getting along with each other and having a great day!

Here are some highlights from the day:

E.H. and B.S. enjoying the slide and trying

to obey the rule of NOT running!

              C.R. taking in the sights from the train lookout!

C.R. and C.E. creating using recycled materials.

                     S.B. exploring properties of water.

                                   A sunny, yet cold day comes to an end...Until next time!

Where are your favourite field trip locations??

Nicole and Room 6

S, L and G

This post is a little late...but better late then never right?! Ok perfect! For the month of December our class explored many different properties of Solids, Liquids and Gases. We began with a class conversation about matter.

Then we sorted different types of matter into the three categories: Solids, Liquids and Gases.

 Our first experiment looked at the elements of Dissolving:
 1. Each student created a snowball of various sizes
2. We brought the snowballs inside, put them on plates and sketched them. Then we made predictions of what would happen to the snowballs on day 2.
                       -Many students said it would melt
3. We came back on day 2 to find some snowballs melted into water and some had large bites of snow amongst the water, some had dirt, sand and rocks mixed into the water as well.

4. Students then predicted what would happen on day 3. Many said the snowballs would stay as water and some said they would be gone completely.

On day 3 the larger snowballs still has water remaining on the plates and the smaller snowballs had completely dissolved.


Our second experiment with dissolving looked at how use heat and force (stirring) to have a solid dissolve into a liquid....and what better way to demonstrate this then to make HOT CHOCOLATE!

Many students observed once they were finished drinking their hot chocolate that some cups still had solid particles left in the bottom and some did not...

"There is hot chocolate left because they did not stir long enough" -L.Y.

Many students used different ways to cool down their hot chocolate..

"Blowing slowly helps cool it down"-A.P.

"We put them on the vent because its blowing cold air" -E.H.

The Third Experiment looked at how different states of matter take up space. We watched a few videos and experimented with our bodies how solids, liquids and gases take up space differently. Then we used cheerios to demonstrate our understanding.

Finally we looked more at how gases take up space, since many gases are invisible to the naked eye. This was best demonstrated by practicing how to blow bubbles!

We all realized that blowing BIG bubbles was ALOT harder then we thought!

Stay tuned for our next inquiry, where we apply our knowledge of matter to learning about the water cycle, our air and soils!

Until then

Nicole and Room 6

Family Time

A few years back I attended a workshop with several teachers from Elwick which focused on making authentic relationships amongst children and how making these kinds of deep relationships can foster a stronger learning experience for all kids. Needless to say the workshop was amazing and we began to think of how we could create and foster these authentic relationships at Elwick. We came up with and idea we call FAMILY TIME.

Family time began with mixing up the students in our five grade 2/3 multi-age classes and linking them up with a teacher, learning support teacher or Educational Assistant from another classroom. Students would spend an hour a cycle engaging in activities from art, to storytelling to cooperative games, with the goal to have children connect with both other kids from other classrooms as well with other adults in the school.

Family time continued for a second year this same way. We are now in our third year of family time and it looks a little different and has many more students and adults involved.

How Family Time looks now:

-7 grade 1, 2 and 3 classrooms are involved with 12 adults

-5 grade 4/5 classrooms are involved with 10 adults

The next goal is to in some way involve our middle years classrooms in the coming years!

Every year we change up the groups once or twice to allow more positive connections for the students. We have just wrapped up our Family Time groups and are about to switch. Our last time together was spent enjoying a healthy snack (which we often do) and writing kind words about each other on pieces of paper that each student could then take away and keep!

Here were some of the words we brainstormed:

Then students spent some time writing words, drawing pictures or writing comments on each others paper:

I feel so honoured to have met these students and cannot wait to met and get to know the next group!
See you in the hallways and on the playground A, J, K, S, H, C, S, C, M! :) :)

With love and respect,

Nicole

Taking Care for the Holidays

At Elwick School we talk daily, weekly and monthly about our school beliefs. These beliefs were created by the staff and students of Elwick School around 5 years ago and continue to be the underlying values that guide our daily teaching. It is important to note that each quadrant could not exist in isolation, each belief is reflective of the other three quadrants.

As a classroom teacher I feel that it is my responsibility to constantly bring our learning, and our daily classroom life back to these beliefs. Making them become not just something we talk about in isolation at the beginning of the year, but really making these beliefs a strong foundation in how each students and member of the school acts daily. Always understanding that taking care of ourselves, allows us to take care of each other, and when we are taking care of each other we can take care of this place together, and when we take care of this place we are learning ways to take care of our world.

This year our holiday gift home was reflective of each quadrant of our Elwick belief statement. Here are a few examples of students work and ideas that reflected these beliefs.

The first was a gift to ourselves. A published story of our favourite holiday memory. Students wrote each story in their writers notebook, created the detailed illustration, then typed their story and created the full published piece that they could take home share with their families and be proud of. Thus taking care of themselves as an individual learner!

The second gift was to each other (our families). As a class we have been talking ALOT about how we speak to each other. The tone we use, and our word choice and how this effects others. We have done several activities with Ms. Toni (School Learning Support Teacher) and within the room all reflective of the kind words we can say to and about each other. So I decided to use this understanding and encourage the class to create a gift of kind words for their families. Choosing their words carefully they wrote kind and loving things about various members of their families. Then we laminated their work so that it would last forever, just like how kind words can last a life time.

The third gift was a gift to our place (our home).  We made a snowman tree ornament with each students face as the snowman's face. As an adult I still have ornaments on my tree that I made in school and we decided  that making a tree ornament would be a great gift for our place!  Almost all of my students expressed that they had a tree to decorate in their homes, however for the students that do not celebrate Christmas and do not put up a tree we talked about how this gift could be hung anywhere in their homes, on a door or window or fridge.

https://www.pinterest.com/source/aspoonfuloflearning.blogspot.com

The fourth and final gift was a gift of promise to our world.  As a class we brainstormed how we could take care of our world in various ways. Each student came up with such amazing and thoughtful ways to take care of our planet. This gift was more of a promise to act instead of something tangible. Each student selected one or two of the ideas and promised to act on these ideas with their families. Here were their great ideas...

All in all it was an amazing and thoughtful way to spend the last few weeks at school working on these various gifts. And at the same time being constantly reminded how our Elwick School beliefs can be visible everywhere!

Happy Holidays!

Nicole and Room 6