Flat Stanley was a Success!

Thank you to everyone who helped mail out or host Flat Stanley. He travelled to Cambridge, multiple areas in Toronto, Sudbury, Nova Scotia and Alberta. He even met Barry Davis, SportsNet reporter for the Toronto Blue Jays and was on the field before a game! 

Flat Stanley also went across the boarder to the United States and visited cities in Washington and California. He flew across the ocean and visited relatives in Ireland and a Grade One class in Switzerland.

We LOVED opening all the packages, reading and learning about new towns and cities as well as seeing where each adventure took Flat Stanley. 

Thank you for supporting our Flat Stanley Adventure!

To read about some of our adventures that were posted online, check out our Flat Stanley Blog: https://kidblog.org/class/flat-stanleys-big-adventures/posts

Hour of Code: Coding Options

With your coding partner, choose one of the coding options below:

Minecraft

 

https://studio.code.org/s/mc/stage/1/puzzle/1

Angry Birds

https://studio.code.org/hoc/1

Lightbot 

http://lightbot.com/hour-of-code-2015-flash.html

The Foos

http://thefoos.com/webgl/

Wonder Wednesday Learning

Today we continued with our Wonder Wednesday, inquiry projects. We have been learning about a variety of topics and presenting/sharing our learning in a number of ways. Some of us have made posters, or used Explain Everything on the iPad, or made booklets. You can check out our blog here to see some of the projects we’ve created so far. 

After researching today, Mrs. vanRees asked us to join her on the carpet and share one thing we learned today. Here’s what some of us said...

A bald eagle is a symbol of the United States. - Katelyn

A Tyrannosaurus Rex spends most of his time hunting. - Hayden

An Iguanodon means iguana tooth. - Ali Q.

A female quarter horses have one baby at time. - Khloe

Jupiter is the 5th planet from the sun. - Manush

Veterinarians use the same tools as human doctors. - Leah

Tyrannosaurus Rex hunts other dinosaurs. - Gracelyn

Our Wonders

Most of us have finished up our first wonder projects and have presented our new information with the class. We have learned a lot through our Wonder Wednesdays!

Some things we've learned so far:

• Using non-fiction books to find information
• Using PebbleGo to read and understand new facts
• Creating sticky notes to write down new facts
• Taking our information and creating a presentation
• Choosing the best way to present our information (So far we've created posters, booklets and slideshows using Explain Everything)

You can check out our wonders on our blog: https://kidblog.org/class/gradeonelearners/posts

Using Google Docs

Today we explored Google Drive again, but this time we used Google Docs and Read and Write to help us with our writing.

Once we had a google doc opened (from our classroom assignments) we had to insert a drawing that we got to create. After completing our picture, we needed to add the words to describe the picture.

Before we started on our own, Mrs. vanRees taught us how to use the microphone to record our thinking. For the most part, the computer was able to type exactly what we wanted to say. We needed to remember to speak clearly, but it worked really well - even with a 'not so quiet' classroom! 

Here are a few examples of our work today. We were allowed to draw what we wanted, as long as it was a picture (not just random lines or icons) and were able to talk/write about it.

How have you used Google Docs and/or Read and Write in your classroom?

Google Drive

There is a new Google Drive link button (above this post) that will directly take you to the sign in page to sign into your Google Drive account. You can do this from school or home.

Please let Mrs. vanRees know if you have any trouble logging into Google Drive at home.

100th Day of School Performance

February 12th was a very busy day in our class! We had a Valentine's Day party, a dance-a-thon AND celebrated the 100th day of school. Mrs. vanRees missed out on the fun that day because Emma was sick, but Miss B. was there for the whole day! In the afternoon we invited our families to come celebrate the 100th day of school with us and Ms. R.V.'s Grade 1/2 class. Together we performed a 100th day song entitled, "We Can Count by 10's" for our visitors. We'd love to share it with you now.

Coding with Scratch

Click HERE to go to Scratch to start coding your own program!

Need a reminder how to use Scratch? Watch the how-to videos HERE.

"We Wonder" Wednesdays

About a month ago, Mrs. vanRees was inspired by a class in the United States that were sharing their learning on twitter about #wonderwednesday. After talking to the teacher, Mrs. vanRees decided that our class needed to start Wonder Wednesdays too. Wonder Wednesdays happen on Wednesdays for 1 hour to focus on our own wonders (inquires) and then doing research to find out more about it. So far we have had 2 Wonder Wednesdays. Last week we started choosing wonders and creating questions that we want to learn more about. Today we talked about where we can get information from. We came up with a list of places we can help us learn:
- Internet
(our WRDSB online library learning commons has some great resources that are primary friendly!*)
- Twitter
- Books (non-fiction)
- People - our families, experts (we can be experts too!)
- Movies (documentaries)

We each came up with a few specific questions about out topic and then started to research. Today we used the PebbleGo app on the iPads. It's such a great website with information that is at our level AND it can be read out for us with 1 click.  Some of us couldn't find what we were looking for in PebbleGo, but found some great information using Britannica Elementary, another great website with primary friendly research.

After 20 minutes of researching and learning we came up with some new learning already! We wanted to share it with you, so we tweeted it out using our class twitter account: @Grade1Raptors and #wonderwednesday. If you're not following us on twitter yet, you can read about our learning below, but we'd love if you would follow us too! We have a lot more learning to do this year!

Wonder Wednesday Learning for January 20:

Katelyn: blind is when you are unable to see 

Leah: Golden Retriever have 3 to 7 babies 

Misha: The sun is a big star 

Yuvraj: Video games are programs with computers

Cian: The triceratops is a leaf eater and 30 feet long 

Ali Q. The blue whale is the longest mammal ever 

Hayden: video games are cool 

Khloe: Chihuahuas have 3-6 babies

Arianna: turtles lay eggs in the sand to keep them warm 

Dominic: video games can be made by humans

Manush: Triceratops eat meat **We actually did a little more research about Triceratops after we noticed that we had different facts. We all found out that triceratops is actually a herbivore and eats only leafs (plants). 

Thanks for following us on our Wonder Wednesday journey so far. There's so much more to come!

*Parents in our class: a note will be going home shortly that explains how you can log onto the WRDSB online library and use these same resources at home.

A special thanks to @MollyMeck and her class (@msMeck'sclass) for inspiring Mrs. vanRees to get started on Wonder Wednesdays!

Raz Kids

Click HERE to go to Raz Kids.

If you need help logging in or have forgotten your password, please ask Mrs. vanRees.

We've Been Peanutized!

Today in the computer lab, we created own our Peanuts' characters to look like us! Check them out. Can you figure out who is who?

Let's Get Peanutized!

Hey Grade Ones!

Click HERE to create your own peanuts' avatar for your blog picture.

Have fun but try to make sure it looks like you!

Here's the character I made:


Mrs. vanRees :)

We are Bloggers!

We have been busy blogging once a week during our Computer Lab time. We bring our writing offices with us and try to remember all the great things great writer's do so that our audience (you!) can read our blogs. Check them out here: kidblog.org/class/GradeOneLearners/
We love comments, so if you have a few moments, we'd love to hear from you!

International Dot Day!

Today was International Dot Day. It's a day to celebrate creativity, courage and collaboration. Peter H. Reynolds wrote the picture book, The Dot which has inspired this day. (To hear/see this book, click here.)

In class this morning, Mrs. vanRees read us The Dot and then we created our very own dot masterpieces. We were given 3 different options of paper and a variety of things to colour/draw with. The rest was left up to us to be as creative as we wanted.

Below is our online Art Gallery of our dots. We hope you enjoy!

Thanks for viewing our dots. Did you celebration International Dot Day? If so, we'd love to hear (or see) what you did!

Welcome Back!

Well, it's the long weekend and school starts on Tuesday! I have been busy getting the classroom ready for our class for the past couple weeks and can't wait to share it with all my new students! This year, we will be sharing our classroom with Miss Bobanovic! Miss B. will be our afternoon teacher, as I'm going to be teaching in the morning and home with my daughter, Emma in the afternoon.

Can't wait to meet you on Tuesday!

~ Mrs. vanRees

Happy Summer!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy summer!
Mrs. vanRees will be back in her classroom in September and can't wait to meet all her new students.

Welcome Back to School!

Mrs. vanRees is on maternity leave, so this website will not be updated.

Stay tuned later this year... Can't wait to share our learning with you again!

Class Store

In Math, we have been focusing on money in class. Our two Learning Goals were to learn the names and amount of each coin and combine coins to make a total of 20¢.

Today we created a class store. We found objects around the room and put price tags on each item between 5¢ and 20¢.

Some students became store owners and others were shoppers. Then we switched so we could do both jobs. It has been a lot of fun playing store and but we also realized that we were still doing MATH.

How have you learned about money in your class?

Virtual Library

Click here for the Virtual Library for WRDSB.


Please ask Mrs. vanRees for the password to log in at home.

We Are 100 Days Smarter!

On Friday we celebrated our 100th day of school!

We have been counting each day that we've come to school and we finally got to 100! We can count up to 100 by 1's, 5's and 10's. Now we are going to work on counting by 2's.

On Friday, we did a lot of activities that involved 100. We tried to do different exercises in 100 seconds, made lists of 100 things, made fruit loop necklaces using 100 fruit loops. Mrs. vanRees even had a treat for us of 100 things. Before we could eat any of it, we had to count it, to make sure we had 100. We counted by 10's, so it was easy to do.

We also brought in our own collection of 100 things. We had a lot of great ideas. We put our collections on our desk and had Mrs. Kewley's class come over and take a look. It was like we had a museum of 100 items all over the room.

100 days of school has been a lot of fun. Can't wait to see what we will learn next!