Celebrating Alberta Culture Days

Our school was a host site for Alberta Culture Days and we had an incredible day learning about the arts and culture.

We started our day going through the Wonderopolis that looked at "Who invented the hula hoop?".  That was to get us prepared for our first presentation by Teddy Anderson, who is a First Nations hoop dancer.  Not only did he amaze us with his hoop dancing but his message of kindness, love, unity and that we are all part of one family was very powerful for all of us. 
(The lighting in our gym isn't great for taking pictures, so they aren't great, but you'll at least get a bit of an idea of what we saw in this performance.)

 

 He was able to use 30 hoops at once!

 

 

One of our classmates got to help Teddy!

 

 

Our next presentation involved a Mexican woman sharing her culture with us.  She showed us pictures of Mexico and things that are important to Mexican culture.  We saw pictures of Mexican beaches, food, fiestas (celebrations) and families. 

 

She also told us about some of the games that the children in Mexico play.  Did you know that they play rock, paper, scissors there too?  Here are some some pictures of us playing it--except we had to say the words in Spanish!  Rock is "piedra", paper is "papel" and scissors is "tijeras".



 

 

We also tried the game we know as "telephone". 

 

 

 

In the afternoon, artists from our community came into our school to show their art.  Many of them were working on different pieces and we got to watch them and ask questions.  It was so interesting to see all of the different kinds of art--including cartooning, blacksmith, origami, drawing, painting, and photography.

 

 

 

After such an awesome day, we took some time to talk about our favourite parts.  Click here to see the padlet wall we created to share our thoughts.

 

We were wondering...

Have you seen Teddy Anderson perform?

How do you celebrate arts and culture?

 







Kicking Off Daily 5 with Read to Self

A big part of our reading work is done through Daily 5.  From the very first day, our class has been doing "Read to Self".  Reading to ourselves is very important because it helps us to become better readers.  We always talk about what Read to Self should sound, look and feel like.  We made an "I-chart" to help us remember our important job.

During Read to Self we...
~ get started right away
~ choose a good place to sit (away from distractions)
~ take our book boxes that have "good fit books"
~ stay in one spot
~ read quietly
~ read the whole time

On the first day of school, we did Read to Self for 3 minutes.  Was that ever a short time!  Since then, we have been working on increasing our stamina.  Every day this week, we tried to see how long we could go before someone broke our stamina.  This chart shows how we have done over the past 2 weeks--isn't our growth impressive?

 

When we do Read to Self, we can choose where to sit.  Some people choose some pretty interesting places and positions.  Here you can see some of our classmates while they are doing Read to Self.



We were wondering...

Have you heard about Daily 5 and Read to Self before?
How long is your reading stamina?

Building our Classroom Community

It's been a busy couple of weeks as our class works toward building our learning community.  We've done lots of "getting to know you" activities and working with partners.

In one of our activities, the students were put into groups of 4 or 5, given two pieces of tin foil and 20 pipe cleaners and told to "work together to create something".  Everyone had fun sharing ideas (and frustrations!) and working together to create a masterpiece.  In these pictures you can see what each group's final creation looked like.  Aren't they impressive?!?

We also learned a little bit about voting, elections and candidates when we got to choose our class mascot.  First, our teacher read us "Vote for Duck" by Doreen Cronin.

Then the candidates for our class mascot were introduced.  There was a walrus, polar bear, wolf, raven and caribou to choose from.  After listening to their speeches, it was time to go to the polling station.  We even had official Elections Canada materials to use.  Here you can see one of our classmates finishing his voting duty.

 

 

 

And we were so excited when our teacher counted up the votes...Sam the wolf won!  We also chose a class name and we will now be known as the "Party Wolves".  We now end every day with three cheers for the Party Wolves and a big howl!  

We were wondering...

What do you think of our tin foil and pipecleaner creations?
What animal would you have chosen as a mascot?  Why?

The New "Braybrook Bunch"

It was wonderful to meet the newest "Braybrook Bunch" today!  As you can tell, they can be serious and cute...

 

...or a bunch of monkeys!



We had a wonderful day of getting to know each other, sharing stories and starting to learn the routines of grade 3.  One of the activities we did, had each child contribute to a poster that had a question or fill-in-the-blank sentence.  There were definitely some interesting responses!

I also shared the "What Inspires You?" Wonderopolis post with the students.  I encouraged them to be curious and ask questions.  We've started a Wonder Wall in our classroom where students can post things that they are wondering about.

After a busy first day, I asked each student what their favorite part of the day.  Click here to see what they had to say.

And now onto day 2!

We were wondering...

What was the best thing you remember about grade three?
What inspires you?
What do you "wonder" about?

Connecting Canada and Kenya

Hey everyone, it's Mrs. Braybrook!  I got to spend the first two weeks of July in Kenya travelling with the organization A Better World Canada as part of the "Two Countries/One Voice" teaching tour.  During my time there, I was able to visit different schools, work with the teachers and teach the students.  I wanted to connect my students in Canada with the kids in Kenya so we worked on a few projects in June to do just that.

For the first project, our class made a book to teach the Kenyan students about some of the important things about Canada.  We started by reading "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown and then brainstormed important things about Canada that we wanted to tell the Kenyan kids about.  Each one of our students then picked one of the topics and did some research on it to find out more information.  From there, each student used the same organization as "The Important Book" to write a paragraph on their topic.  Each student also drew and colored a picture to illustrate their topic.  Every student used the computer to type a short paragraph about themselves that was also included as part of their entry.  I then put all of the pages together and bound them into a book, complete with cover that included a class picture taken on our playground.

Before I presented the finished book to the Kenyan kids, I read them "The Important Book".  It was such a lovely afternoon, so I read it to them outside, under a tree.

 

Then it was time to share our "All About Canada" book--they loved it!  They couldn't wait for me to turn the page to find out what they were going to learn about next and who wrote it.

 



The other project involved having all of the students make bookmarks for the Kenyan kids.  I knew I would be spending a few days at Segera and that they had about 200 kids.  My goal was to have a bookmark to give every student at this Kindergarten to grade 4 school.  Our class made 2 different kinds of bookmarks and there were a number of other classes from our school that made bookmarks as well.  In this picture, you can see me handing out the bookmarks to each student.  They also received a pencil, toothbrush and other goodies from our team.

 

I had the chance to spend a lot of time in Susan's grade three classroom.  I did a lesson on "Wangari's Trees of Peace" by Jeanette Winter with the grade three students.  (I have also done the same activities with my grade three students in Canada for the last couple of years.)  This is a true story about a Kenyan woman who started planting trees and created the Green Belt Movement.  After reading the book, they had to work with a partner (which was pretty new for them) to put the story in order.

 

Then I did an art project with them.  (It's also one I do with my Canadian students.)  First, they had to draw shapes in different spaces on their paper with wax crayon.

Then, they had to paint each space with watercolor paints. 

When I do this with my Canadian students, we talk about the dove being a symbol of peace and so we place a dove on the page.  In Africa, the tree is a symbol of peace, so each student then drew a tree to finish off their masterpiece.

They were so pleased to see their completed art work up on the wall of their classroom!

A friend of mine from Music Together in Edmonton donated some instruments for me to give the students.  Although the Kenyan people are very musical, these students had not seen or tried many of these instruments before but loved experimenting with them.  They sang a couple of songs while trying them out.  (In the picture below, you can see their teacher, Susan, putting out the instruments.)

 

My time at Segera was incredible.  The kids were fantastic--I had so much fun with them and the teachers were so eager to learn about other ways to teach.  I've left a part of my heart with the people of Segera as it was truly an unforgettable experience.