Feb
5

Tree

Ms H on February 5th, 2010

tree_poem

Image Atribution:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/lincolnian/300262799

Writers Workshop No comments »
Feb
5

Sustainability Web Activities

Ms H on February 5th, 2010

Here are some web sites related to sustainability.  Today in class, you will visit some specific areas of these sites with a partner, but you can revisit them any time from home to explore some more.  (At home, you can turn the volume up as loud as you like, but at school, please keep it VERY  low!)

Tip: instead of clicking on the links, use control+click and choose “Open Link in New Tab”.  That way you can easily keep coming back to this post.

When you have tried the sites, please create a post on your own blog answering these two questions:
a) What was the best site or activity in your opinion?  Why?
b) What are three new facts that you learned?

1) EcoKids Home

There are some nifty games that help you learn under “Top Ten Games” or “Games and Activities”.  Try two or three.  One activity (here) lets you figure out how energy efficient you are.  Find the “Blog” icon to see a blog that both students and expert ecologists contribute to.

2) EPA Climate Change Kids Site

Before trying any of the games on this site, read two or three of the topic pages, such as Climate Change: What it is.  There are great explanations on this site sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

3) Scholastic’s Virtual Forest

This is an interactive guide to making “green” choices.

4) Bobby’s Bigfoot Adventure

Help Bobby calculate his ecological footprint.

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Social Studies No comments »
Jan
16

Social Issues in Reading Workshop

Ms H on January 16th, 2010

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Readers Workshop No comments »
Jan
15

Mr Charles Moore

Ms H on January 15th, 2010

Room 231 students ……… Remember the man that first discovered the North Pacific Gyre?  Mr Charles Moore?

Please watch this YouTube video.  It’s Mr Charles Moore talking to an audience about the plastic that is floating in our oceans.  After watching this video, I want you leave a 3, 2, 1 comment on this post.

  • 3 things that you didn’t already know before you watched this video.
  • 2 things you think would make a difference to this HUGE problem in our oceans.
  • 1 question that you would like to ask Mr Moore.

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Social Studies 17 Comments »
Jan
15

Afloat in the Ocean

Ms H on January 15th, 2010

Yesterday we read an article about plastic afloat in the ocean.  In particular, we found out about a huge gyre of plastic, twice the size of Texas, that has formed in the Pacific Ocean, close to Hawaii.

You can read more details about the gyre and other interesting Current Events that we have been collecting for our Sustainability News Google Map.

Ms Cofino found this YouTube clip about the gyre for us too:

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Social Studies 1 Comment »
Jan
7

Winter Break Assignments

Ms H on January 7th, 2010

Room 231 -  365/7 Just a friendly reminder about what you needed to complete during the Winter 3-week Break.

  1. Publish your final Personal Narrative (it’s been in draft for a while - use your feedback from your peers to edit your work before pressing “PUBLISH”)
  2. Publish your Essay (on your Blog)
  3. Complete the Math Investigations packet (some of you may have found p51 is missing - ignore any questions that require p51 but complete the rest)
  4. Fill out your reading log (accurately) with all of your holiday reading.  You should be reading at least 45 minutes every day if you can.
Image Attribution:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/teachingsagittarian/4252344880/
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Jan
7

Sustainability and Google Maps

Ms H on January 7th, 2010

We are going to combine our non-fiction reading strategies with our Sustainability unit to learn about some current events around the world.

Using Google Maps, we will collaborate as a class to create a map with news that we find.

On the left side of the blog, under “Pages”, you can see a link to our map under the title  Sustainability News. The Google Map allows us to place “pins” to mark locations around the world where events related to the environment and sustainability are taking place.  You need to remember to log in to the Google Map to “edit” and place “pins”.  Is there someone in Room 231 who would like to create a screencast to show others how to do this?

Our first step is to find an event to report on.  There are many ways to do this!  We have an RSS feed on our Netvibes page.  Online and print newspapers are good sources.  So are our online reading links–Time for Kids, National Geographic Kids, and Scholastic News.  News reports that we watch on television (or online) are also useful.  We found that sometimes you have to do a little further research if you start with a video, in case you haven’t got enough information to answer all the questions.

What information will we include in our reports?

We will answer the following questions:
· Who is involved?
· What is happening or has happened?
· Where?
· When?
· Why did this happen?
· Why is it important?
· Is the effect on the environment positive, negative, or neutral?

You can see a couple of sample reports already on the map – completed by me.  We will created one together in our first week of Semester 2.

After the holidays, we will be finding more events to put on the map. As we learn more about using Google Maps, we hope to add images and videos to the map, as well as our reports.

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Classroom Happenings, Social Studies No comments »
Dec
11

Best Class Edublog 2009 Nomination

Ms H on December 11th, 2009

Wow - imagine our surprise this morning when we discovered that our class blog has been nominated in the Edublogs Best Class Blog for 2009!!

Best Class Edublog 2009 2013 The Edublog Awards

We are honoured to be included amongst some really awesome Class Blogs.
Blogs nominated in alphabetical order!

  1. Alice Project
  2. All Saints Languages Blog
  3. Billings Middle School Tech Class Blog
  4. Borman Blogging
  5. Class 4OQ’s Blog
  6. Creative Voice
  7. East Dragon Den
  8. English With Rosa
  9. Extreme Biology
  10. Fab4@Work
  11. Forrester High School Int 2 Info Systems
  12. Gelincik Grubu
  13. Griffin Science – 8th Grade
  14. Huzzah!
  15. Intermediate English class blog
  16. Luce Semester 2009
  17. Ka Tangi Hoki Ko Au Room 15 Blog
  18. Law Primary School East Lothian Primary 6 Blog
  19. MrCs Class Blog
  20. Mr McClung’s World
  21. Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog
  22. Ms Mourad’s Absolutely Sensational Learners
  23. Mrs Goerend’s Blog
  24. Planet Infinity
  25. Room 10 Grey Lynn School
  26. Room 18’s Learning Journey blog
  27. Room 231
  28. Rumford Writers
  29. Saint Exupery 6
  30. South Paris Collaborative Chat
  31. Tamaki Tales
  32. Tamaki Primary Blockbusters
  33. Technology in the Classroom
  34. The Greatest Middle School Blog in the World
  35. The Overlakes 6th Grade Blog
  36. The Skinny
  37. Think in English
  38. Watch Out!

Please visit the Best Class Edublog 2009 website and cast your vote for your favourite class blog 2009!

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Classroom Happenings 2 Comments »
Dec
9

New Visitors to Our Blog

Ms H on December 9th, 2009

We have new visitors to our blog Room 231.Flickr Photo Download: Welcome

Mr U sent me an email from a Teacher in California.  She tried to leave us this comment on our blog (but unfortunately our server thinks she’s a spambot! - Oh no!).  Here’s the comment she tried to leave us:-

Hi Ms. H and students, My name is Ms. Pechan and I work as the Technology Specialist at an elementary school in California. I linked to your blog from here yesterday and saw all of the wonderful learning that you’re doing. Some of our students (in a 5th & 6th grade class) along with their teacher, Mrs. Gillum, have started blogging for the first time this year. These students visited your blogs today and left comments on some of your blog posts. Hopefully we did it all correctly so that you will be able to read what we wrote. We’re still learning how all of this works, but so far it has been a blast. Also, I wanted to mention that we are looking to create some learning partnerships with some different classrooms this year. If you are interested in doing the same, please let us know. We have added you to our blogroll. If you’d like to see our class blog, you can click here. We hope to hear back from you sometime soon. Sincerely, Ms. Pechan

I’ve added their class blog to our blogroll - you can click here to see what these 5th and 6th Graders are doing in their classrooms.

Don’t forget to check your blog for their comments!  This is what it means to have a real audience!  Now we need to look after our audience to make sure they keep coming back to our blogs. Use the hyperlinks left in your comments to go back and leave a comment for them too.

Creative Commons License:
Image Attribution:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparkys/2187485704/
Classroom Happenings No comments »
Nov
27

Water Tolerance Blog Post

Ms H on November 27th, 2009

Room 231 students …….

On YOUR blog, in a blog post ……

  • embed the image of the plant that you were the expert for (from our flickr account - remember to login so that you can grab the code) and
  • write a post detailing it’s range of tolerance and it’s optimal environment.

corn_tanya

You many also add any extra information that you have found out about your plant such as it’s more usual environment for growing and any other interesting facts about it (such as how high it grows, what it’s grown for, etc).

See if you can hyperlink back to this post.  $10 H ….. Bucks if you can figure out how to do this successfully. (Hyperlinked means I won’t see the full web address inside your post!)

This post is due by Wednesday 2nd December.

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Science 1 Comment »