Ms. Brown's Blog: December 16, 2019

Hello Families,

I hope you were all able to enjoy the wonderful Winter Concert put on by the students at Lake Bonavista School! They always do such a lovely job at spreading holiday excitement and joy. I know the concert is a highlight for many students in Room 11!

Caroling
This week we have opportunities for families to join us for caroling in the gym, if you're interested we will be caroling on Tuesday, December 17 at 12:45PM, Wednesday, December 18 at 8:30AM, and Thursday, December 19 at 12:45PM.

Winter Celebration
On Thursday, December 19th in the afternoon we will have a small celebration to end the 2019 year as a group! Students are invited to wear holiday sweaters for this event. If you'd like to provide plates, napkins, or snacks for a group of 22 students that would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you'd like to come and join us for treats and celebrations you're more than welcome, just come through the main office anytime after 1:15PM and join us in the classroom!

Current Learning
We are working hard at wrapping up a few important pieces of learning before going our separate ways for the winter break. The biggest piece of this work is around the Memory Museum. Last week, students used their 5 senses to recall the memory that is connected to their museum artifact. Using their visual journals and palm prints, we brainstormed and documented the memories through words and pictures. From here, grade two students (along with a few grade ones) turned their brainstorming into sentences to reflect the memory artifact information cards that came with the museokits (as seen in previous blog posts). Thus, the final product for some students will be a written artifact card. For other students, they will orally share their memories from the visual journal page, and I will help them document by acting as their scribe, to ensure success for all students. I am hoping to have the memory artifacts returned by Thursday so they will be home over the break!

Here are the pictures of our Memory Museum.

We continue to work with our big buddies to complete our animal artwork that incorporates sketching techniques, giving and receiving effective feedback, repeating patterns, and self-assessment of work. Today, students moved to their good copy work and shared how they would implement the feedback they received about their drafts. This is another piece of work we are hoping to have completed before the break. Here are some pictures from the work today, the improvement between drafts is really evident which shows students were doing an excellent job at incorporating their feedback and revising their work to make it better!

We brought our "On the weekend I..." journal writing back in time today... to 100 years ago!! We learned from the museokits that 100 years ago, there were no pencils and erasers to write with! Instead, all students had to use what is called a "straight pen" and ink for writing. We practiced this in our own version using skinny paintbrushes and black "ink" (paint). Students had to create their own lines in their journals to write on and then paint their journal entries, you may have seen evidence of this work on SeeSaw. While this was happening I told them it needed to be completely silent work like in the schools of 100 years ago... needless to say this brought on lots of giggles and laughter from the kids!