We Are "Fabulish"!

We are really enjoying our Peter Reynolds author study as part of the Global Read Aloud.  This week's book was "Ish".



Photo Credit: 101 Picture Books

In this book, the main character, Ramon, loved to draw...anytime, anything, anywhere.  But he got discouraged when his older brother laughed at his drawings and asked what they were.  Ramon started working harder to make his pictures "just right" but he usually failed at it, so he would crumple up his work.  His younger sister came along and rescued them and taught Ramon that his drawings were "ish" and how to love them again.

Here is a video of somone reading the book, so you'll understand the story:

 

We had our Family Wellness Worker, Miss Joy, come and do a lesson with us.  She loves this book and it's message...how we all have "ish" qualities.  She also shared the inspiring story of two brothers (Connor and Cayden) and how Connor appreciates his brother's "ish" qualities.  Here's the video of these two brothers:

 

Then it was time for us to think about our "ish" qualities.  Miss Joy gave each of us a sheet that looked like this:

We had to put our name on the top line and then complete the sentence by writing on the bottom lines about what makes us fablous...although we changed the 'ous' to 'ish' to make the word "fabulish". 

The next step was to tape the paper to our backs.  We then went around to as many classmates as we could and wrote something on their paper that we thought made them "fabulish".  No one could look at their own paper though because it was taped to our backs.  Here are some pictures of us doing the activity:

Finally, when the time was up, we took our paper off of our backs and read what our classmates had written about what makes us "fabulish".  It was so amazing to see our page filled with comments from our classmates!

Here are some completed pages...just look at all of those comments!

We are also a bucket filling school and this activity really helped everyone to fill each other's bucket (and our own!)

We were wondering...

What makes you "fabulish"?
What are other ways to celebrate your "ish" qualities?

Marty Chan Author Visit

We enjoyed a visit from author Marty Chan this afternoon.  He is from Alberta and writes books for kids.  We also found out that he writes plays and stuff for radio and television too.  He was a very funny presenter.  He told us that he likes to write about things that happened to him as a kid.

In his first series, he chose to write mystery books because he liked reading the Hardy Boys mystery books when he was a kid.  His first books were this series of mystery novels:

Photo Credit: Carr McLean

Our teacher is reading the "Mystery of the Cyber Bully" in class during snack times to us.  In the book, there is a scene where the kids are tossing around a bunch of back packs.  Cheyanne asked him if that really happened to him.  He told us no, that part didn't happen, but he made it up to include in the book.

One of our classmates even got to help him act out a scence from one of his books!  In this scene, our classmate is throwing a ball in a game of Dodgeball at Mr. Chan.

He then told us about the second series he is writing.  This series is all about a sasquatch.  He has always been interested in learning more about legends of creatures like sasquatch, so he decided to write this series.

Photo Credit: CanLit for LittleCanadians

As he was telling us about his interest in these creatures, he showed us a replica of something that was found.  In this video, you can see him showing it to us.  Some of us were too freaked out to watch him reveal it!

He told us about a time when he went camping with a friend and his friend's Dad really spooked them out that there was a sasquatch in the area they were camping in.  He had gotten up during the night and tripped on something in the dark.  In the morning, when he looked at what he had tripped on, it was a great big footprint.  He had it made into a mold and this is what it looked like:

He ended his presentation by having a few people from our audience work with him to tell a story -- it was very entertaining!

Mr. Chan has also written a funny picture book about his cats.  Our teacher read it to us this week. 

Photo Credit: Canadian Review of Materials

Our teacher was looking around his website and found that he has some tips for students when they write.  You can check it out here.

We were wondering...

Have you read any books by Marty Chan?
What authors have you heard speak?

Global Read Aloud -- Week 1

It was exciting to start the Global Read Aloud this week!  Our class is doing the author study using books by Peter H. Reynolds.  The book we studied this week was "North Star". 

In this story, a young boy is on a journey and there are many different paths to follow.  It reminded us that we need to follow our own path to reach our dreams.  We also talked about how the boy had to show many of the "classroom habitudes" that we've been learning about -- courage, adaptability, curiosity, self-awareness.

You can read the story online by clicking here. 


Photo Credit: Peter H. Reynolds website

What's really cool about participating in the Global Read Aloud, is that there are other classrooms all over the world who are also reading the same books.  Our teacher has buddied up with a grade 4 class in Illinois.  This week, we worked together to share what the book means to us.  We all posted our responses on this Padlet wall.  (Some of the posts cover other posts.  If you click on a post, you will see black/yellow arrows in the top right hand corner that you can use to scroll through each person's post.)  It was a pretty cool way to connect with the other students about this book.

We were wondering...

Have you read any of Peter H. Reynolds' books?
After you've read the book (using the link above), what would you say the book means to you?

We'd love it if you left us a comment sharing your ideas!

Wonder Wednesdays

Since the beginning of school, our teacher has been doing Wonder Wednesday with us.  On these days, we start by looking at a picture from the internet, usually from the Wonderopolis website.  Then we spend a few minutes recording our thoughts, ideas, and wonders in our Wonder Journal.  We write questions we have, observations we make and what we think the picture is.  We can share our ideas using sentences or pictures.  After that, we share our ideas with our classmates for a few minutes.  Finally, our Wonder Wednesday time ends with our teacher showing us the question, information and video related to that Wonder.  Doing Wonder Wednesday helps us to be more curious, which is one of the Classroom Habitudes we've been talking about.  We have even started a "Wonder Wall" in our classroom, where we can post any wonder that we have.

Here are the wonders we've done so far this year.

The first week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

 

The actual question was: How much is a sand dollar worth?

The second week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

 

The acutal question was: Who invented Lego blocks?

The third week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

The actual question was: Do polka dots dance?  This was during "International Dot Week"!

The fourth week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

 

The actual question was: What inspires you?

And the most recent Wonder Wednesday picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

The actual question was: Why do leaves change color in autumn?

We were wondering...

What did you wonder about when you saw those pictures?
What's something that you're curious about?  What question would you want to put on our Wonder Wall?