Grade 1 Electronics Day!

Our class has asked Mr. Gardner to allow us to bring electronics to school for a special treat. We first asked him much earlier in the year (around March Break), but Mr. Gardner told us that our reasons were not strong enough. We worked hard to develop our ideas (we brainstormed new ones, shared ideas, and built on the ideas of others) during our persuasive writing unit.

Here is the letter we wrote together and created as a class:

June 18, 2013

Dear Mr. Gardner,

      We want to bring electronics to school for a special treat.

      First of all, we can learn more about sharing. If someone doesn’t have electronics to bring then we can share ours with them. Sharing makes a difference!

      Second of all, we are learning about energy, and some electronics (like iPads and iPod Touches) will help us to find information. We can also learn about how electronics use energy, like electricity and batteries, by turning them on and off.

      Third of all, bringing electronics will help us to show how we are responsible. We can be safe with our devices so they don’t break. We can review our skills to show we are ready for Grade 2.

      Fourth of all, we always play with the same toys. If we try new games on our devices then we can learn more skills and get smarter. Electronics have a lot of games about writing. We can learn more about spelling too. We can also learn to write neater and faster. We can learn more vocabulary words to help us prepare for Grade 2.

      Most importantly, we’ve been working hard for the whole year and we deserve a special treat. It’s a great way to celebrate the end of the year!

      It is for these reasons that we think we should have an electronics day.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Howard’s Grade 1 Class

We were so excited to hear Mr. Gardner's response - YES!! 

Here are the details for the special Electronics Day:

Who: Grade 1's from Mrs. Howard's Class

When: Thursday, June 27 (9:00am-12:00pm)

School is only during the morning on this day.

Where: Mrs. Howard's Class 

Students may only use the electronics in the classroom. Before school and after school use on the tarmac or during recess it not permitted. We will keep the classroom locked during recess time.

What: Electronics

Please only bring devices that are hand held (e.g., iPads, iPods, PSPs). We will not have access to a TV. Students are also welcome to bring nothing - we will have iPads and laptops from our school to use and enjoy as well!

As I have said to all of the students in our class, I will miss everyone over the summer vacation! This is the perfect way for us to celebrate our hard work and to enjoy the last few hours of school together!

Recycled Materials Needed

Next week we will be building some very cool student-designed structures using recycled materials. If you have any boxes, containers, paper towel rolls, etc. at home that you can send in next week, our class would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!

Bike Safety

At the beginning of the month we had a presentation about 'jelly brains'! The intermediate students did a great job and everyone from our class really enjoyed it! We especially loved feeling how soft and smooth the jelly brain was! 

The bike tuneup was a huge success! If you signed up for the educational bike program, the next day (and the day you need to bring your bike and helmet for) is June 18th (Gr. 1 and 2). 

Fun Media / Energy Video Clips

As part of our learning about media and energy, students loved watching many different video clips and commercials this week! Our focus has been on identifying target audience, responding to the media, and finding the message. Next week we will think more about who has created the media (e.g., commercial) and their purpose.

Here are links to some of the clips we have seen. Students asked for links from the class blog so that they could enjoy them at home. These links will show the videos on YouTube, so please keep internet safety / supervision in mind while viewing them at home.

The House Hippo

Animals Save the Planet - Meerkat Traffic

Ridiculous Waste

School Calendar

Our Class Blog now has another cool feature - the School Calendar Page! The link is now located under the 'Pages' section of the blog (on the lefthand side).

Click here to access the School Calendar.

We LOVE Math!

In celebration of our learning about probability, we played a very fun game today! Each student received one pencil before entering our classroom. Students had the opportunity to take a turn playing the spinner game on the SMARTboard.

Rules of the Game:

It costs one new pencil to play the game.

If the spinner lands on blue, no prize is won.

If the spinner lands on green, you win the grand prize - either the yellow or orange present!

Students quickly decided that winning the grand prize was very unlikely! As R.B. put it, "It's almost impossible to win the grand prize because there is only 1 green part and there are 11 blue parts on the spinner!"

Although there was only one grand prize winner, and some students chose to keep their pencil instead of taking a chance on the spinner, we had a LOT of fun playing! 

Investigating 3D Figures

Today students were given a very important task! Our class is in charge of labelling the bins with 3D figures for our whole school! We quickly realized that we would need to figure out the names of each of the figures and ways to identify each figure.

While working on a plan of action, students noticed a lot of interesting things about the figures. Take a look at some of their work below!

Here students were tracing the faces of the figures to find familiar shapes (e.g., triangles, rectangles, circles).

In the above picture, students were drawing the 3D figures to help recognize each one. They talked about how the sides of each shape looked different. 

Here is one of the bins our class is in charge of labelling! Students were already debating about whether or not they would sort specific figures into different bins, and if so, what the sorting rule might be (the number of points, the 2D shapes on each side, etc.).

Tomorrow we will compare our investigations and determine what we still need to find out. Today, A.K., suggested that we all work together to label the figures we do already know. That way we will figure out which figures we still need to learn about.

Way to go, Grade 1's!