Grades 1 And 2 At Ancaster Meadow School

Changing My Blogging Site

2011-12-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

I am moving my class blog over to the Commons. A special thank you to @mrjarbenne for helping me making this move. You can now check out my newest posts at http://avivadunsiger.commons.hwdsb.on.ca/.

Thanks for being so supportive of this class blog! I hope that you continue to follow our classroom happenings at our new blogging address!

Aviva

Understanding Inquiry

2011-12-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

I think that today I really learned what "inquiry" means. I know that this seems strange to say, as I'm a believer in giving students control over their learning, but usually I still have quite a few parameters in place.

Today I tried something new. For a special literacy/science activity, my Grade 1 and 2 students each went to three different centres. At one of the centres, they wrote and created words based on pictures of seasons (for Grade 1) and liquids and solids (for Grade 2). At the second centre, students read and listened to information about seasons (for Grade 1) and liquids and solids (for Grade 2), and then they shared what they learned using the iPod Touch, iPad, Nintendo DS, or Livescribe Pen in any way that they wanted. At the third centre, the students tweeted out and replied to tweets about seasons (for Grade 1) and liquids and solids (for Grade 2).

While the Grade 1's have already learned some information about the seasons, this was my introductory lesson on liquids and solids for Grade 2. I gave the students nothing today. I provided them with resources, I encouraged them to talk and learn from each other, and I got them to try and use the information that they already knew along with the new information from today to try and better their understanding of these science topics.

I was so pleased with the results. Students naturally asked questions. They helped each other out. They talked ... a lot. They used this talking to inform their writing. Best of all, students chose to write. They could have used any tool to share what they learned, but almost all of them chose a writing tool. Students were on task, engaged, and excited to learn throughout the hour that we spent on these centres.

Sticky Notes 3x5 Pad 1 p. 16
brought to you by Livescribe

The interesting part is that when I asked them what centre they enjoyed the most and why, almost all of them said the, "tweeting centre." Students talked about how exciting it was to write to others online and have others reply to their tweets as well. They see the value in this "audience," and this "audience" encouraged them to keep on writing. Thank you so much for that!

Today I started teaching a new unit, but today, I didn't "teach" anything at all. I supported the students as they learned by themselves, and now I can use what the students know to inform my future lessons. I think that this is what "inquiry" is all about. I will definitely be doing more of this.

How would you define inquiry? How do you use inquiry in your classroom? I would love to hear about your experiences too!

Aviva

What Happens When It Doesn't Work

2011-12-10T04:06:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday and Wednesday, my students completed some different literacy and math centres on measurement. I had what I thought was this great plan for one of the centres. The students made objects out of playdough, and they used measurement terms to describe these objects. They wrote their descriptions on sticky notes, and they took photographs of them along with the objects. The plan was to take all of their photographs and turn them into a digital book about measurement. The students were excited, and they spent a long time creating their objects, writing about them, and taking photographs too. There was just one problem: the photographs weren't clear enough. Often it was difficult to read the writing on the yellow sticky notes. I should have had the students write on a larger piece of paper and with marker too. The pen markings weren't dark enough. The activity didn't work.

So now what? This is when the "process" is more important than the "product." No, I don't have a published book to share, but I do have lots of documentation of student work. I have written notes, photographs, and videos of conversation. I know what the students know, and I know what I still need to teach them too. This activity was a success, despite the lack of a published digital storybook.

The other activities worked too. You can see many examples of student work on our class blog: from our video toy catalogue to our Puppet Pal measurement and temperature videos to toy riddles that students would love for you to solve. There's also a video here of our Twitter game: #ispy2011. Students wrote clues of objects in the classroom, and other students from Canada and the United States, replied with guesses. These other students contributed some of their own clues too. This was a lot of fun, and a great way to get students reading and writing with a purpose.

There's also some videos here of the students at the different activities and discussing them too. It's great to hear what they have to say!

I'm now excited to see what adventures this week brings! Even when things didn't work according to plan, it was still a successful week of learning. What did your child enjoy the most about these centres? What did he/she learn this week? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

Redefining Problem-Solving

2011-12-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

It's taken me a while, but I think that I finally understand one of my issues with math problem-solving. I really didn't understand what "problem-solving" meant anymore. When I think about math problems, I think about the ones that I grew up with: There are 10 candies. You give five candies to your friend. How many candies are left? These are the math problems with just one solution. They're the ones that don't require a lot of thinking or a big explanation. They may help students apply some of the skills taught in class, but they are definitely not higher level thinking math problems.

As I read more and discuss more about math, my understanding of problem-solving has changed. Now I also see how some math exploration can also be problem-solving. On Thursday, I was introducing my Grade 1's and my Grade 2's to measurement. We started with non-standard measurement, and I was focusing on length. After we worked together to define the terms "non-standard" and "length," I had the students work in small groups to measure different objects are the classroom. I had seven different non-standard units that the students could use for measuring the length of various objects (from playing cards to toy bears). The non-standard units varied in size. Before the students started to measure the different objects, they predicted if they would require more "smaller non-standard units" or more "bigger non-standard units" to measure the same objects. Then they went off into groups, and I got my camera ready to take photographs (seen in the Animoto slideshow below).

I saw students helping each other. I saw students solving problems. I saw them counting, estimating, and making predictions too. Then when the measurement activity was over, we met back at the carpet to discuss the results. Students shared what they found out. When they found out that two students were the same "length," they even figured out how to compare the heights of the two students to see if this was true. They reflected on their own results. They also looked at our chart of results, and they started to make comments on the size of the non-standard units. They realized which units were larger ones and which ones were smaller ones just by the results, and they shared their thinking with the rest of the class too. This "math exploration" was "problem-solving" as well. It just took me until now to realize this.

What are some problem-solving activities that you do in your classroom? How has your definition of problem-solving changed over time? I would love to hear your thoughts too!

Aviva

Loving Our Flat Classroom

2011-12-03T10:45:00.000-08:00

I'll admit that years ago when Zoe Branigan-Pipe (@zbpipe) introduced me to social media, I was skeptical. I felt that I ran a good, solid classroom program, where students were making gains and meeting expectations. Why did I need to add social media to this? Years later, and I now get it!

Learning becomes far more meaningful when we can learn with others outside of the classroom. Students get excited about learning when they can learn alongside other students in our country and from other countries around the world. Students come to understand why we do what we do at school, and that has value!

Over these past few weeks, I've really come to see what a "flat classroom" means. At the end of November, I saw a tweet from Karen Lirenman (@lirenmanlearns) that she did an art lesson with her Grade 1 class that I blogged about weeks before. A former student taught this lesson to my class, and I recorded his instructions using both video and the Livescribe Pen. Karen was able to use these recordings to instruct her group of Grade 1's in British Columbia. Wow! Amazing! It occurred to me that with the use of social media, teachers no longer need to be the experts in all subjects. We can use the lessons shared by others to help teach our own students. We can learn alongside other educators that can help make us better teachers. I know that this is what I'm experiencing right now!

As we learn from other teachers, our students can learn from each other too. Right now, my students are working on descriptive writing, including learning how to spell the colour words correctly in their writing. On Tuesday and Thursday, my students helped practice their skills through a Twitter chat called #namethattoy. Students tweeted descriptive clues about toys to other students from Canada and the United States, and they responded with their guesses. Then the other classes tweeted their clues too, and we responded as well. Students were reading and writing with a purpose, and from our room, they were connecting to others from miles away. Look at this video shared by Karen Mensing's class (@msmensing) in Phoenix Arizona:

The real impact of this Twitter chat came to me on Friday afternoon when one of my Grade 2 boys said to me after nutrition break, "Miss Dunsiger, on the weekends I think to myself, I wish that we came to school all week long. Wouldn't that be fun?" Then he started talking about the colour writing activities from this week (featured in the Animoto slideshow below), and he asked me, "What do you have planned for next week? Who can we connect with then?"

And this is why I now see value in the "flat classroom." Before I started using social media in the classroom, students never got as excited about learning as they do now. This excitement helps motivate all of my students to learn. I see success. As the quote at the bottom of my email says, "If they don't learn the way you teach, teach the way they learn." I think that I'm finally doing that!

Aviva

Learning Can Be Fun!

2011-11-29T17:03:00.000-08:00

I think that learning can, and should, be fun! I love when students get excited about learning, and I love seeing them so engaged in activities too. I love hearing great conversations between students, and I love when students can learn together. Today was a wonderful day of learning and a ton of fun too!

In class, the students have been learning how to spell the colour words correctly in their writing. They've continued to learn about adjectives, and they're applying what they're learning by working on descriptive writing too. I set-up six special literacy centres that all focused on the colour words. The students only got to visit three of these six centres today. They'll visit the remainder on Thursday, so after Thursday, I'll blog again with more details about the activities.

Tonight though, I was going through the mini-movies made by the students using ScreenChomp and ShowMe, and I loved them so much that I just had to post them. In class, we read, My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss, and the students reflected on what they learned by creating some short videos. Some students spoke about their different coloured days. Other students read the story and responded to it through pictures. Some students even read the story, and thought aloud as they discussed what Dr. Seuss really meant in his book. I hope that you enjoy these movies as much as I do:

Another one of our centres today was descriptive writing using Twitter. I brought in two large bags of various toys, and students wrote clues through our class Twitter accounts (and my account too) to describe these toys. We used the hashtag #namethattoy, and other classes from "around the world," joined in with their own clues and their guesses too. Here's a short screencast showing my students' tweets and the replies too:

Students just loved this writing activity! They spent time proofreading their tweets, and working with the other students in their groups to help each other with spelling and punctuation as well. I was thrilled with the results! Thank you to all of the wonderful teachers and students that joined in on this Twitter chat today, and I look forward to doing it again on Thursday!

Looking back on just what's shared here, it's clear to me that learning can be fun! What do you think? How do you have "fun" in your classroom?

Aviva

They Really Get It

2011-11-25T18:21:00.000-08:00

My class has been fortunate enough to be involved in a Twitteracy project established by Brittney McCarter. While my Grade 1 and 2 students are continuing to tweet out summaries of the books that they're reading using the #twitread hashtag, Brittney is nearing the end of her project. She asked my students to reflect on their involvement in this project. Since she didn't need the whole class to reflect, I had a discussion with my Grade 2's today when my Grade 1's were attending a dental presentation.

I'll admit that I was procrastinating on this part of the project because I thought that the students were going to struggle with this reflection piece. Could they really understand the benefits and drawbacks of Twitter? Could they really reflect on how this Twitteracy Project made them better writers? I thought that it was going to take a lot of prompting from me. I decided to use the Livescribe Pen to record my discussion with the students based on the four reflection questions that Brittney emailed me:

1) How does using the confined space of Twitter help your writing?

2) What kinds of things do you think about when you use Twitter?

3) Are there any other things that you would like to use Twitter for?

4) Has using Twitter made you a better writer in other areas when using a pencil and paper? Computer?

My initial thought was that if I used the Livescribe Pen, I could focus on trying to get some good information from the students, and then I could later summarize what they had to say. As I said before, I was doubtful about how this would go.

I shouldn't have worried! As I was having this discussion with my students, I could almost feel myself getting excited by their answers. Here are seven-year-olds that really understand what Twitter is all about. This reminded me of Dean Shareski's post about his wife's Grade 2 classroom. Even in Grade 2, students know that they're sharing their thoughts with "the world," and they understand the implications of this too. They also believe that writing using this platform helps them become a better writer overall. They make some terrific points, and I hope that you enjoy what they have to say as much as I do (scroll over the page number to view the second page in this Notebook).

Twitteracy

brought to you by Livescribe

Hearing what the students shared here makes me see the tremendous benefit of using social media in the classroom. What do you think?

Aviva

Making Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives Meaningful!

2011-11-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

Over the last three weeks, the students have been learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives in class. They've been using various spelling patterns to write different nouns, verbs, and adjectives. They've been editing their sentences to add in more descriptive words. They've been learning about the importance of complete sentences and what a complete sentence includes.

This week, I thought it would be fun to review nouns, verbs, and adjectives by using different tools and different forms. I created six literacy centres, all of which are outlined in the Animoto slideshow below.

The students worked together to create media works, blog posts, and lists. They even tweeted their own sentences using the hashtag #nva2011 (inspired by George Couros' post on hashtags), and encouraged a conversation on grammar. Today, the students even replied to tweets from others about nouns, verbs, and adjectives: allowing them to read and write in a meaningful context.

I know now that all of the students understand nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and how to use them in their writing. I can't wait to see how their writing continues to improve as a result. For the parents out there, what did your children think of these activities? Which one did they enjoy the most and why? For the educators out there, have you ever done similar activities before? What were the results? I'd love to hear about your experiences too!

Aviva

What Student Led Conferences Taught Me!

2011-11-19T08:54:00.001-08:00

On Monday, I started a week of Student Led Conferences as a follow-up to our progress reports. This is my second year doing Student Led Conferences instead of the traditional interview, and looking back on the process, I've learned a lot.

Here's my Top 10 List (in no particular order) of what Student Led Conferences have taught me:

1) Regardless of age, students can share what they're learning in class. They can show and tell their parents about what they do at school every day, and they can highlight some of their favourite activities too.

2) Students can set their own goals. In preparation for the conference, I had all of my students pick two of their favourite blog posts. They needed to write about what they liked most about these two posts, and what they would add or change the next time. I was so impressed! The students were very reflective, and they even set their own writing goals based on these posts. Some students feel like they need to concentrate on conventions, while other students want to concentrate on generating more ideas. All students now have a focus for their writing.

3) Students and parents both need talking time. Students wanted to talk about what they're doing and learning in class, but parents also wanted to talk and ask some questions about their children too. I completely understand the need for both. I think that a small interview component of these conferences is important, and I'm glad that we were able to balance student talking time and parent talking time.

4) Fifteen minutes is not long enough for this conference format. I set each time slot for 15 minutes, and I was pretty good at sticking to this time limit too, but it was a challenge. There isn't enough time for students to show everything, talk about what they want, and answer questions all in 15 minutes. Next year, I definitely need to give more time.

5) Student led conferences could be done in larger groups. After I got home from my "marathon conference night" on Thursday (15 conferences back-to-back), I tweeted about my timing concerns. Both Angie Harrison (@techieang) and Heather Jelley (@team_jellybean) shared that they do multiple conferences at the same time. Angie mentioned that she sets her conferences for 30 minutes, but staggers how many students attend based on student needs. I like this differentiated approach. Heather teaches Kindergarten, and she said that she does two conferences at a time. This seems very doable too. I would need a slightly different set-up than this year, but I think this is definitely worth exploring for next year.

6) Sometimes there also needs to be an interview. I speak to the parents in my class regularly -- once a week or once every couple of weeks -- so there were no surprises on the progress reports. I think that this is important. If a student is struggling, I also think that I need more time to sit down and talk to the parents about what we can do. Student led conferences are fantastic, but sometimes interviews are needed as well, and that's okay. There's no reason that we can't do both. Angie Harrison (@techieang) has tweeted about this before too, and I love how she schedules interviews in advance of the student led conferences if they are necessary.

7) Put out centres. Have different activities or tools on different tables, and even have signs with them that have some guiding questions for both the student and the parent. Try to balance literacy and math activities, so that the parents get a good understanding of everything that's happening in the classroom. On the signs, be explicit about the expectations met at these different centres and when using these different tools. My students know this information, but when they shared different activities with their parents, they weren't always explicit about the purpose of the activity. Before the Thursday conferences, the class made a list of 23 different things they could show their parents in the classroom. They were able to identify the tool (e.g., an iPad) versus the activity (e.g., using Word Wizard for making words), but we didn't identify the subject area on this list. This is definitely something to do differently for next year.

8) Incorporate student choice. Given time restrictions, students probably aren't going to be able to show their parents everything, so let them choose what they'd like to show. That being said, maybe have students show at least one literacy activity and one math activity. Most of my students did this, but not all of them. Having this requirement in place will ensure that parents get some variety in what they see.

9) Have something for parents to bring home at the end of the conference. I put together a collection of work that parents could bring home with them. They can then look at this work with their child and discuss some more goals for the rest of the year. Including a list of some guiding questions with this package of work would have probably been a good idea, as then the parents and the students can get the most out of it.

10) Incorporate an opportunity for feedback. I think that it's always good to hear positive feedback about the experience, as well as any suggested changes too. Much of what I have on this list here comes out of the feedback that parents and students contributed on this Lino Wall:

Thank you to everyone that helped me reflect on this process and think of ways that I can make the student led conferences even better for next year.

For those of you that do student led conferences, what have you learned from these experiences? What do you like about the format, and what would you change about it? For parents and students that have been part of the process, is there anything else that you would include on this list of mine? I would love to hear your ideas!

Aviva

Why I Love The Flipcam

2011-11-11T15:42:00.000-08:00

I teach a 1/2 split. Sometimes this means that my Grade 1's are involved in activities that my Grade 2's aren't and vice versa. Today was one of those days. My Grade 2's joined one of the other Grade 2 classes for a special Reptile Party while my Grade 1's stayed back with me for a special seasons activity. These were both science activities, but the students weren't doing them together.

As a last minute decision, I had my Grade 2's bring the flipcam to the Reptile Party. I'm so glad that I did! When my Grade 2's returned, they were so excited to share with the Grade 1's what they did. While they described a lot, it's not the same as seeing the events themselves. The Grade 2's took over 15 videos of this special activity though, and all afternoon, we downloaded them onto my computer.

Thanks to the flipcam and an awesome group of Grade 2 students that know how to use this technology independently, the Grade 1's can now participate in this activity virtually by viewing the videos here. Parents can also see what the students did this afternoon, and the students can talk about what they learned. With the blog, other students from around the world can learn what these Grade 2's learned, all by watching short video clips as well. The power of the flipcam is really quite remarkable!

A special thank you to Mrs. Ryan for hosting this Reptile Party today. My students loved joining yours for an hour of learning and fun! For those that went to the Reptile Party and those that watched the videos, what did you enjoy the most? Why? What did you learn? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

Click here for the rest of the video links, including videos of Flat Stanley interacting with the reptiles.

Time To Reflect and Connect

2011-11-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

As a teacher, I know the importance of reflecting, but I also know that sometimes I run out of time with my students to do so. I'm determined to have more of this "reflection" time though.

In class today, we started a new math topic: money. This is usually a difficult math concept for students. Many of them know the names of the coins, or can at least match the names of the coins with the values, but making different amounts of money is challenging. Students sometimes confuse dollars and cents. They have difficulty counting by fives and tens while also adding on by ones. They also have more real-world experience dealing with dollar amounts than coin amounts, so each year, it's like starting the money concept all over again.

With this being a more difficult math topic, I know that the reflection piece is so important. Students need to see how other students are solving money problems. They need to compare solutions, and they need to start thinking in new ways too.

Today, my Grade 1 students worked with a partner to try and come up with different ways of making 10 cents and 20 cents. My Grade 2 students worked with a partner to try and come up with different ways of making 50 cents and 100 cents. They counted together. They helped each other "count on," and they reminded each other how to count by 5's, 10's, and 25's. They applied what they just learned in our unit on counting.

I made sure to end the activity early enough though that students could see what other students did. On one group of desks I laid out the Grade 1 work, and on the other group of desks, I laid out the Grade 2 work. Students walked around and looked at the work. They counted with each other to see if the answers were correct. They compared what they did to what other students did. Then they came back to the carpet, and they discussed with the class what they observed.

Here is a Livescribe Pencast of our discussion with a screenshot of the notes that I took (I couldn't post the page and the audio from Livescribe because I had other notes written on the page too):

11.04.2011 1141a
brought to you by Livescribe

It's great to hear the students talking about the solutions that they saw and thinking of new ways to solve the problem for next time. I'm interested in seeing how this impacts on our math activities next week.

How do students reflect in your class? What impact does reflecting have on performance? I would love to hear about your experiences!

Aviva

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-28T16:08:00.001-07:00

Today was our Halloween celebration in class since Monday is a PA Day. Students love Halloween: it's all about candy and costumes, and fun. I wanted everyone to have fun at school today too, but I wanted them to learn as well. I really thought that we could do both. Last year, I planned some special literacy and math centres for Halloween, and I thought that I would plan some new ones for this year too.

Below is an Animoto slideshow of our day and some videos that the students recorded during one of our math centres too.

With our tweeting and blogging centre, students were writing using different forms, practicing their various spelling strategies in a meaningful context, and reading with meaning as they replied to comments from other students and teachers too. With our Toontastic centre, students were developing their oral language skills as they created their own oral stories. They were also working on drama, as they gave their characters voices and personalities, while creating their own exciting plot lines too. With our Halloween Reading Centre, students were practicing their decoding and reading comprehension skills, as they worked together to read different Halloween stories. They were using various strategies to read difficult words, and they were doing a fantastic job retelling the stories and making connections to them too. With our Halloween Candy Problem, students were developing their one-to-one correspondence skills, developing beginning addition skills, and explaining strategies they used during problem-solving activities. With our Oreo Stacking Problem, the students were practicing their graphing skills, and interpreting graphs too. Throughout all of the centres, students were continuing to practice their learning skills, as they worked cooperatively with others, and developed their own independent work habits too.

I saw learning happening all day long. Best of all, even though the students worked hard today, they went home happy and eager to tell their parents about the great day that they had. I love days like today!

For parents reading this blog post, what did your child enjoy the most about today? Why? For educators reading this blog post, how are your going to celebrate Halloween with your class? How do you mix both fun and learning too?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Aviva

What Does This Mean For The Students?

2011-10-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

For the past two days, I've been at ECOO: a conference in Richmond Hill, Ontario. This was a fantastic professional development opportunity for me, where I not only got a chance to share what I'm doing in the classroom, but I also got to hear what others are doing in their classrooms too.

As much as I love conferences, I always find it hard to be away from the students, so after arriving home today, I really started to think about the past two days. Was it worth it? Absolutely, positively, yes! How will this conference make a difference for my students?

Here is my Top 5 list (in no particular order) of new ideas/activities to try out in the classroom based on what I learned at ECOO:

1) Create "thinking books" for students for math. Students can only use marker in these books. The idea is that if they make a mistake, you can still see what they were thinking at the time, as they may be able to cross out their work, but they can't erase it. This thinking book is not marked, but just a safe place for students to share their thinking and pose their questions. What a fantastic idea! (A special thank you to @team_jellybean, and the amazing teacher sitting with us at lunch, whose Twitter name I don't recall, that taught me all about thinking books.)

2) Add captions to photographs of students demonstrating skills. Use these photographs in the classroom as anchor charts to help the students remember what to do at different activities or in different situations. For example, take a photograph of students listening to each other. Add text bubbles to show which student is the listener, and which one is the talker. Highlight what the talker and listener are both doing in the photograph. (A special thank you to @rajalingam for sharing this idea during his fantastic workshop!)

3) Have students put their writing through Wordle to see what words they use the most often. Have them make changes to their writing based on the Wordle results. What an easy activity, but what a great one too for word choice! This could really help the students add more variety to their writing and make them more aware of what words they're using too. (A special thank you to @shadiyazdan for this great idea during her Pecha Kucha presentation yesterday.)

4) Have students add an audio comment over their glogs to explain their thinking on why they chose the images and videos that they did. I love this metacognitive addition to Glogster, and I think that this would help take a great media literacy activity and make it even better. Some of my students remember how to use Glogster from last year and are already using it, and others will be introduced in the coming months. I'm going to have my students try this out for sure! (A special thank you to @misterpuley that shared this wonderful idea during his presentation today with @faulkneronline.)

5) Use Twitter to help students summarize the books that they're reading. They can summarize various amounts of the books based on they reading level and comfort. I was also thinking that, if necessary, they could use other tools (e.g., video or the Livescribe Pen) to record their summary and tweet out this recording too. What a great way to get students to really focus in on the main idea of texts and to engage in conversations about the books that they're reading too. (A special thank you to @shadiyazdan for suggesting this idea during her Pecha Kucha presentation.)

I know that I could add many more ideas to this list, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind. I can't wait to try them out in the classroom! What would your "top 5" list be? I'd love to hear about your learning at ECOO too!

Aviva

Allow Them To Be Responsible

2011-10-14T15:58:00.002-07:00

I was at an inservice all morning today, and just before heading back to class, I happened to check my mailbox. I was excited to see that the Flat Stanley from Mrs. Kolis' class in Ohio had arrived. But there was a problem: Mrs. Kolis really wanted the Flat Stanley mailed back out to her class within a week, and I'm away presenting at ECOO next Thursday and Friday. How was I going to get photographs taken, blog posts written, and the Flat Stanley returned quickly? To add to my concerns, our class also has a Flat Stanley from a Grade 1 class in Atlanta Georgia, and we haven't taken any photographs with him yet. It was time to get things started!

My initial thought was to take the class around the school and snap some photographs together. I really didn't have time to do this though, and how beneficial would this really be anyway? I'd end up policing the students all afternoon as I shushed them in the hallways, and we would take unnecessary time gathering for group photographs too. There had to be a better way!

That's when I thought of another plan: why not give a group of three students the iPod Touch, and let them take the two Flat Stanley's on a tour around the school? They could take the photographs themselves, and then come back and blog about where they went and what they did. On the upcoming progress report, one of the learning skills that I'll be evaluating is "responsibility," so why not give my students the chance to be responsible?

I went back to class and told my students the plan. As a class, we thought that we should try to keep to around 10 photographs. We brainstormed some good places to include in the pictures. We spoke about safety, and since the students wanted to go outside, we talked about where they could go and where they couldn't go. The iPod Touch also has a clock on it, so the students were told that they had 20 minutes to take the photographs. The class thought it would be fun to get some other teachers and students in the photographs, so we also spoke about the importance of manners. Students practiced how to ask others to take part. Then all of the students that wanted to go, put their names in a basket, and three names were pulled out. We had our group ready to go!

The three photographers/actors left at 2:10 and returned with seconds to spare at 2:29. They got a great variety of pictures, and they even figured out how to take a photograph including all three of them in it too. Talk about a good problem-solving opportunity. When the students returned, they started blogging. One student chose to work alone, and two others, chose to work together. They helped each other generate ideas, and they edited each other's work too. By 3:19, their posts were done, and I just added in the photographs for them tonight.

The Two Flat Stanley's Visit Our School on PhotoPeach

Student Blog Post #1 on Flat Stanley and Student Blog Post #2 on Flat Stanley

I love how when given the opportunity to be responsible, the students met and/or exceeded every one of my expectations. I'll definitely be thinking of other ways to continue to give students even more responsibility in the classroom and school community.

How have you helped your students become more responsible? What were the results? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

Our Week In Pictures

2011-10-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's difficult to capture the week in words, so this week, I decided to highlight our week in the classroom through pictures. Below is an Animoto slideshow all about our exciting week.

I hope that you'll look at this slideshow with your child. What did your child enjoy the most? What did your child enjoy the least? What did your child learn in class this week? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Have a great long weekend!

Aviva

Does It Matter?

2011-10-06T15:15:00.001-07:00

Today gave me reason to ask myself a question that I've never really asked myself before: does it matter? My students today were preparing for a Skype call with a Grade 1 class in Atlanta Georgia. This is a two-part Skype call: students in both Ancaster and Atlanta have researched different aspects of their school community and local community, and they are comparing them through their presentations over Skype. Not only was this a great way to connect with another class involved in the Global Read Aloud Project, but it also met Social Studies expectations for both Grade 1 and Grade 2. Perfect! :)

Drawing A Visual To Accompany Research

As a class today, we went over the different topics for the call, and we discussed different options for research, from a Google search to books from the library. Students also had some previous knowledge that they could add to their part of the presentation too. Each group had to record at least three facts to share, and they needed to create a visual to share too.

Researching Their Topic And Writing Down Information

I'll admit, when I planned this research project, I had one basic format in mind: students would research their topic, write down their three facts, and draw a picture to go with their topic. And this is basically how things started, but then a Grade 2 partner group that were researching on the SMART Board, asked me if they could make a presentation in GoogleDocs. I'll admit that my initial instinct was to say, "no." Hey, I love using different tools, but this wasn't what I had in mind for this project. Then I stopped to think though: does it matter? The truth is that in this case, it doesn't. I wasn't evaluating the students on artistic skill. I wasn't marking their printing skills or seeing if they could organize ideas on a page. I was assessing them on their ability to research with a group, gain facts on a topic, write notes about these facts, and later present these ideas to a group. Students could do this just as well on GoogleDocs as on paper, so why say no?

Animal Image Created In DoodleBuddy After Researching On Google Images

Just as I said, "yes," to this, another group asked me if they could use the iPad and the iPod Touches to search for images of animals in Ancaster and Ontario, and then draw these images in DoodleBuddy to share with the other class. My initial instinct was to direct them to the paper, crayons, and markers, but again, does it matter? The students are researching the animals, and they are applying what they learned to create their own. They saved their images to upload to the computer, so that we could share them with the class in Georgia. They met the expectations, so the choice of tool was irrelevant!

Today reminded me that it's important to constantly ask myself, does it matter? I want to build creative thinkers and problem-solvers, and today showed me that in less than a month, this has already happened. It's amazing to watch, and I'm so glad that I resisted the urge to say, "no," and instead went with, "go for it!"

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, "does it matter?" What were the results? I'd love to hear about your experiences too!

Aviva

Videos From The Terry Fox Run

2011-09-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

We had a lot of fun today taking part in the Terry Fox Run! See and hear what some people had to say about this run. We hope you enjoy our videos!

Miss Dunsiger's Class

Experience The Trip With Us!

2011-09-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year, I wrote a post on my professional blog about "giving the students control," and how amazed I was by what one student did when he wrote about our whole trip during the field trip itself. Through some replies by others, I commented about how great it would be if the students had iPod Touches or cameras to record their learning on the trip. I thought that I would give this a try on our first field trip of the year to the Ancaster Fair. I'm so glad that I did!

My class was divided into three groups of six with two parent volunteers in each group. I gave each group an iPod Touch or a flipcam to take pictures and record videos showing what they saw, did, and learned throughout the trip. I was amazed by the results! When we got back to the school, I realized that I received over 200 photographs and over 60 videos throughout our four hour field trip. Incredible!

What I love the most is that the majority of these photographs and videos were recorded by students. They were documenting their own learning. They were watching closely, reflecting on what they were seeing, and engaging in meaningful discussions with others. As I watched the videos, I heard students inferring and I saw students problem-solving. I love that! It's not about the quality of the video, but what that video captured. I only wish that I tried an activity like this one a long time ago.

For other educators reading this post, have you ever tried this before? What were the results? For parents and students reading this post, what do you think looks like the most exciting activity? Why?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on our trip to the fair!

Aviva

Our First Week At School

2011-09-14T14:50:00.001-07:00

Meet the Teacher Night is tomorrow evening, and I wanted to put together a slideshow to play tomorrow night showing what the students have already done in Grades 1 and 2. For those that can't make it tomorrow night, below is our Animoto Slideshow of our exciting first week at school. Watch this slideshow with your child. What did your child enjoy doing the most? What has your child already learned at school? Please leave us a comment and let us know!

Have a great night!

Miss Dunsiger and Her Grade 1/2 Class

Down By The Bay

2011-09-08T15:06:00.003-07:00

For Shared Reading this week, we read Down By The Bay. The students got to create additional verses to this song, orally first and then in writing. As a class, we developed Success Criteria for good sentences and questions, and all of the students had to check that their questions started with a capital, that they left spaces in between their words, and that they ended their questions with a question mark. The Grade 2 students also created some more complex verses, adding in adjectives to make their writing more interesting. Students were given a choice of using the sentence starter provided or writing their own complete question. Many of the students independently made use of their copy of the poem to find the words that they needed as they wrote their questions.

Below is a digital copy of our Down By The Bay Class Book:

Please read this book with your child and leave a comment with more possible verses that we could add here. We'd love to hear all of your ideas!

Aviva

A Down By The Bay Update

Today (Friday, September 9th), my students recorded themselves singing Down By The Bay using AudioBoo. They read the words as they sang the song, tracking the words as they went along. I hope that you enjoy our singing debut!:)

Miss Dunsiger"s Class Singing Down By The Bay (mp3)

Students Saying Goodbye

2011-06-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

On my professional blog, I posted today about our school principal retiring at the end of the month. Bev Laporte is a fantastic principal that has really made a positive impact on all of the students at the school. When I told my class that Ms. Laporte was retiring, they wanted to do something for her to say, "goodbye." Below are the common craft videos that the students created in partners today. The children drew the pictures, wrote the script, practiced the lines, and recorded the videos too. This was a reading, writing, and media literacy activity, but also a thank you to somebody special.

Ms. Laporte, we're all going to miss you!

Miss Dunsiger and her Grade 1/2 Class

Happy Father's Day!

2011-06-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

On Mother's Day weekend, I was inspired by Angie Harrison (@techieang). Angie's a Grade 2/3 teacher for the York Region District School Board, and even though I've never met her in person, I am constantly learning from her online thanks to Twitter. In May, Angie wrote about a special Mother's Day gift that her students made for their moms: they created padcasts using the Garage Band app. I thought that this was such a fantastic idea, and I commented on Angie's post right away saying that I wanted to give this a try another year. Angie then said that maybe I could do this for Father's Day instead. She also shared with me some other Father's Day gift ideas.

I was so excited to try something new! I vacillated over different choices, but eventually, I decided to have my students collaborate to make a Father's Day gift. During literacy centres, they worked on GoogleDocs to make a presentation about their dads. Children contributed slides to one of three different presentations. They had to share ideas in complete sentences, check their spelling and grammar, and find appropriate images to match their thoughts. Here is what they created:

All of the dads and step-dads in my class now have a CD with these three presentations on them. Hopefully they'll enjoy watching these presentations and seeing just how much they mean to their children. Angie, it's thanks to you that this year I tried something different other than the ubiquitous tie. Now my mind is reeling with new gift possibilities for next year!

Happy Father's Day to all of the dads, step-dads, and grandfathers in my class and from around the world! I wish you all the best on your special day!

Aviva

What A Week!

2011-06-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a very busy week in our classroom. Between the car experiment, the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Blowdryer activity, the ladybug research, and the Prezi lesson (see the completed Prezis on the individual student blogs), the students have been reading, writing, talking, and learning all day long. Below is a short video highlighting some of the exciting activities from this week. What did your children enjoy the most? Why? What did they learn from these activities too? I would love to hear their thoughts!

Aviva

Learning Prezi: Students Teaching Students

2011-06-01T14:39:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I was speaking to Mrs. Faux (@mrsfaux), and she mentioned that she was using Prezi with her Grade 7 students. I said that it would be great if her students could teach mine how to use Prezi too. I thought that we could use the screen share feature in Skype to do this. The two of us spoke more about this plan, and even though Mrs. Faux had never used Skype before, she was willing to give this a try. We thought that June would be the perfect time!

Mrs. Faux worked with her students to create six Prezis -- each a separate mini-lesson -- on how to use Prezi. The students ordered the Prezi lessons according to what skills they thought needed to be taught when, and then they grouped them, so that they could teach two skills at a time. Today was our first of three Skype call Prezi lessons.

Last night, Mrs. Faux and I worked together via FirstClass (our email system) to set-up Skype on her laptop computer, and this morning, we did a practice call at 8:30 to make sure that everything was working well. Once I realized that I needed to turn on my microphone for her to hear me (oops!!), we were good to go!

My students were so excited for the call, and her students were fantastic teachers. They went step-by-step, explaining what to do, and they made sure to answer students questions at the end to clarify what they explained as well. I think that the sign of a great lesson is when every student is able to accomplish what is expected, and in this case, that is exactly what happened!

Thank you so much to all of the Grade 7's and Mrs. Faux too for teaching us something new, and giving us a great way to create media texts and practice our writing skills while having a lot of fun as well! We can't wait for our next set of mini-lessons on Friday.

For the students in my class, what did you think about using Prezi? What are you excited to learn next? For other educators that have used Prezi with their students before, how have you used this tool? What did your students think about using Prezi? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

How We Use Technology In Class

2011-05-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

On Friday morning, I got an email from Teresa Nickell (@tnickell) asking if my class could help her with a presentation she's doing on Thursday. Teresa teaches in Texas, and she wanted my students to Skype into a session she's doing on using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. The problem is that I'm not in class on Thursday. I offered to have my students create a video showing what tools we use in the classroom and how we use them. Teresa was excited by this idea, and I was too! Today my students created these two videos:

As a class, we brainstormed a list of six different tools that we frequently use in the classroom -- a SMART Board, computers, PALM Treos, Livescribe Pens, iPod Touches, and iPads -- and we listed some ways that we use these tools. Students then got into partners and decided what they were going to talk about. The groups had about 20 minutes to prepare, and then the filming started.

It was great to see what the students did, and even more exciting to hear what they said. They really understand how to use these tools, and more importantly, they understand why they are using these tools too. I also learned a lot about myself too, and about what I need to work on in future videos:

1) I say, "excellent," way too much. I was so thrilled with what the students shared that I think I got caught up in the excitement of the moment. I need to think about exactly what I'm going to say and make my words count.

2) I sometimes forget to give enough "waiting time." I know about the importance of waiting time, but when the minutes count and the responses seem to be delayed, I often follow-up with more questions than I need to. I need to remember to give students lots of time to think.

3) I do not multi-task well. I find it hard to control the camera, ask the questions, and see everything that's happening around me too. I need to hand the camera off to students. Usually the children are the ones that do the filming in the classroom, but since I wanted to create a seamless video and not short little segments, I thought it would be easier for me to do the filming. The next time, I will give up this role to the people that do it better: the students.

I hope that you enjoy these videos, and a special "thank you" to Teresa for pushing me out of my comfort zone and trying something new with my class. This was a great oral language opportunity, a fun media literacy activity, and a wonderful way to give students leadership in the classroom. I feel confident in saying that this is only just the beginning in more videos to come ...

What are some videos that you've made in the classroom with your students? What are some things that you've noticed about students and about yourself when creating these videos? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

What would you want your students to write?

2011-05-26T16:34:00.002-07:00

In math right now, my Grade 1 students are reviewing probability. For one of our math centres today, some of the students completed this always, sometimes, and never writing activity, and it was all on me: their teacher. Reading their answers had me smiling all day long!

My teacher always is nice to me.

My teacher always makes fun days for us at school.

My teacher always is very nice.

I got to thinking tonight though: if you're a teacher, what would you want your students to write about you? What do you think they'd say? It really is amazing how a kind word or a thoughtful sentence can inspire us!

Aviva

Imagine The Possibilities

2011-05-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night, the Primary Choir had a special performance at our school in the library. Many of my students are in the choir, and I wanted to be there to hear them sing. I'm so glad that I went back to the school to watch! I was amazed by how many people were there. The room was packed!

As I sat and watched the performance, I was moved by both the singing and the environment. Music connects us! Watching what was happening around me made me realize just how much things have changed since I was in school. I remember singing in the Primary Choir when I was in school, and often parents came with their cameras to take photographs, and some parents even took videos too, but these photographs and videos were really just meant for personal use. No one was going to share them with a larger audience, but now, thanks to the tools we have, we can do just that!

The whole back row of the library was full of parents with their smart phones taking photographs and videos. With a click of a button and the wonders of social media, this evening performance could be shared with the world. Imagine if there were multiple schools from around the world, singing on one night, and maybe even singing together thanks to a tool such as Skype. Consider this: we could all have a global audience for our performances. The possibilities really are endless!

On Tuesday night, families came together: the listened, they sang, they connected. And with the tools of today, others from around the world can listen, sing, and connect with us too. I think that this is really incredible, and I think that our two wonderful choir directors, Mrs. Ledroit and Mr. Mitchison, deserve a big thank you for making a night like this such a memorable one for so many people. Congratulations to you and the Primary Choir for an evening to remember!

Aviva

Imagination and Creativity

2011-05-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Over the past six months, I've had the pleasure of learning from Ian Chia (@ianchia) as part of my Twitter PLN. Ian is incredibly creative, and really pushes me to think and try things that I never did in the past. Ian also lives and works in Australia, and learning as much as I do from Ian, continually reminds me that with the use of Web 2.0 tools, the world is definitely a lot smaller.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a Skype call with Ian early one morning (late one night for him), and he invited my class to do something special. He wanted my students to think about something small that captures their attention, but that adults often ignore (e.g., the ants crawling around on the floor), and write about it. Ian didn't care if the final product was perfect, but what he was really interested in was the "process." How did the students develop their ideas? What did they discuss? What interested them?

Creative Writing on PhotoPeach

For our Friday Journal this week, my students worked in partners on this writing activity. They were so excited! I gave them the use of any tool and topic that they wanted. All that I required was that they were creative, and allowed themselves to just let go and write. The results were amazing! The students planned their written pieces -- making a list of characters, setting, problems, and solutions -- and then started writing. For over two hours, our room was a real writers' workshop. I was sitting with groups, hearing their ideas, watching them write, and seeing them have fun too. Not all of the groups are finished yet, but they will have some more opportunities in the coming weeks to finish their writing then. Have a look though at what they did create.

Ian's invitation really pushed my students to step out of their comfort zone, experiment with different tools, and try different writing forms, all while having fun writing too. Thanks Ian for helping my students work through the creative writing process while completing some finished pieces that they feel proud of as well.

Have you ever tried a similar writing activity before? What were the results? I would love to hear about your experiences as well!

Aviva

Open House Slideshow: Our Class Identity

2011-05-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

This year, May 5th was both Open House and Identity Day. To keep with the "Identity Day" theme, my Open House slideshow helps define what's important to us as a class. I used information from our class discussions throughout the year to add meaningful text to this compilation of photographs. Please watch this slideshow with your children and discuss what they have learned throughout the year. Did I miss anything in this slideshow? Is there anything that they would like me to add or change? I would love to know their thoughts and yours too! Thanks for your help with this!

Aviva

Not A Traditional Classroom

2011-05-06T16:17:00.000-07:00

This afternoon a teacher candidate came into observe my class. At the time, my students were working in small groups to make dinosaur models: the final task in our Newspapers In Education project that we have been working on all week. The groups had to create their own dinosaur. They needed to name it, design it, and then create a three-dimensional model of it. Students had tons of choice in the materials that they used, but the one requirement was that the newspaper needed to be used in their model.

Both the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students have been learning about three-dimensional solids in class, so what a great way to apply their knowledge of these solids. Those that know me know that I am not artistic in the least, so trust me when I say that I gave very little direction or assistance for this activity. Students used the books in the classroom, online resources, and the newspaper to research dinosaurs and create their own unique dinosaur. Then they problem-solved together to build their model. They used everything: some just used newspapers and glue; others used bristol board, newspapers, glue, and tape; and still others added paper bags, staples, and elastics to the mix. They not only helped their group members, but they helped each other. They were offering suggestions, problem-solving, and persevering. Students were everywhere, supplies were everywhere, the room was buzzing, and everyone was learning something new.

This was a difficult task. Truthfully, I was hesitant if the students could create these models, but I was so pleasantly surprised with what they did and what they learned. They showed me that they understand the properties of three-dimensional solids, and what they need to consider when building with these solids. Even the students that created the two models that didn't work were able to reflect on what went wrong and what they would do differently the next time. They didn't learn this because I told them the information, but they learned this because they figured it out for themselves. This was learning by doing, and the students will definitely remember what they learned today. I couldn't be happier!

And it was when we were tidying up that this teacher candidate started to talk to me, and she mentioned how much she enjoyed the visit. She then said to me something that I will remember for a while: "This is definitely not a traditional classroom!" You're right. My room isn't traditional, and looking back on what my students learned today, I feel confident when I say, "I'm good with that!"

Aviva

We Love You, Mom!

2011-05-06T15:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday is Mother's Day, and my students wanted to do something special for their mothers as a thank you for all they do for them! Here is a Mother's Day VoiceThread and screencast (and Wordle) wishing all of our moms the very happiest Mother's Day ever!

Aviva

Building And Reflecting On Park Structures

2011-05-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

My Grade 1 students got to join Mrs. Howe's class today for a special building experiment. Students used a variety of recyclable materials to construct their own park structure that could hold a small teddy bear. The students had to plan this structure first, and then build it today. After building it, the students reflected on their work: what worked well, and what would they add or change the next time?

My students took turns recording these reflections using our classroom flipcam. Below are some of the reflections. It was interesting to hear what each of them had to say, as well as hear what information they provided on their own, and what information they shared after some guiding questions.

What feedback do you have for my students? I'm sure they would love to hear what you have to say! Thanks for your help, and a special "thank you" to Mrs. Howe for organizing and facilitating such a great activity!

Aviva

It's Almost Here ...

2011-04-29T17:56:00.000-07:00

Identity Day is less than a week away. I can't wait! When I read George Couros' post about Identity Day back in June, I knew that I wanted to give this a try at our school. Thankfully the amazing staff at the school were just as eager. All week, I have heard students, teachers, administrators, and parents buzzing about the Identity Day Projects. I'm so excited to see all of them on Thursday!

Media literacy is a large part of our current TLCP, so to help build some more excitement about this special day, my Grade 1 and 2 students created advertisements about Identity Day. Below is a glog of their advertisements:

Right-click on the glog to view in full screen.

Now it's just waiting until May 5th to see what the staff and students share about themselves. I can't wait to see what interesting information we all learn about each other on Identity Day: the day we celebrate what makes each of us special.

For others that have had an Identity Day at their school, how did it go? What was the best part of this day? What did this day teach you about the people in your school community? I would love to hear!

Aviva

Learning Something New

2011-04-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

This week, my students learned how to tell time in math and how to read a map in Social Studies. Many of the students had some background knowledge to help them with both of these activities, but they also learned many new things as they explored these concepts both individually and in small groups. Below is a short slideshow of a "telling time" and "mapping" activity. Watch this slideshow with your child. What did he/she learn as a result of these activities? What is he/she ready to learn next? I would love to hear what you and your child have to say!

Aviva

Telling Time and Exploring Maps on PhotoPeach

Talking Time

2011-04-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

Carmel Crevola (@carmelcrevola), Heather Jelley (@team_jellybean), and Angie Harrison (@techieang) have all showed me the value in using oral language in the classroom. This year especially, I am trying to give students more and more talking time, and I love hearing what they have to say. Below is a glog that I made today that features videos of students talking about math. Having discussions with them about their learning really shows me what they have learned and what they continue to need to learn.

I hope that you enjoy these video clips! I would love to hear about how you use oral language in the classroom for formative assessment. I think that we can learn a lot from each other!

Aviva

Busy Builders

2011-04-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

Both the Grade 1's and 2's were hard at work building in the classroom today. My Grade 1 students were challenged to build a chair to hold Eeyore. They could either build one for the baby Eeyore or the big Eeyore, but their chair needed to support his weight. Students worked together to create the chair and make changes to it along the way. Have a look at our video to see if all of the chairs worked.

The Grade 2 students worked in partners to create different simple machines using pulleys and gears. They needed to work together and follow instructions. They were reading with meaning and having a lot of fun as well! Students quickly realized the importance of teamwork.

I'd love to hear what your children thought of these activities. What did they learn from them? Please add a comment here and let me know. Thanks for your help with this!

Aviva

Get Into The Groove

2011-04-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the generosity of our Home and School Association and the amazing organization of our Grade 2 teacher, Ms. Stretton, the JK-Grade 3 students get to enjoy some dance lessons this week. Here are my students participating in their first lesson. Hopefully they will show you some of their jazz moves at home too!

The students are very excited to learn a new dance on Thursday as well. I hope that you enjoy us grooving to the beat!

Aviva

An Amazing Week

2011-04-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

I don't go far without my camera. I am definitely not a professional photographer, or anything close, but I do see the value in pictures, and in the classroom, it's amazing how much a few photographs will tell me about the learning that's taking place.

Looking back on the photographs that I took this week, helped me realize just what an incredible week it's been. Below is an Animoto Slideshow featuring some highlights of this week. I hope that you watch this slideshow with your children and talk about what happened in the classroom. What did your children enjoy the most? What are they looking forward to doing next? Please feel free to leave a comment here and share your thoughts!

Have a great weekend! I look forward to another amazing week next week!

Aviva

Keeping Our Teeth Healthy

2011-03-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

Today we were fortunate to listen to a fantastic presentation on dental health. The students learned what they should eat and what they can do to keep their teeth clean and healthy. We captured some of this learning in pictures today, shown in the Animoto Slideshow below.

The Grade 1/2 students then worked in partners to reflect on their learning, and share what they learned with others too. This activity matches up perfectly with our Grade 1 Social Studies unit on Community Helpers and our Grade 2 Health Unit on Healthy Foods. We hope that you enjoy our presentations too!

We'd love to know what you know about keeping teeth clean and healthy. Please help us learn by leaving a comment here. Thanks for your help!

The Grade 1 Classes and the Grade 1/2 Class

Visiting Community Helpers

2011-03-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Here is an Animoto Slideshow of our visit with two special community helpers today: a police officer and a firefighter. We learned a lot from them! We hope you learn something from this slideshow too!

The Grade 1 Students

Our Fantastic Friday

2011-03-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday really was an amazing day, and I'm glad that I could capture some of it in pictures. Watching the children working together and writing yesterday made me realize the value of choice. Instead of telling the students what tools they had to use, I outlined the form of their writing and gave them control over the rest. It was awesome! Students were using everything from the iPod Touches to the iPads to the computers to markers and paper, and they were all happily engaged in writing. They were helping each other, they were problem-solving, and they were learning. As a teacher, I can't ask for anything better!

I hope that you enjoy this Animoto Slideshow with your children, and that you get a chance to use this slideshow to discuss yesterday's writing activities. What did the children think about them? Did they like having more "choice?" Why? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

Anything's Possible

2011-03-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

Creating Their Presentations

Today, we did an activity that I would have never thought I'd do with a group of Grade 1 and 2 students: we made Presentations on GoogleDocs. Since just before the March Break, we've been learning about feelings as part of a Character Education/literacy activity, so I thought it would be interesting for the students to create their own slideshows on "feelings." The students worked in partners to find appropriate images on Google Images, copy the links, and insert the pictures into their slideshows. Then they wrote sentences and/or captions about each of the feelings.

The activity itself does not seem that complicated, and it really wasn't, but it was the "searching" part of this activity that I was hesitant about. Our Board filters lots of Internet content, but when searching images, it's hard to know what's going to appear. Everything may not be appropriate. Can six- and seven-year-olds deal with this? Will they filter accordingly?

Today was the test, and my students did an outstanding job! The amazing part was sitting back and listening to them create their slideshows. They took this responsibility very seriously. They discussed what images to use, and they immediately let me know if they saw something inappropriate. The students also thought about the target audiences of this slideshow: their parents and the teacher. Even though some of the images were appropriate, I heard the students say that they wouldn't choose them because "Miss Dunsiger might not like them," or "this isn't something we do at school (fighting), so I shouldn't pick this picture." Wow! Today, all of the students showed me just how responsible they can be!

Below are the completed slideshows. I hope that you enjoy them! To help us with this feeling activity, I'd love if you would share what you do when you feel different ways. As I asked the students today: how can we behave our best even when we don't feel our best?

Thanks for your help with this activity!

Aviva

We Did It!

2011-03-10T14:59:00.000-08:00

We have been working hard on our educational Television Show, and yesterday, the students did the first full recording of their show. I had another chance to work outside of my comfort zone by using JayCut to edit the video and produce what you see below. I would definitely suggest plugging in some external speakers when listening to this video, as the sound quality is not as good at times. This is my no means a professional production, but it is what six- and seven-year-olds independently produced in small groups, and it was a great opportunity to share out learning with others in a new way.

The students would like to watch this video again, reflect on how they did, and try a live performance the next time using UStream. I plan on doing this when we get back from March Break. I'm interested in seeing how they change their performances based on their reflections.

Here are some things that I learned from this experience:

1) It is important to give students the opportunity to present information in a lot of different ways. Many chose to just have a discussion, and having some more variety in the performances would have been great!

2) Planning is important, but script writing may not be quite as important. The students really wanted to stick to their script, and this made things stilted at times. Using an organizer to plan out some ideas instead of writing a full script, may have been better.

3) Have students list what props they're going to use and how they're going to use them. Students realized the importance of having props, but not all students used all of the props that they chose.

4) Develop a conclusion as a class. What is the meaning behind the television show? Make sure that this message is clearly stated at the end.

For teachers that have done a similar project before, what are your suggestions for improvement? I would love to hear what you have to say! And once again, a special thank you to Colin Jagoe (@colinjagoe) and iAnna for inspiring all of us to try something new.

Aviva

Practice Makes Perfect

2011-03-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

Today, my class started to practice their lines and actions for our big television show. They were so excited! The students quickly learned that it takes a long time to memorize lines and figure out how to present to others in an interesting way too. Watch this Photo Peach slideshow of the "young actors" hard at work:

Practicing For Our TV Show on PhotoPeach

While we are still not ready for our final presentation yet, here is a recording of one of the groups presenting "scared" during our initial full-group rehearsal:

I love how this group considers the audience -- a group of six- and seven-year-olds -- in their presentation. They knew that Spiderman would interest these young children, and they planned accordingly. Way to go!

Thanks again to Colin Jagoe (@colinjagoe) and iAnna for inspiring us to complete this project in the first place and continuing to motivate us even when it gets hard. We watched the second iAnna episode today, and the students were even more excited to practice after seeing this great acting. Thanks Anna!

Aviva

Come On In And Have A Look

2011-03-05T14:58:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted an Animoto slideshow here, and when looking through my photographs this weekend, I realized just how many I have to share. Take a look at the slideshow below to get a glimpse into our classroom and some of the activities that we do each day. What are some activities that your child enjoys the most? Why? I would love to hear what you and your child have to say!

Aviva

It All Started With A Tweet ...

2011-03-04T15:26:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet by Colin Jagoe (@colinjagoe) about a guest post on his blog by his seven-year-old daughter. She made a "television show episode" called iAnna, which is very similar to iCarly. When watching her show, I knew that I needed to try out something similar with my students.

I then saw a tweet last week by Heidi Siwak (@heidisiwak) about her class UStream Channel. When I saw this, I knew what to do! I would have my students create a television show on UStream.

Last week, for our Word Wall and Word Family activity, students learned about feeling and colour words after reading My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss. As part of our school focus on Social Justice, we've been spending time discussing feelings, so why not have students create an educational television show on feelings? An idea was forming ...

Yesterday, I showed the class iAnna. We used this excellent example to help us develop "success criteria" for television shows. From there, the idea took off! Watch this PhotoPeach Slideshow to see where the students are going with this mega-media literacy project:

Our TV Show Project: Starting The Process on PhotoPeach

The students are so excited for Monday and our continuation of this fun and educational activity! A special thank you to Anna, Colin, and Heidi for helping me step out of my comfort zone (television shows, music apps, and UStream are very new to me) and learn along with my students: a whole class of excellent teachers! And to think this whole project started because of a single tweet ...

Aviva

And This Is What It's All About ...

2011-02-25T16:18:00.000-08:00

I was having a look at some of my student glogs tonight, and I came across this one that one of my students made. I just had to share it here (right click to see the full screen glog):

This is really what teaching's all about. Hearing that a student loves school and is excited to learn is so important. A special thank you to this student, and all of my students, for reminding me daily why I love what I do!

Aviva

Sharing Our Learning And Trying Something New

2011-02-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

Today, my class had the amazing opportunity to learn about Mardis Gras from @plnaugle and her Grade 4 students in New Orleans. Paula's class Skyped with ours, and using a combination of words and visuals, they taught us all about this special celebration.

My students decided to share what they learned by working alone or in partners to create a Common Craft video. Here are various examples of these videos:

Students were excited to try this out, as for the next couple of weeks, they're going to need to make Common Craft videos for Show and Tell.

For a first attempt, I was amazed by what they did: the students were creating, applying, and connecting, and having fun too! Watching what my students did today makes me wonder in what other ways the class can create Common Craft videos to share their learning with others. Have your students created Common Craft videos before? On what topics did they do so?

A special thank you to @plnaugle for inspiring today's activity, and @kathycassidy and @mariak for sharing their students' Common Craft videos (see here and here)! I love learning from all of you!

Aviva

When Technology Doesn't Work

2011-02-22T15:01:00.001-08:00

When I got to school this morning, the wireless network was down. Oh no! It's Tuesday, and my students always do a blog post for our Word Wall and Word Family activity. I knew that they would be disappointed.

Sometimes technology doesn't cooperate though. We all needed to be flexible. Instead of doing a blog post, students got to work on their own or with a partner to write a number story. The Grade 1's needed to use a selection of numbers from one to ten, and the Grade 2's needed to use a selection of numbers from one to twenty. We read a bunch of number stories together as a class, and we even wrote one together too. The students could be as creative as they wanted to be though!

They really wanted to still share their work with an audience, so I decided to take photographs of their stories and share them here in a Slideshare Presentation. I will never win any photography awards,:) but hopefully you can still read their work, and enjoy their number stories too!

My class would love to hear some of your number stories and number sentences as well. Please feel free to add a comment with your own. Thanks for your help with this special activity!

Our number stories

View more presentations from adunsiger.

Talking About Math

2011-02-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

I love to get video footage during classroom activities. It's great to hear what students have to say, and I really enjoy listening to them explaining their learning. During math centres today, I took short video clips of three students explaining "symmetry."

How would your child define symmetry? What objects can you think of that are symmetrical? Please help us learn together!

Miss Dunsiger and Her Grade 1/2 Class

Blogging: A Student Voice

2011-02-17T16:27:00.000-08:00

Tonight I uploaded a video that I took of a Grade 2 student explaining blogging. He was completing a blog post during math centres today, and when I asked him what he was doing, he shared his blog post with me, and also explained what he was going to continue to write about.

After uploading the video, I tweeted out the link, and within minutes, I received mentions from @langwitches and @_zebrastripes:

I love what they had to say here. We really do need to hear from more students about their definition of blogging. This student does make blogging sound so easy, as blogging is a regular part of his classroom routine. He's excited to blog, and he sees the power of sharing his thoughts online.

Let's see if we can get some more students sharing their thoughts on blogging. What would your child say about blogging? I can't wait to hear!

Aviva

Explaining Symmetry

2011-02-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

During math centres today, I went around and talked to the students about what they were doing and what they learned. Below is a video clip of a child explaining her symmetrical picture. I like hearing her explanation of symmetry.

What do you know that is symmetrical? What does it mean for an object to be symmetrical? My class would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

100th Day Lino It Wall: 100 Things We Know

2011-02-14T17:26:00.001-08:00

We didn't quite make it to 100 posts on this wall, but with your help, we might. Please feel free to add a sticky note of "something you know."

Let's see just how many different things we know!

Aviva

100th Day & Valentine's Day: Learning Should Be Fun!

2011-02-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Today was both the 100th Day of School and Valentine's Day. It was definitely cause for a big celebration ... but why can't we have both learning and fun together? This was certainly my theme for today, and as I said goodbye to my students and they said to me, "This was the best day EVER," I know that I succeeded.

A special "thank you" to my amazing Twitter PLN that encouraged my students all day today by replying to their numerous tweets. We didn't quite make 100 tweets today, but with the last few that students sent on their way out the door today, we got to 88, and hopefully we can do those final 12 tomorrow. Without all of you, I know that we wouldn't have gotten half as far. You were our cheering section today, and so a special cheer for you: "Give me a T. Give me an H. Give me an A. Give me an N. Give me a K. Give me an S. What does that spell? Thanks, thanks, and more thanks. You're awesome!"

Below is an Animoto Slideshow of our very exciting day:

I'd love to hear from the students here:

What activity did you enjoy the most? Why did you like it?

Please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts. A very special happy 100th Day and happy Valentine's Day to all of you!

Aviva

Our Readers' Theatre Presentation Of The Three Little Pigs

2011-02-10T15:35:00.001-08:00

This week, my students have been working on rehearsing a Readers' Theatre presentation of The Three Little Pigs. We have read the script together as a class, and the children have read it in small groups. They practiced the actions in small groups too. They even rehearsed the script with a global audience by presenting it to @mrmacnology's class yesterday via Skype.

Today, the class read the script together, and we recorded the first reading using the Livescribe Pen. The children listened to this reading, and reflected on how they did. Students noted that they were not loud enough and did not always remember when to speak and when to listen. They also noted that they did not always speak in time with the other people in their group. We used the reflections from this initial recording to make our second recording even better. Students still noted when they forgot to speak or when they were not in time with their other group members, but they all agreed that they did a better job the second time around.

The Three Little Pigs Readers' Theatre
brought to you by Livescribe

Students then got in groups and rehearsed their lines with the other group members. They added in some actions too. Eventually it was time to record the plays. All four groups took turns presenting, and in between the presentations, students offered positive feedback to their peers and some suggestions too. The class agreed that it was great that all students participated and tried to project their voices so that they could be heard too. They liked how students helped each other track the lines. They also enjoyed the voices that the students gave to the different characters. For the first two presentations, their peers suggested that students remember to "act" their role as well as "speak" it. Students thought that the third group did better than this, but that some classmates interrupted the presentations by walking in front of the filming. All of the students agreed that the last group used the feedback well from the other three groups, and remembered to "speak" and "act."

I hope that you enjoy these presentations. I was proud of all of the students for participating so eagerly in this Readers' Theatre activity and really trying to take on the different character roles. What Readers' Theatre activities have you tried with your class? I would love to hear some suggestions to try out with my students too!

Aviva

Reflecting On The Great Fish Problem: Day Three of the Three Part Lesson

2011-02-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

Today was our final day of the three part lesson. Yesterday, the students worked in partners to complete The Great Fish Problem, and today they reflected on their work. We decided to use the Livescribe Pen to record our reflections. I picked a couple of the sample questions provided by our math facilitator, and as a class, children shared their thoughts. Here is what they had to say:

How Did You Solve The Problem
brought to you by Livescribe

What Was The Most Challenging Part
brought to you by Livescribe

What Other Math Can You Connect This With
brought to you by Livescribe

What Did You Learn
brought to you by Livescribe

Based on their discussion, I had some more reflections as well:

1) Students can explain the process of what they did, but they need to continue to make reference to the tools and the strategies that they used when completing various math problems. Continue to model this during full class activities, and give students lots of opportunities to discuss tools and strategies in small groups and with the class.

2) Students can make connections between various math problems, but many of their connections are general ones based largely on involvement in other problem-solving activities, and not specific ones related to the type of question asked. Give lots of opportunities for students to discuss connections between different math problems completed in class, and encourage students to make reference to specific skills addressed in both problems.

3) Students know what they learned from this experience, but they need to continue to use the appropriate vocabulary to describe their learning too. Model this vocabulary in class during math problem reflection opportunities. Maybe even try making an anchor chart of words that students can use to explain their learning.

4) Students know what was difficult for them, and they also know the importance of overcoming these challenges. Try to address their concerns though. Many expressed that the writing was the hardest part of this word problem, so continue to model how to write a complete answer, and provide anchor charts to assist students with this writing. Try the use of the Livescribe Pen to allow students to expand on the ideas in their written work too.

Completing this three part math problem and reflecting on the process has been a very beneficial activity for both me and my students. I look forward to trying more of these problems in class too!

For those of you that completed this problem at home or at your own school, I would love to hear your reflections too. Maybe you just listened to these recordings and you have something else to add. All insights would be much appreciated! Thanks for your help!

Aviva

The Great Fish Problem: Part Two Of The Three Part Problem

2011-02-09T15:11:00.000-08:00

Today my students completed part two of the three part math problem. Both the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students had to work in partners to solve a problem involving fish. There were different numbers for each grade. Right away, the children applied what was asked in this problem to what was asked in our Great Smartie Problem completed on Monday. Connecting the two problems, many of them chose to solve this problem in a similar way. They quickly figured out that some of the ways to solve the Smartie Problem may not apply here: no one wanted to eat any real fish.:) The students were creative though. One discussed putting the fish all into one bowl and moving one over at a time until there was an equal number in both bowls, and one even suggested going out to buy more fish. Someone said that she was going to "put some of the fish into the pond," but her solution changed when she started working with her partner. I'll be interested in hearing what the students think of their solutions as they discuss them tomorrow.

Here are some things that I noticed:

1) The students seem to understand the concept of equality. Even though there were many different solutions, all of the students ended up with an equal number of fish in each bowl. I loved seeing how eager the students were to find different ways to solve the same problem.

2) Many students rely on writing addition sentences even when their solution would involve both addition and subtraction. I need to continue to have the students complete math problems that involve both addition and subtraction, and model for the students the need to include both number sentences in the solution.

3) When students solve the same problem in a different way, they often write the same addition and/or subtraction sentence even though their new solution might involve a different one. I need to model for the students how to change the number sentence when the solution changes too. I will do this when completing math problems with the whole class, and then slowly transition the students to doing this on their own.

4) When provided with a paper copy of the fish bowls to use, students often just drew one picture cue, even though more than one picture could be used to show what they were doing. Giving the students just a large, blank piece of paper to complete the problem tends to result in a higher number of picture cues that actually match the various steps in the solutions.

5) While all of the students told me what tool they used to solve this problem (and, in fact, in this case all of them used counters), none of them actually wrote this down. To help get the students in the habit of writing down the tool that they used, I am going to provide a place for them to do so for upcoming math problems. Then I will slowly transition them to automatically including this information in their written work.

6) Sometimes the students have more to share than they are comfortable writing down, and talking to each of the groups showed me just how much they had to say. Using the Livescribe Pen at Math Problem Solving Centres might encourage the students to orally add additional information to what they have written down as well. I will have to give this a try!

Below is a Photopeach Slideshow of the various solutions:

The Great Fish Problem on PhotoPeach

I would love to hear what you notice.

If you would like to try out this math problem with your students too, please feel free to add a comment here letting us know how you solved it. Seeing various solutions and hearing about the process used to solve these problems will definitely help us when we discuss this on Friday.

Aviva

The Great Smartie Problem

2011-02-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

In preparation for our upcoming PA Day, all of the teachers at the school are having their students complete a three part problem. We have been given the "Day 2" activity -- the actual open-ended word problem to complete -- but we have to design the "Day 1" and "Day 3" activity. The problem is a challenging one, and it will be interesting to see how it goes. I'm looking forward to the debriefing session on Friday!

Today, our students completed the "Day 1" activity. Mrs. Howe and I made a Math Story to share with our classes called The Great Smartie Problem.

The great smartie problem
View more documents from adunsiger.

After reading the math book together, we had our students work in partners to try and solve the problem presented at the end of the story. It was interesting to see their solutions, and hear what they had to share. All of the groups shared their completed work with the class.

Our Solutions To The Great Smartie Problem on PhotoPeach

Here are some of the observations noted by my students:

1) All but one of the groups used counters to solve this problem. The other group used a reckenreck.

2) Most of the groups thought that there should be 8 Smarties in each bucket, but they came to this conclusion differently. Some students dumped all of the Smarties out of the buckets, and put them back in one at a time. One of the groups, dumped all of the Smarties out of the buckets and put them back in two at a time. Still other groups moved two of the Smarties from the first bucket to the second one.

3) One group decided to buy more Smarties and put an additional four Smarties in the second bucket that had less Smarties than the first bucket.

4) One group decided to just put six Smarties in each bucket and eat the additional Smarties. The children thought that this would be a yummy choice!:)

5) Even though all of the solutions are different ones, all of them make sense, and all of them are well-explained. In all of the cases, the answer is a "fair" one.

We wonder how the students will apply what they did here to the problem that they solve on Wednesday. We would all love to hear your solution to this problem too. Please consider adding a comment here letting us know how you would solve this problem. Thank you for your help with this!

Aviva and Sharon

Thank You!

2011-02-05T07:43:00.000-08:00

This is a special "thank you" to @technolit and the other six educators from the Thames Valley District School Board that came to visit our classroom yesterday. My students enjoyed sharing with you what they do and how they use technology in the classroom. They loved how you photographed their work and recorded their thoughts on using technology to help them learn. You really made their opinions matter ... thank you!

At the second nutrition break, one student whispered to another one, "I'm going to be famous! One of those visitors recorded what I said, and he's going to put the recording on his website too. Isn't that cool?" Wow! This student went home last night so proud of his accomplishments, and that is all thanks to you.

When the children wrote their Friday Journals in the afternoon, I told them that it could be a "free write" week. Three of the students chose to write about your visit, and I recorded their readings (posted below). Imagine the impact that you had on them, if when given the choice to write on any topic, they chose your visit as their favourite one. Many thanks for such a memorable day!

Aviva

A Special Goodbye

2011-01-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went out for a special "goodbye dinner" for Janet Adler. Janet is our Vice Principal, and on Monday, she'll be leaving Ancaster Meadow to become a principal of another school. I got to the dinner a little bit late last night, and when I arrived, I was speechless. Almost our entire staff came out for this special goodbye. As I started to converse with the people there, I realized what an incredible impact Janet's had on our entire school.

Thank you, Janet, for all of your help and support. You always put students first, and I applaud you for all that you do for them! You are kind and compassionate, and you help inspire all of us to always do our best. I wish you all the best in your new position, and I will definitely miss you!

Aviva

The Actors In All Of Us: Thanks Robert Munsch!

2011-01-20T15:04:00.001-08:00

I love Robert Munsch stories. I have always loved Robert Munsch stories. There's something about his characters and the extreme situations that always make me giggle, and I've read most of his books so many times, that I have them memorized now. One of my favourite Robert Munsch books is Mortimer.

This week for a read aloud, we read Mortimer, and then my students worked in groups of four and five to retell the story and create their own puppet plays. They're going to practice and perform their plays early next week, but in lead-up to that, we retold the story today (with a few small changes) in Readers' Theatre style. One of my students suggested that we videotape the performance so that we could look back at it later and see how we did, and I thought it was such a good idea, that I was happy to oblige!

While I think that I'll need to continue to work on my videotaping skills, I'm so glad that we did videotape this. Even my most reluctant actor was eager to participate here. Everyone chimed in with the different lines from the book, and all of my students acted their parts. We then watched the video afterwards, and I was amazed at the feedback the students provided. They reflected on ways that they could stay more in character, and they even reflected on ways to make for a smoother ending too. All of us are excited to perform Mortimer again next week. We hope to email Robert Munsch a link to our performance too: he inspired this after all.

We hope that you enjoy this video. Please share some of your Readers' Theatre success stories here too. We'd love to hear what you do!

Miss Dunsiger And The Grade 1/2 Class

Our First Mortimer Performance

An Update

Today (January 24th) we performed Mortimer again as a class. The students watched their other performance first and reflected on ways that they could improve their acting. They tried to stay in character, perform their lines with loud clear voices, and quiet down when necessary at the end so that we could have the final scene with Mortimer fast asleep. The children were so proud of their performance that they emailed Robert Munsch with a link to their video. They are hoping that he might come for a visit. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The students are definitely excited for our next big drama activity. Do you have any great drama activity suggestions to share? I'd love to hear them!

Aviva

Trying Something New: Skype Literature Circles

2011-01-19T16:43:00.001-08:00

This blog post is actually a very big "thank you" to @jgriffith2 (JamieLynn): an amazing Grade 2 teacher that has taught me so many innovative ways to use technology in the classroom to really further learning. A couple of weeks ago, we spoke via Skype to set-up a "Global Literature Circle." With JamieLynn's encouragement, we decided to have a group of her Grade 2 students read the same book as a group of my Grade 2 students, and then discuss this book over Skype. After messaging each other a number of different book titles, we decided to use Where the Wild Things Are for our first literature circle.

I'll admit that I was a bit skeptical about doing this. While I loved the idea, I wondered if the students would be independent enough to have a Skype call while the other students in the classroom are working on a different literacy activity. Everything is worth a try though, and I'm so glad that we decided to give this a try.

Today was fantastic! The students were thrilled to introduce themselves to each other over Skype and share some of their thoughts on reading. They also loved making predictions about the book, and they can't wait to read the book too!

Sharing Thoughts On Reading

Making Predictions

Making More Predictions

Both groups of students are going to read Where the Wild Things Are now, and then share questions about the book, summarize the book, and share some some pictures that show different events that happened in the book as well. We are going to continue to work on building good conversation skills: responding to what the other students said, and moving the conversation forward.

This is meaningful book talk, and I can't wait to see the progression in the students' reading and oral language skills over the coming months. For those of you that have done literature circles before, what advice do you have to share? What are some of your success stories? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

An Update

Participating In The Skype Literature Circle

On Friday, January 21st, this group of students met again to discuss the book. It was great to see them engaging in a meaningful discussion on this fantastic book: Where the Wild Things Are. While the students still needed some support, by the end of the Skype call, they were getting better at responding to each other's questions and really talking to each other. They are going to meet again in a couple of weeks, and as these students continue to meet and discuss books, I think it will be great to see how independent they become at this.

As something different, on Friday I also had my other students completing centres at the time of the call. These were special literacy centres for our Experiment Day, but even so, it was wonderful to observe how engaged the rest of the class could be in their own activities while this was happening at the same time. This was one of my biggest concerns about these Skype Literature Circles, and watching the students on Friday proved to me that this can work!

Aviva

Sharing Learning About Science

2011-01-14T18:50:00.000-08:00

During our last round of literacy centres, the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students shared what they learned in Science by adding sticky notes to these Lino Walls (Grade 1 Wall and Grade 2 Wall). Both of these walls are embedded below as well. Please read what the students had to say, and see if your child can add any more sticky notes to these walls sharing their learning on Living Things (Grade 1) and Liquids and Solids (Grade 2). If other classes from different schools are studying these topics too, please feel free to share your learning on these walls as well. It would be great if we could all learn together!

Thanks for your help with this!

Aviva

Author's Chair

2011-01-14T17:47:00.000-08:00

For our Friday Journal Activity this week, I decided to try something new. I had my Grade 1's write a letter on any topic of their choice, and I had my Grade 2's write a procedure for doing anything that they wished. For those students that were interested, I invited them to read their letter or procedure in the Author's Chair. I recorded these readings and have shared four of them with you here. I love how excited these students got to share their work with an audience.

Both of my Grade 2 students wrote procedures for making a snowman. They would love if you try out their procedures and see if they work. Please leave a comment here and let us know.

Thanks for your help with this!

Aviva

The Perfect End To Our Perfect Pajama Day

2011-01-11T16:57:00.000-08:00

During Reading Buddy time today, my students worked together with their Grade 4 buddies to record their reading using the Palm Treos. I used the document camera to demonstrate how to do this recording, and then the students had to problem-solve together, while also reading and having fun. Below is an Animoto slideshow of this activity in action. It's great to see all of the students so engaged. It was definitely the perfect end to our Perfect Pajama Day!

Aviva

Verb Videos

2011-01-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

Since we got back to school after the Winter Break, the students have been learning about verbs (action words). To help them demonstrate what they learned, my Grade 1 and 2 students worked in partners to create their own videos. They made plasticine creatures to use in their videos, and they even designed their own sets too. Some students decided to take turns saying sentences that included nouns, verbs, and sometimes even adjectives too, and some students decided to create a story that included the use of verbs. We're going to watch these videos tomorrow, and the children are going to use them to create their own Verb Wordles to embed in their individual blogs. To help them with this activity, please add a comment here with some verbs that you either heard or saw demonstrated in these short movies. The children would love to add some of your verbs to their Wordles.

Thanks for your help with this activity!

Aviva

P.S. Reflecting on these videos, the students learned about the importance of using clear, loud voices and including actions to accompany their dialogue. I was really pleased with their first attempt at these mini-movies!

Puppet Pals: Drama and Technology

2011-01-08T12:45:00.001-08:00

This week, my students got to participate in a very special drama activity. Thanks to @techieang and @davelanovaz, I learned about Puppet Pals: an app for the iPod Touch and iPad where students can create their own puppet shows/puppet videos using a variety of characters and settings. Since we've been learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives in class, I thought that it would be great if the students could apply what they learned by creating a puppet show that included nouns, verbs, and adjectives as well as some exciting dialogue too.

The students worked in groups of five to make this puppet show. Three groups used the Puppet Pals app on the iPod Touches and one group used the Puppet Pals app on the iPad. The groups had to plan their show and figure out which group member would play which character. They all needed to have a speaking role, but this speaking role could vary depending on what the group decided.

The students loved this activity, and they reflected well after completing it too. The groups agreed that they did a good job following their plan and completing a final puppet show/movie, but that they needed to continue to improve on working well as part of a team. They knew that they couldn't always do what they wanted to do, and they needed to be willing to compromise. Some groups said that they worked better after recording the play/movie a couple of times, as then they had a better idea of what worked well and what didn't. One group said that they worked better out in the pod (attached to our classroom), as they could then have a bigger and quieter area to work, and this helped.

Below is a video of one of the puppet shows/movies (sorry, I started recording just a few seconds late). The children in this group definitely enjoyed manipulating the characters on the iPad as well as coming up with some creative dialogue too. I hope you enjoy their show! If you have used Puppet Pals before, I'd love to hear about your experiences too. What worked well, and what didn't? I look forward to using this app again with my class!

Aviva

An Update -- Sunday, January 9, 2011

Here's a link to another Puppet Pals video that a second group produced. This group used an iPod Touch to record the video, but it's an older iPod Touch, so I was not able to export their video to YouTube. I apologize for my "finger shot," but I wanted to be able to record the video to share with you here. I love how this group used both a narrator and dialogue, and their story even has a happy ending too. It took this group a number of times to record the video the way that they wanted it to be, but when they were done, all of them were pleased with what they produced. I think that this activity taught all of these group members the value of perseverance. Enjoy!

Why "Free Write Time" Is Important

2011-01-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

Once a week, my students go up to the computer lab for a period. For the last couple of months, I have given my students "free write time" during this period. They can write on any topic that they choose and they can use any tool that they choose too. My only requirement is that they need to "write."

My class loves this time. They get excited about writing, and all of the students are highly engaged in this writing activity too. They are all so creative. I even have students conducting interviews and recording the questions and answers in a chart. They continue to surprise me with what they can do.

I loved what I saw yesterday though. One student opened up the Notebook software and decided to write a poem. She then exported this poem as a jpeg image and uploaded it to her blog. Her poem was full of rich description and fantastic ideas!

I could have given the students a topic and had them write a poem, but would I have gotten the same results? This student got to write about a topic that interested her, and she got to choose the form that she wanted to use too. Giving students control over their writing produces some amazing results.

For the parents reading this post, I would love to hear what you think of "free write time." How does your child respond to this time? For the teachers reading this post, do you give regular "free write time?" What are your thoughts on this? Thanks for sharing!

Aviva

Nothing Better ...

2010-12-18T12:03:00.000-08:00

Every year, when the winter holidays come, I think that the students and teachers are both equally excited for a break. We all love school and enjoy our time at school too, but having some time to rest and relax is important as well. Just before starting this break, I wanted to thank all of the students, parents, teachers, and administrators for a great four months of school.

Yesterday, a child gave me this card, and it quickly reminded me why I teach:

You can "read" the happiness and excitement in her card, and I can't think of a better gift. This student definitely had me smiling all day yesterday.

Happy holidays everyone! See you again in 2011!

Aviva

Goodbye Miss Ho!

2010-12-10T14:39:00.001-08:00

Today was a difficult day for me and for my students too, as we all had to say goodbye to Miss Ho. Nicki did her first teaching placement in our classroom since November, and she is already an amazing educator. She always looks at the needs of students first, and has done everything possible to ensure that all students meet their full potential. She is a great addition to the teaching profession.

As a special Friday Journal, all of us included a special sticky note or two on this Lino Wall, letting Miss Ho know just how much she means to all of us. All the best in your next placement, Miss Ho! We'll miss you!

Miss Dunsiger And The Grade 1/2 Class

Explaining Their Thinking

2010-12-10T12:53:00.000-08:00

In math this week, my student teacher, Nicki, planned some exciting centres that reviewed money and introduced patterning for Grades 1 and 2. During centre time today, I sat down with a group of Grade 2 students completing a money activity. They needed to make different coin amounts using different numbers of coins (e.g., make me 85 cents using 6 coins). I recorded the students as they explained their thinking. Wow! What amazing math talk! Thank you, Nicki, for planning such engaging centres that not only allowed the children to think, but to communicate their thinking too.

Aviva

Trying Out Lino

2010-12-04T07:48:00.000-08:00

For Reading Buddies last week, my Grade 1/2 students worked with their Grade 4 buddies to add sticky notes to a Wallwisher Wall detailing what they learned from various books. This week, we focused on asking questions. The students read books with their reading buddies, and then added sticky notes to a Lino Wall (embedded below) with their questions and even some possible answers too. It was great to watch the students working together to formulate the questions and post their notes.

It was also great at the end of the process when I asked the students what tool they liked better -- Wallwisher or Lino -- and why? All of the students agreed that they liked using Lino more. They said that it was, "easier to grab the sticky note than to double-click and make it appear." The Lino sticky note is also "bigger," so it's "easier to type on and post." Students also enjoyed all of the "colour choices." They had so much fun using this tool that they almost forgot that they were reading and writing too!

So for now, all I'm thinking is, what can I try out next week? If you have any ideas to share, I would love to hear them. Thanks for your help!

Aviva

Use your mouse to move around the canvas and see the different sticky notes. Feel free to add one of your own too.

Reflecting On Our Musical

2010-12-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

Completing The Wallwisher With Their Partners

With special thanks to Ms. Ledroit, Mrs. Lucarelli, and Ms. Doyle, all of the primary students were involved in presenting a musical for the holiday season. The students spent months practicing for this musical during their weekly music classes as well as during some special nutrition break practices. On November 30th and December 1st, they got to share their months of work during two daytime performances and one evening performance.

For a special Friday Journal this week, my students worked in partners to reflect on their performance: what did they do well, and what could they improve the next time? The students quickly realized that nobody is perfect, and while they all worked hard, they also realized their areas of weakness too. This reflection fits perfectly with our new Arts curriculum, and allows students to do some meaningful writing as well.

Read through these sticky notes with your child, and feel free to add additional sticky notes too. Thanks for your help with this activity!

Aviva

P.S. Since I got to perform alongside the students, I added a reflection too. Please note though that one of the students used my laptop for this activity and so my username appears on her sticky note as well. I did manage to stand "quietly" on the stage ... or at least relatively so. :)

Real Collaboration

2010-11-26T14:36:00.000-08:00

For Reading Buddies today, our class worked with the Grade 4 class to add a sticky note to this Wallwisher Wall (embedded below) on books. Students reflected on the books that they read together. Some of my Grade 2 students used Wallwisher last year, so they were the experts, but for the majority of students, this was a new tool. Students had access to the wall on nine computers and the SMART Board.

It was amazing to watch! The students were working together on these computers and on the SMART Board too. They were problem-solving together, writing together, and even sharing ideas both orally and in written form. This was real collaboration! It wasn't about the teacher showing the students what to do, but about the students showing each other what to do and helping each other along the way. Now the only question is, what exciting thing can we do next week for Reading Buddies?

To really help make this Wallwisher Wall a global activity, we would love for you to add a sticky note here about a lesson that you've learned from a book that you've read. Thanks for your help with this activity!

Aviva (Grade 1/2 Teacher) and David (Grade 4 Teacher)

The Blogger's Cafe Is Open

2010-11-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

Over a week ago, @j_allen tweeted me and mentioned that my professional blog was discussed in a Blogging Session at #edcampkc. I was really excited about this, so when Josh tweeted out the link to the recorded session, I had to watch it. I was fortunate to watch three amazing members of my PLN (Professional Learning Network) on Twitter present on blogging. One of these presenters was Nick, also known by many as @thenerdyteacher. Nick was talking about the Blogger's Cafe that he has in his high school English class. I've read some of the posts on his blog about this Blogger's Cafe, and again, I was intrigued by the idea. When I saw that his students used Kidblog to do their blogging (a platform that I use too), I knew that I needed to give this a try.

Nick's Blogger's Cafe operates as a backchannel in his classroom, where basically he has two students blogging about the teaching and learning that's happening in the classroom as it's happening. I loved this backchannel concept, and I knew that I wanted the same set-up too.

Having students blogging throughout the day though sounded like too much, so I thought that I would "open" the Blogger's Cafe during our Literacy Centre and Math Centre Review. It would be interesting to have a written student perspective on this review process. Since I wanted the cafe feel too, I decided to set up a comfortable area in the room for blogging (with some pillows and stuffed animals to help create an ambiance). To make the blogging portable, I thought that I would have my students write on the iPod Touches.

I initially set it up for students to blog in Kidblog, but I quickly found out that Kidblog was hard for the students to operate on the iPod Touches. One of my first students got her post published, but the other student got frustrated making it work. I then thought that the students could micro-blog on Twitter, and they liked this, but wanted a blog post that was not confined to 140 characters. A student actually suggested that we use our Litcircuits Blog for this, and that's when I remembered that @mrjarbenne told me to download the WordPress app onto my class iPod Touches. Perfect! The Litcircuits Blog was the way to go, and the students were the ones to come up with the idea too. Awesome!!

The best part though was not in the set-up but in the blogging. All of my students are anxious to be our daily bloggers. They are excited to write, and they don't even realize that they're writing. They are completely engaged in this writing process. They also told me that they need to be "even better listeners," so that they "don't forget to include anything important." Wow! They really get it! These six and seven year olds are developing their listening comprehension skills in a meaningful way.

Thank you so much Nick for inspiring me to try something new in my classroom and giving my students another wonderful way to write! For the parents out there, what do think of the Blogger's Cafe? What are your child's thoughts on it too? For the educators out there, have you used a Blogger's Cafe in your classroom? How do you make it work? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Aviva

Students Explaining Their Thinking

2010-11-13T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I wrote a post on the Live With Livescribe Blog about metacognition. I think that it's really important that students of all ages explain their thinking. Below is a Glog where I've embedded three videos of students demonstrating metacognition in both reading activities and math (right-click on the Glog to view it in full screen).

For parents out there, I'd love to hear about how your child demonstrates metacognition when completing different literacy and math activities at home. For teachers out there, I'd love to learn about different metacognitive activities that you've done with your class before. Hopefully we can all learn from each other.

Aviva

What Does Freedom Mean To Us?

2010-11-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

In class today, my students watched this amazing video called, A Pittance of Time.

We used this video to discuss why we celebrate Remembrance Day on November 11th. Then the students got to discuss with each other what peace and freedom means to them. We used the information from this discussion to create our own slideshow on What Freedom Means To Us.

This slideshow will be shown at our Remembrance Day Assembly on November 11th. We would love to know, what does freedom mean to you?

Aviva

Reflecting On Works Of Art

2010-11-03T16:15:00.000-07:00

As a special literacy and art activity, the children watched and listened to Pinky Dinky Doo And The Far Out Adventure On Planet Vroom Vroom. As a follow-up to this listening activity, they had to create their own plasticine spaceship for Pinky Dinky Doo. To connect with our new Art Curriculum expectations, the children had to reflect on these plasticine spaceships and explain what they liked best about them and what they would add or change. Below is a VoiceThread where the Grade 1 and 2 students used the webcam feature to record their thoughts.

I love all of their various ideas and how they explained all of their answers too. What do you like about these spaceships? What would you add or change too? Any positive feedback would be much appreciated!

Aviva

P.S. My apologies about some of the photographs! I still have much to learn about how to become a better photographer.:)

Reading Buddies: Giving Students Leadership Opportunities

2010-11-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

My class started Reading Buddies today. For the first time ever, I am pairing up with younger junior students (a Grade 4 class) for Reading Buddies. The students meet every Day 3 for 20 minutes to read to each other. Both the Grade 1/2 students and the Grade 4 students have specific reading tasks, and they both get an opportunity to self-assess and peer-assess their reading.

Today was fantastic! About 10 minutes into our Reading Buddy time, the Grade 4 teacher said to me, "Isn't this amazing, Miss Dunsiger?!?! Look at the students. They're all engaged, they're all reading, and there are no problems either." It really was great to see!

Throughout our Reading Buddy time together, the students are also going to get a chance to respond to books together using different technology tools too (including blogs, Wallwishers, VoiceThreads, and even our Palm Treos). The Grade 1/2 students will get to teach the Grade 4 students how to use these tools, and both groups of students can experiment and learn together.

What are some different activities you've done with Reading Buddies in the past? I would love to hear your ideas!

Aviva

Halloween Story VoiceThreads

2010-10-29T16:38:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, my students wrote a Halloween Pattern Story that Mr. McDonald's class in Manitoba illustrated. They then wrote a story that we illustrated. Today, we connected with Mr. McDonald's class via Skype and read the stories together. Below are the VoiceThread stories. I hope that you enjoy them as much as the students did!

The Story We Wrote (Illustrated By Mr. McDonald's Class):

The Story Mr. McDonald's Class Wrote (Illustrated By Our Class):

Math VoiceThread: Creating And Commenting On Graphs

2010-10-27T11:53:00.001-07:00

Last week, we had a Skype call with @jgriffith2 as part of our Grade 1 and 2 graphing unit. The students in her class surveyed my students on a variety of topics, and my students surveyed her students on a variety of topics. Today my students worked in groups of four to take the results of the survey and record them in a tally chart. Then they looked at these results and offered some commentary on them using VoiceThread. Listen to their comments below and feel free to add some of your own. We would love to hear your response to these results.

Thanks for your help with this graphing activity!
Aviva

P.S. I learned that we need to make smaller tally charts the next time because neither the document camera nor my camera can capture the entire graph.

Our Special Collaboration: A Halloween Story

2010-10-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

For Halloween, my class decided to join with Mr. McDonald's class (from Manitoba) to write a Halloween story. Each class wrote their own pattern story, and then we exchanged the stories to illustrate. We are going to take these stories and put them into VoiceThread to create digital storybooks that we will read together on Halloween. This will be a very special shared reading activity brought to life thanks to Skype.

Today, my students worked in partners to illustrate the stories. They needed to work together using one piece of paper to create a picture that matched the text in the story. Here is a short Animoto slideshow of this great teamwork. I was so pleased with what the students did! Please use this slideshow to help talk to your child about this exciting Language and Art activity, and then check back on the blog on Halloween weekend to see our completed VoiceThread stories.

Aviva

Animal Story Show And Tell

2010-10-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

As my students are using a variety of tools more often, they are quickly realizing the different purposes for each of these tools too. Today, one student was getting ready to start her Show and Tell, and she said to me, "Miss Dunsiger, can I use the document camera? I want everyone to see the pictures in my book as I explain them." What a great reason to use this tool! I happily agreed, and she opened up the Notebook software (on my laptop), clicked on the document camera button on the toolbar, and turned on the document camera too. I love how independent my students are becoming at using these tools as well!

After she started her Show and Tell, I realized what great information she was sharing, and we decided to use the recording feature (from that point, on) to record her presentation. Hope you enjoy it as much as my students did!

Aviva

A Typical Day In Our Grade 1/2 Class

2010-10-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

For the Meet the Teacher Night on Thursday, October 7th, I created a short Animoto slideshow to show a typical day in our classroom. I hope that you're able to watch this slideshow with your children and discuss what they are learning in our new Grade 1/2 class. Please add a comment here, so that we can all share our learning together.

Have a great long weekend, and I look forward to seeing all of you again next week!
Aviva

Little Leaders

2010-10-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

I took this video footage this morning of one of my students explaining our Read to Self Centre. Listen as she discusses the Reading Strategies (you may need to turn up the volume). This video clip makes me realize that students of all ages can be leaders. We just need to give them the power to do so. I hope that you'll share your great little leaders' experiences here too.

Aviva

Leading Up To Student Led Conferences

2010-10-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

During our PA Day on Friday, my principal was talking about Student Led Conferences. I've heard of these conferences before, and they've always intrigued me, but I've never thought about settting them up with my students and parents. After my principal's talk though, I've spent a lot of time thinking about these conferences. Then I saw this blog post by @smartinez all on Student Led Conferences. Reflecting on my principal's talk and then reading this blog post led to these questions of mine:

1) How can I prepare my Grade 1 and 2 students to lead these conferences with their parents?

2) What would they discuss?

It was as I was brainstorming these questions that I started to think about the rationale for having these conferences in the first place: they give students independence and control over their learning. I have started to do this a lot in the classroom already. I have the children take turns reviewing math and literacy centres with the class. I ask them questions to get them thinking and talking about their learning.

I use the scaffolding approach a lot in my teaching, and I'm starting to think that what I'm doing now will help my students as we try to prepare for student-led conferences in November. The next step is to get the children to self-assess their work: what do they like about it, and what do they need to improve on? I can't wait to hear what they have to say!

For those of you that have tried out student-led conferences before, I would love to know your thoughts on them. What are your words of advice? It's great when we can learn together!

Aviva

Slideshow Of Literacy And Math Centres

2010-09-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

Below is a slideshow of our first round of Literacy and Math Centres. Watch this slideshow with your children and talk about the different activities. What did they learn? Which activity did they enjoy the most, and why? I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Aviva

A Special Kind of Show and Tell

2010-09-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

My students are really excited about our Document Camera, so we tried a different kind of Show and Tell today. Using both the Document Camera and the recording feature on Notebook software, this student made a video of his Show and Tell. Hope you enjoy it!

Aviva

Best Pet Video

2010-09-16T12:46:00.001-07:00

For our Read Aloud this week, we read the story, The Best Pet. The students then created a pet puppet that merged two different pets. For this design challenge, they needed to use a combination of paper bags, construction paper, and crayons and/or pencil crayons. Then they used the document camera to take a picture of their pet, and together, they made this video. Please leave a comment here helping us name these wonderful pets! You can also visit the Live With Livescribe Blog to see how we used the Livescribe Pen during Meet the Teacher Night to help us with this activity too!

Aviva

So Proud!

2010-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

I love this video clip of two of my students reading together during literacy centres today. Watch them track the print in the book, problem-solve the words, and work on reading fluency too! Way to go! I just had to celebrate this success!

Saturday, September 18, 2010

After catching this moment on video the other day, I was walking around yesterday during literacy centres, and I saw these two students reading together again. They said to me, "We're going to finish Andrew's Loose Tooth today. You can get the rest of it on video now." They were so excited for me to videotape them again that I just had to add the update here. Enjoy!

Seeing this wonderful learning, problem-solving, and collaboration in action is really what teaching is all about!

Our First Week In Grade 1

2010-09-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

It has been such an exciting first week in Grade 1! The students are fantastic, and I have had so much fun learning with them. Below is an Animoto Slideshow showing some of the highlights of this week. Enjoy watching this video with your child! What did your child enjoy most about this week? I would love it if you would leave a comment here and let me know.

Can't wait to hear what you have to say!
Aviva

Mixbook: An Electronic Yearbook Documenting Our Year In Grades 1 and 2

2010-08-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

I love learning from so many amazing educators on Twitter, and earlier today, I was reading a tweet from @plnaugle. She teaches Grade 4 in New Orleans, and when I started tweeting last year, she was one of the first teachers that I followed. Paula always shares amazing ideas and really inspires me to try some new things in my classroom.

Today, @plnaugle was tweeting about Mixbook. She really just had a question about it, but having never heard of Mixbook before, I thought that I would take a look at her link. She just started a class yearbook on it, and her photographs and captions are amazing. I loved the idea of documenting our year in the classroom, so I thought that I would try it out too.

Paula just blogged about her Mixbook, and I was so inspired, that I thought that I would blog about mine too. I really just created the cover, but here is what our Grade 1/2 Yearbook is going to look like. I'm excited to add in more photographs throughout the year and document what is sure to be a very exciting year in Grades 1 and 2.

Thank you, Paula, for teaching me something new today and creating such a wonderful memory for my students!

Aviva

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

A Whole New Way To Do #FollowFriday

2010-08-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

I wanted to try something a little different for #FollowFriday this week, so I thought that I would create a Voki and let my PLN on Twitter know just how much they mean to me! Each and every one of you deserve to be followed for all of the wonderful ideas that you share and all of the help and support that you provide. One of my favourite educational quotes is, "To teach is to touch lives forever," and you have all touched my life: teaching me so much and making me a better teacher as a result. Thank you!

This Voki is for you:

Get a Voki now!

Since I can't mention all of your names in this brief message, and since even when I do mention them, I may not pronounce them correctly, here's a glog of all of the wonderful educators that I follow on Twitter. Happy #FollowFriday to all of you!

Aviva

Final Centre Activities

2010-06-28T17:11:00.001-07:00

Here's a short slideshow of the students working at the final round of our literacy and math centres. Watch this slideshow with your children and leave a comment here telling about their favourite centre and why they enjoyed it. I look forward to hearing about what my students have to say.

Have a great summer!
Aviva

Saying Goodbye!

2010-06-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that there are only two days of school left! This has been such a wonderful year. Last year, I left Kindergarten (after teaching it for eight years) to move to Grade 1. I wanted this move, I even asked for this move, but as I was packing up my classroom to move, I was worried that maybe I had made the wrong decision. I loved teaching Kindergarten, and for years, I told people that I couldn't imagine teaching anything else, but here I was doing just that. I'm so glad that I did! This has been an incredible year of teaching and learning, and I truly do LOVE Grade 1!

Since I team-taught SK last year, I basically taught all of the students that are now in my class. Saying "goodbye" to these students after two years is a very difficult thing to do, and while the excitement of the summer is definitely looming, so is the sadness of the end of the year. I want to dedicate this blog post to my amazing students that have taught me so much over the past two years.

Here are the top five lessons (in no particular order) that I have learned from you:

1) Don't be afraid to try something new! It's okay if it's hard the first time, for it won't be as hard in the future. My students learned lots of new concepts this year and tried lots of new tools, and despite any difficulties they may have had, they knew that what they were doing would be easier in time.

2) Never give up! I remember a few times that my lesson wasn't working according to plan, and my students chimed in with, "Don't worry, Miss Dunsiger! You can do it!".

3) Set expectations high, and students will meet everything that you expect of them and more! If I ever mentioned that an activity might be difficult, my class always replied with, "We're in Grade 1 now. We can do it!" And you know what? They always did!

4) Be genuine. Show you're having fun because you really are having fun! Six- and seven-year-olds are always genuine -- they always tell you what they're thinking and feeling -- and they can tell if you're not being genuine too! If they see you enjoying yourself, they will as well, and the learning will come through this enjoyment.

5) Don't be afraid to admit that you don't have all the answers! Let your students teach you something new, and let them teach each other new things too. I learned something new from my students every day, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Thank you, Grade 1's, for an incredible two years of learning and laughter! I will miss you next year, but I wish you all the best in Grade 2!

Aviva, or as my students would say, Miss Dunsiger :)

Team Work

2010-06-19T10:50:00.001-07:00

I am lucky to work as part of such a wonderful team. I was reminded of this on Wednesday when the music teacher came to tell me that her video was complete. All of the Grade 1 and 2 students have taken a special interest in Waving Flag, and so the music teacher used her incredible talents to put together a video of the students dancing to this song. She gave me the video, and my class helped embed it on one of the Music Glogs that they created during literacy centres. They loved watching themselves singing and dancing on the "big screen" (in this case, the SMART Board). They asked me to tweet about this video being on the glog, and I did. Within minutes, @rmcdonald17, direct messaged me to say that he shared this video with his class in Manitoba, and they liked it so much, that they requested to watch it again and again. My students were thrilled! We have collaborated many times with Mr. McDonald's class, and they loved knowing that their successes could be celebrated by their "other Canadian friends." I am fortunate to be a part of so many wonderful teams, and in this case, I can thank many of them: from Mrs. Ledroit (the amazing music teacher) to my students (the awesome people that thought of tweeting this video out in the first place) to my Twitter PLN, and in this case, more specifically @rmcdonald17 (the fantastic Grade 2 teacher that I'm lucky to consider both a colleague and a friend)!

I hope that all of you have had some wonderful experiences like this one, and I hope that you'll leave a comment here and share them too. Can't wait to read about some of the highlights of your year!

Aviva

Right-click on the glog and choose "Full Screen" to make it bigger.

Spring Fling: What A Night!

2010-06-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

Friday, June 11th was Spring Fling, and it was quite the night! The weather was perfect, the attendance was great, the variety of activities was fabulous, and the food was yummy. It was an evening to remember, and one that would not have been possible without the amazing volunteers on our Home and School Association. These volunteers worked for months to plan the activities, order the tickets and prizes, arrange the food, and ensure that the evening was a great success! Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work with these same volunteers on a number of different activities, and I cannot say enough positive things about them and what they will do for the students at the school. We could not have had this event without you, and the countless hours you put into it have not gone unnoticed. Many thanks for all that you do and all that you continue to do to ensure the best for all of the students at the school. This blog is for you!

Aviva

Building Park Structures

2010-06-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

On Friday, all of the Grade 1 classes built park structures. The students had to use a variety of 3-D recyclable materials to build their structures based on the plans that they created. They needed to explain why their structures held a small toy, and what they would add or change if they were to re-build their structures. Above are some photographs from this exciting day. Look at these pictures with your children and talk to them about this building activity. What did they learn from this activity? Please add a comment here letting us know.

The Three Little Pigs Meet The Big Bad Blowdryer

2010-06-02T11:08:00.001-07:00

As part of our Structures Unit, the students were divided into groups of two or three to design a house to keep a little pig safe when the Big Bad Blowdryer came for a visit. Please watch this short Photopeach Slideshow with your child and talk about the different houses and why they worked in protecting each little pig. The students will use their newfound design knowledge to create their park structures on Friday. They can't wait!

Hope you enjoy this slideshow as much as the students enjoyed the designing and building process! Who knew school could be so much fun?!?!

Aviva

Video Of Our Exciting Week

2010-05-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

Below is a video of our exciting week in Grade 1. Watch this video with your children and add a comment here letting me know what they enjoyed the most. I would love to hear their thoughts!

Aviva