2017 Polar Bear Walk: A Retelling

To conclude  our polar bear project, we did some reflecting and summarizing after we held our WWF Polar Bear Walk at Brandon University.  We met on Skype with the OLCS Kindergartens who collaborated with us on this project.  We discussed the project and made a to do list of next steps for the project.  Our list included things like writing thank you cards to those who helped us and sharing the work from our project.  We also made a goal for each class to create something to showcase and reflect on the project.  The kindergartens decided to create a video.  Our grade 1 class chose to write a retelling about the project, since that is a text-type that we have been working on this year.  We worked together to collaboratively author the book, using photographs from the project as our pictures.

Our first book: Is this a ball?

The grade 1s published their first shared writing book today!  We read "Is this a moose?" by Jenny Armstrong and used her book as a model text for our own writing.  First, we began by brainstorming possible topics for our book.  There were a lot of good ideas, but we narrowed it down to 3 topics and voted.  Once we decided to write our book about toys, then we brainstormed some toys we could include in the book.  Since we wanted to have photographs of each toy, we had to make a plan for that too.  We took pictures of any toys we had at school and then some of us took notes home to get our families to help us.  Once we had all of the photographs, we began to write the words for each page of the book.  Each day we would read our writing as a class, then add the writing for the next page.  When we were done writing, we printed off a copy to keep in our classroom and we also made a digital book to share online.  You can flip the pages in our book by clicking here or watch the version below!

Marvelous Muffins: Putting our Plan into Action

The grade 1 class has been busy putting our Marvelous Muffins plan into action so we can help our partner class in Ghana, Africa.  After determining which kinds of muffins we were going to sell based on survey results, our class started to read muffin recipes.  We read recipes and discussed the variations in recipe size and ingredients.  Since I've never made chocolate chip muffins, I decided to test out a recipe at home and surprise the class with a batch of muffins to taste test.  We determined that the recipe was tasty, so we decided to use it for our baking.

Once we had selected our recipes, our next job was to write a list of ingredients that we would need.  Using SMARTnotebook, I was able to display the recipe and a blank slide side-by-side on our SMARTboard.  We read through the recipe together and each time we read a new ingredient, a student added the item to our list.  Next, we went through the ingredients we already had and narrowed down the list to create a list of groceries we needed to buy. 

Our class took a walking field trip to the grocery store to purchase the groceries.  Students worked together to push the cart, keep track of items on the grocery list, load groceries, unload groceries and carry groceries. 

Spring Break Snapshot!

Spring break has already come and gone, and since we've been back at school the boys and girls have been hard at work. They have written a paragraph to explain what they did on their spring break!

This was a great writing activity that started with a hamburger graphic organizer to organize our thoughts. We discussed topic sentences, conclusion sentences, jot notes, editing paragraphs, writing good copies, and many other writing topics in the process. The students started with a hamburger graphic organizer and we wrote down our jot notes for each sentence (what our sentence was going to be about in one or two words). After we had completed our hamburger it was time to put our jot notes into sentences to make our rough draft. The students were great at adding describing words to make their sentences "juicy". We then conferenced one on one to revise and edit our writing, so we checked for capitals, periods, correct spelling, missing words, etc. After our editing was complete it was time to make our good copy using our best printing. I was so happy with how well they turned out. The Grade 1's did an excellent job of using their nice neat printing and copying from their rough copy. The illustrations that were added brought our spring break paragraph to life! Enjoy looking through our work!