Miss Dent, the teacher!

It Was a Happy Halloween!

2009-11-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

We had a great time celebrating Halloween in grade 3. We started out with some Halloween stories using a frame from "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" by Eric Carle.
Next we had Pumpkin Centres and thanks to student and parent volunteers everything went very smoothly. We discovered that even when a pumpkin has been carved and it fills up with water it floats! Our favorite centre was the carving centre where Mrs. Dent did the cutting we planned for.
On Friday we got to wear our costumes and parade around the school before having a party in our classroom.
We hope your Halloween was Spook-tacular!

Wordle!

2009-10-15T10:05:00.001-07:00

I have posted about wordle before but we used it again today and the kids LOVED it! Give it a try www.wordle.net

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-10-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

We hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving weekend (even if it is snowing)! Check out the turkeys we made!

Flat Stanley from New Zealand!

2009-09-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

One of our classmates was very busy over the weekend taking Flat Stanley from New Zealand around Winnipeg! Check out some of the activities they did together...

Our First Stanleys!

2009-09-18T11:15:00.001-07:00

We have received our first Flat Stanleys in the mail! They have come all the way from New Zealand. Stay tuned for photos of what we do with our guests :)

Here are a couple of photos of us and our Stanleys.

New Year, New School

2009-09-17T18:19:00.001-07:00

I have changed schools this year which has definite positives and negatives. There are certainly comforts to being in the same place with familiar faces and routines but it is nice to have fresh ideas and opportunities as well. The most positive change, by far, is that I don't have to commute out of the city anymore. The most negative change? The difference in technology available at the new school, which is surprising. Bottom line - no computers (or internet) and a chalkboard. I feel like I am back in the 80's when I was in grade 3!

This year we are starting the year with the Flat Stanley Project (www.flatstanley.com). It is AWESOME! The kids love it, I love it and we are all so excited! I have about ten schools lined up to mail to all over the world! I hope it works out and we get all our Stanleys back.
So far we have made our Stanleys, created journals to mail along with them and written a letter to send along with Stanley. We have a display with a world map where we will mark all the places our Stanleys go and the display the things they come back with. Check back for our progress!

Happy Earth Day!

2009-04-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Earth Day we took photos with the Earth in our hands. We brainstormed ideas of what we could do to help clean up the Earth. Here is a picture of how our display turned out.

We also had our 2nd Annual Town Clean-Up. All K-6 students went out in groups for an hour picking up all the garbage we could. The kids picked up bags and bags of trash that has built up over the winter, it was a great success!

2009-02-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

It is 100th Day for grade 1 & 2 today! I love 100 day! There are so many neat and fun things to do it could literally fill a week. I am most proud of my 100 collection...the 100 buttons I sewed on my shirt! I thought this would be quicker than it was but it was well worth it. And I honestly think it is a shirt I would wear again! We also made 100 Crowns, 100 glasses (so cute) and Fruit Loop necklaces. The kids spent the rest of the day in centres like:
-link 100 paperclips together and compare the length to other things in the room.
-make a list of names that have 100 letters.
-find 100 different words in a magazine and glue them to a paper.
-make a pattern with 100 pattern blocks.
-make 100 tally marks.
-make a Digi Block tower with 100 Digi Blocks.
-colour all the 5s and 10s on a 100 chart, circle the even numbers and box the odd numbers.

This afternoon some leadership kids have planned active centres for them in the gym (thank goodness after all those Fruit Loops...of course some kids ate them all immediately!). I heard, more than once, the kids say this was the best day of the year!

The Boiling Water Experiment

2009-02-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

A co-worker told me about a neat experiment that is perfect for this cold weather. Try throwing boiling water into the air, it is AMAZING. As a class we predicted what would happen when we threw cold water, warm water and boiling water into the air. Of course they predicted things like "it will freeze in the air and then hit the ground", "it will stay water in the air and then freeze when it hits the ground" and "it will stay water in the air, freeze when it hits the ground and then BREAK when we STOMP on it"! You will be as surprised as they were when you throw the boiling water into the cold air.

Check out these explanations:
http://www.arcticphoto.co.uk/gallery2/polar/phenomena/rv0019-29.htm
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/news/news_shorts/icebubbles.php

Kathy Cassidy's Blog

2009-01-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

All I can say is WOW! This is the most amazing teacher blog I have seen. Check it out.
http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337

Super Interview on CJOB

2009-01-07T20:43:00.001-08:00

Click on this link to listen to the archive of a great interview on CJOB with Richard Cloutier. Some of the topics discussed include education in the 21st Century, numeracy, the impact of rapid technological change on teaching and learning, and the K12 Online Conference.
http://www.archive.org/details/RichardCloutierCJOBInterviewwithDarrenKuropatwa2Jan2008

SAG ePEARL Session

2008-11-27T14:59:00.001-08:00

I am presenting a session on ePEARL (Electronic Portfolio Encouraging Active Reflective Learning) for MAME at SAG 2008. I have been using ePEARL since discovering it from my mom and attending a session at the BYTE Conference (http://byte.merlin.mb.ca/) last year. It has been a bit more challenging this year as I am with younger students but it is still worth it. If you are interested in checking it out you can have a look around by going to www.epearlrrvsd.merlin.mb.ca and logging in as guest01, password: guest.

If you are interested in hearing more about it let me know and I can share what I know. In order to use it with your students you need to go through your division.

Some other links that might be helpful:
http://doe.concordia.ca/cslp/Downloads/Promo/ePearl.html video overview
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/tech/lict/resources/epearl/index.html Literacy with ICT resource
http://grover.concordia.ca/eportfolio/epearlhelp/resources/home_en.html

PS - The BYTE Conference is awesome!

Wordle

2008-11-09T20:42:00.000-08:00

Wordle is a neat website that allows you create a word cloud.
All you have to do is enter your list of words or a link to words and click go!
It makes the word cloud and you can adjust many settings to have it look how you want.
Check it out at wordle.net I am trying to post the epearl wordle I made here.

Making Books

2008-10-16T12:08:00.000-07:00

Last year at the Widening Circles conference in Winnipeg I was one of the lucky few who got in to the Bookmaking session. It was an amazing hands-on session and I walked away with a sac full of books to try. I brought the ideas back to the staff at Morris School on a PD day and many of these book ideas are used in our classrooms.
I subscribe to get email newsletters from Susan Kapuscinski's website which has some really cool ideas. She has a blog at http://makingbookswithchildren.blogspot.com/ and you can see her photos at http://flickr.com/photos/96576418@N00/
Do you have bookmaking ideas to share?
~Leslie

David Shannon Literature Study

2008-10-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Here is an article I wrote for the MAME (Manitoba Association of Multiage Educators) newsletter. I had a ball with my class studying David Shannon, his stories are quite funny!

David Shannon Literature Study
Leslie Dent, Early Years Teacher
Morris School, Morris, Manitoba

To start the school year with my grade 1/2 multiage class I decided to use the book “No, David” by David Shannon to introduce our “Getting Along Guidelines”. After reading “No, David” for the first time we talked about some of the “no” and “yes” things we should do in our classroom to get along and make each other feel good. We used the “yes” ideas to make our “Getting Along Guidelines” which are posted in our classroom. Anyone who has read this book with their class knows that the kids LOVE it! The students wanted me to read it over and over so I decided to pursue David Shannon’s books as a literature study.

We started by reading the other “David” books including “David gets in Trouble” and “David Goes to School”. Some of the discussions that followed these books included the children’s stories about the “no” things they have done and the consequences. We decided to write “I am Sorry” cards from David apologizing for what he did and explaining what he could do next time. As a class we brainstormed all the “no” things that David did and wrote them on chart paper. The students each chose the action they would like to write a card for and decided what would be a better choice for David to do next time. I printed cards at varying levels for them to complete their apology, write the better choice for next time, and draw pictures to go with it. Once all the cards were complete we did an inside-outside circle to share our cards. The cards were then compiled into a class book to be used in the David Take-home Bag at the end of the study.

After getting to know David Shannon’s books a little more, especially the David books, we decided to write “David Goes to Morris”. Again, we brainstormed as a class the mischief David could get into if he came to Morris. Each child chose the page they wanted to write and illustrate for our class book. Once they completed their good copies we bound the book and added it to the David Take-home Bag.

Finally we decided to do a story mural so others in our hallway could see what we were up to. The students each drew and painted a large portrait of David and chose one of his “no” things to write about with their picture. We put these up in the hallway and nearly every child that passed by talked about how they remembered David and which part of the book they loved.

While doing the “David” activities, the students often talked about taking the books and their activities home to show their parents, so I decided to make a David Take-home Bag. The bag included the three David books “No, David”, “David Gets in Trouble” and “David Goes to School”; our “I am Sorry” cards book; the “David Goes to Morris” book; a picture of our story mural; and a take-home bag journal for students and parents to fill in together. The bag also includes a list of contents so families can ensure they have all the items in the bag before they bring it back to school.

The grade 1/2 students all loved David and his antics and I loved their willingness to take part in the accompanying activities. Our study of “No, David” turned out to be a “yes” in our books!

Bibliography
Shannon, David. No, David. New York : Blue Sky Pr./Scholastic, c1998.
Shannon, David. David Gets in Trouble. New York : Blue Sky Press, 2002.
Shannon, David. David Goes to School. New York : Blue Sky Press, c1999.

Welcome!

2008-10-15T15:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my first blog as a teacher! I hope to use this space to share ideas, stay connected with other teachers and parents and of course share moments.