Dot Day - Late post

The ending of January...

Wow!  January has flown by!!  I cannot believe that tomorrow is the very last day of the month.  We have been tracking the weather on a weather graph and unfortunately most of January has been cold, windy and cloudy.  We are hoping for better for February.  In fact, we will be checking to see if the groundhog sees a shadow on the weekend.  In order to help our class and others cope with this extreme weather, we have written our own survival guides for winter.

- Miss Matsumoto

Today is Day 6, Thursday, January 30th, 2014.  We just started writing back to our pen pals from University.  No one is done yet.  Also, we have Library. - A.

I can't believe January is ALMOST OVER!!!  Can you believe it?  We have been working on survival guides, but first we put a T-chart in our journals of like and dislike.  We are writing letters to our pen pals.  Every time they write a letter, we write back.  Ummm... - Lara

We sent our Flat stories and our Flat characters to our university pen pals.  They took pictures of our flat characters at the university.  Their school is HUGE!  In their school they have a Tim Hortons and a museum!  And they wrote notes to us and now we are writing notes back to them.  We are hoping that they can make Flat stories and characters like we did and we can take pictures  at our school.  And then we can write them a note.  We also have pen pals in Thailand.  It's fun having pen pals.  In our school, the grade eights are selling candy grams for Valentine's.  A candy gram is a lollipop that you can give to whoever you want for a little present.  To buy one, you only need to give the grade eights 25 cents.  - Ella

I can't believe it.  It's almost the end of the month of January!  After the weekend it will be Groundhog Day.  The ground hog will pop out and see its shadow!  Then after Ground Hog's Day it will be Valentine's Day.   - Skylar

It is almost Groundhog Day.  That is when it is Jonavyn's birthday.  It is probably very exciting for Jonavyn.  We are very excited because it is almost the end of January.  We have been writing letters to our University pen pals.  They have written letters back to us.  We have pen pals in Thailand too.  It is fun having lots of pen pals.  We wrote Flat stories and drew Flat characters.  We are hoping they can make their own flat stories and flat characters.  We wrote a class letter not too long ago to our university pen pals.  We haven't been writing letters to our Thailand pen pals, but I am hoping we can soon. - Evva

Our FLAT Characters...

Our class LOVES the Flat Stanley books!!  We love them so much that we decided to make flat versions of ourselves and write stories about how they became flat.  My character is called Miss Flatsumoto!  We will also take pictures of our flat characters and send them with our stories to our University pen pals.  We are currently working on our stories and hopefully can post some on our blog.

Stay tuned for more!
-Miss Matsumoto

I'm not done my flat character yet, but I will be soon. - Sierra

I'm not done my flat character.  I need to work on it and then I need to colour it before I cut it out. - Skylar

We are starting our flat character stories. A couple people aren't done their flat characters, but I am.  Now we are writing our stories about our characters and how we got flat. - Ella

Student-Led Conference Goal Storybird

Last week our class had our Student-Led Conferences. With our families, we shared something we were proud of and something we need to continue to work on in Grade 1 and 2. Each student used one page from the story creating website Storybird. . Here is our book. Please enjoy!

Dear Spring...

This week has been a very busy week for us! We made pizza yesterday, we made science projects and we also made Eric Carle artwork!! -Miss Hrynyk

We made pizza yesterday, the pizza was good! -Carter

This week has been very fun, we have done all sorts of stuff. We made pizza and Eric Carle art and finished our science projects by painting them! -Stella

Today we went to the computer lab and looked at our houses. -Aiden

Making the pizza was fun!! The pizza dough was very sticky. Today we went on Google Earth and looked at our houses. -Ella

We sent a letter to Spring! -Ethan

Last week our class had a sad, but happy week. It was Miss Hrynyk's last week and I know that our entire class will miss having her everyday in Room 163. On Wednesday, we made pizzas for lunch. They were delicious!!! This week everyone we finished and presented our science design projects. We also have been studying our Author of the Month, Eric Carle's artwork through his wonderful books. We were inspired to create our own art like Eric Carle's. I will be posting pictures of our art later this week. I was truly impressed by the entire process as well as the pictures that were created by the students in our classroom. Finally, we were disappointed in the poor weather of late and wrote letters to Spring. We are currently editing them and I be sharing our letters to Spring hopefully very soon. -Miss Matsumoto

Expert Projects

Just before Spring Break, our grade 1 class decided to become experts.  I got the idea for Expert Projects from a fellow teacher who started doing Expert Projects during Daily Five with her grade 1/2 class at Dr. Hamilton.  We decided that we were interested in becoming experts of a great many different things.  We had do a lot of research in order to become experts and then decided to present our new found knowledge using PowerPoint to create presentations.  As a class, we built criteria that everyone had to follow for their project.  We had an Expert Project showcase and invited our families and other people in our school.  Each student had the chance to present their Expert Project.  It was a great success!  I have shared some of our projects on our blog under the Expert Project tab above. 
I know that everyone worked very hard.  I will continue to add the rest of our projects this week. 
Enjoy!
- Miss Matsumoto

Expert Projects

We have started working on our Expert Projects for IBL with Ms. McAuley.  We are looking up facts in books and looking up pictures from the Internet.  Each student has picked a topic that they would like to become an expert in.  There are a lot of different things that we want to know about.  I am very excited to see everyone's projects. - Miss Matsumoto

We did something good.  I looked at the car books and I saw the engine.  And there was old cars in the book. - Skylar

We went to the Library and the Computer Lab for IBL and my expert project was skating and the figure eight. - Enya

My Expert Project is how the bowling lanes work. - Kale

My Expert Project was roses.  I am supposed to make an "R", then I make a circle on top, then I'm supposed to make an oval. - Frdos