Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Caterpillar Update


Our caterpillars are changing! Talk to your child about the stages of our caterpillars.







We have been learning lots of new words! The change that caterpillars go through is called metamorphosis! Butterflies turn into chrysalis not cocoons. We learned that moths go into a cocoon. 

We are excited about the next stage of metamorphosis!

Sunday, 25 May 2014

Classroom Environment


“We need to think about creating classroom environments that give children the opportunity for wonder, mystery and discovery; an environment that speaks to young children’s inherent curiosity and innate yearning for exploration is a classroom where children are passionate about learning and love school.” 

Our classroom has transformed over the course of the year. (I can't believe we are nearing the end of the year already!) We have been making intentional changes to ensure our environment acts as third teacher for our students. Our goal has been to create an environment that encourages the students to wonder, question and test their theories in order to deepen their understanding of the world around them.

Our classroom
Student created colour word wall

Students decided we needed to add ordinal numbers to our number line

Adding more green plants for a welcoming environment

Student named documentation for our building & construction centre

Student created calendar
The sand table has been adapted to fit students interests and provoke new learning

Documentation and provocation
Organization

Simplifying organization of materials

Friday, 23 May 2014

Caterpillars

We have lots of caterpillars in our classroom right now! Here are a few photos to spark your curiosity!





Observing the caterpillars on the carpet




Thursday, 22 May 2014

'X' Marks the Spot

We have been reading a chapter book about a buried treasure. Students have been visualizing what the story looks like because there have been very few pictures in our book. Many students began drawing pictures of what they were seeing in their heads. This turned into creating treasure maps!






Our Grade 7 Learning Buddies came down and helped the students. They sketched, coloured, and even aged their maps! Here are some of the incredible maps the students created!





















Friday, 16 May 2014

Rainbows



We have continued our learning about rainbows by reading a variety of books, looking at different pictures and watching videos. Students have been curious about the colours of rainbows so we began exploring colour. They investigated how colours mix and what happens when we mix primary and secondary colours together.

Mixing primary colours using marbles
D.K- "look, I see green!"


Mixing secondary colours together with a marble

We used food colouring and water to find out what would happen when we mix the primary colours!

Students said "look we made a rainbow! It should start with red!"
They then reorganized the colours to start with red.


Students wrote about our experiment during Thinking and Learning time.





We did a milk experiment (click here for previous post) using food colouring, milk and dish soap. This was another way for us to see how the primary colours mixed together and what happened.








Students had many discussions around colours and how colours made them feel. We discussed why colours make us feel different emotions.

E.M. - black is a bad colour!

Ms. Tompkins- why?

E.M- because black is a very dark colour, it’s not a good colour, it’s very dark and very black, because its for rainstorms and things, the clouds turn black and then they make rainstorms, thats why black is a bad colour.

Z.H- black is not a bad colour, because if you mix all the colours together you get black 

Ms. Tompkins- what colours make you feel happy?

C.C- red! Playing with a red toy

A.A- purple, because I love purple because it’s violet

D.K- green, blue, red, black, they make me happy because green is like green grass on a summer day, blue is like rain, and red is like the hot sun when you get very close into it and black it makes happy because the dark out (the black out) I liked it because I got to go to my Opa and Oma’s house. 

K.B- I like the colour blue, because I like swimming in the blue water

E.K- red, and blue and yellow are happy 

A.Bh- when I look up at the sky the blue makes me happy because God made the whole planet and I like blue because God lives in blue

M.P- green, because my room is green 


Students have been finding rainbows all around!
Students discovering the overhead created a rainbow on the ceiling!
E.M. found when the sun hit the magnifying glass it made a rainbow!
T.K. made a rainbow out of markers
We have learned about double rainbows and shared our theories on why there are two. The quality of conversations has been truly amazing!

A.L- we see two rainbows!

S.P- I know why it’s like that, because the rainbow is reflecting and making another rainbow

A.B- one is light and one is dark

A.L- when the sun shines the when the rain is gone and the sun shines there is a rainbow

M.W- they are secondary and primary colours and they are in a pattern!

D.S- rainbows have lots of colours, they have 7 colours because rainbows are really big

D.K- rainbows get made from rain and the sunlight after when it rains and the sun is out and the light comes form the sun hits the raindrop, the normal light will goes to the raindrop. A rainbow will come out of normal light.

D.D- sometimes rainbows appear!

A.A- we talked about one rainbow, can we jump on the rainbow?


A.Bh- when the rain goes down the water can go in the air, when the sun goes in, the rainbow changes into different colours

At the beginning of our inquiry, I set up a provocation (an invitation for learning) about rainbows. The students began sorting coloured beads. Through a conversation with a few of the SK girls, we decided to make a rainbow out of the beads using wire. Over the past month, the students have been sorting the beads to prepare for the creation of the rainbow for our classroom. The result is beautiful!


Students began working together to create the rainbow by beading each colour.






The finished product! The students have decided to hang it in the window, so make sure to keep an eye out when you're walking by!