TPT Sale!!!!

It's coming!!!!!

Hope you are filling your carts.  We will be participating:)

How Do We Encourage "Creative Thinking"

So it is a big question. How do YOU encourage "creative thinking" in your classroom? If you have ever had a chance too see any of the Sir Ken Robinson TED lectures then you know that creativity in the classroom is a big proponent of what he has to talk about. He feels to often we are substituting and sacrificing creative thinking and engagement for standardized tests and test scores. Is he right? 

Personally, coming to teaching as a second career I was skeptical of his thinking. I worked in the fast pace world of business and marketing, where results trumped creativity. Yet, without being creative how could you get results. So why was it all right to throw creativity in the classroom out the window like a day old donut. 

Now in my third year in the best profession possible (yes I am talking about teaching) I am trying to foster creative thinking on a daily basis in the classroom. Whether it is through my lessons or trying to solve a problem on the schoolyard I am constantly asking my students to think it out. Be creative in how you come up with your conclusion or solution. 

Now that the second term is upon us at my school I am stepping up my game in the creativity field. I am encouraging my students to be creative in their writing, reading, art, science, and well I think you get the picture. I've taken to our recent use of Google Classroom to engage the students with weekend creative thinking as well. As we know our students these days have the source of technology at their fingertips daily. They also like to check sites that they are apart of daily. So on Friday I have been posting pictures and asking my students to be creative with their thinking to solve the problem. As Ken Robinson says"to be creative you actually have to do something". Well this is me trying to do something. 

Here are some examples of things I've asked in the past week. 

How can you get the pen cap out of the bottle without touching the bottle or the desk it is on? 

Why is can we see a rainbow in -21 degree weather? I thought rainbows only appeared after rain storms.

Friday's News

Happy Friday!

Well, I hope most of you are managing to stay warm. We are having some rather balmy temperatures of, -41F yep you read that right. It is just slightly cold here (smell the sarcasm). Anyhow, enough complaining about the weather and onto what is keeping us busy in the classroom. 

Last week, we talked about our light and sound unit that we are selling on our site. Well, in discussing vibrations I had my students complete guitars and discussed the greats from George Harrison to Slash and how they made their guitars do some truly amazing things. Some of the students have a future in guitar building I think. The rule was they could make the guitar out of anything they could find in their recycling bins. So we saw lots of yogurt and margine containers and elastic bands. It was a great jam session. 

We have also been discussing personal safety lately in health. One of the tasks I assigned the class was to make a PSA about a topic in personal safety on the app Garageband on iPad. It was amazing to see how quickly the kids learned the app and concept of creating a PSA. Their writing and scripts met the criteria of hitting their target audience of students the same age. I highly suggest exploring the app. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Friday's News

Light and sound is one of my favourite science subjects to teach period. I love it so much because typically when students hear they are going to study light and sound they give you this look that is similar to that look you had when you got socks as a Christmas gift as a kid. It's one of "Gee thanks this will be fun". However, the reality is typically by the end of the unit the kids are itching for more. The reason is simple though. It's because of the hands on experiments they get to complete during the unit. We recently put out a light and sound unit out in our store. The following pictures are from experiments we conducted this past week in class. 

In this experiment students are studying reflection and what colours produce the best reflectors 

Here students are experimenting with sound and watching how vibrations work.

Students are doing a reflection experiment with a laser light

Here students are seeing if light does truly travel in a straight line. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Friday's News

Happy Friday!

 This has been a crazy week for us.  We are in the middle of report card season and somehow we managed to get blessed with a snow day.  That's right, school was cancelled.  It took us two hours to shovel out of our little driveway.  So we decided to have some fun with it and make a couch.  Needless to say, our nighbours got a little giggle from us.

On top of that I am excited to be a part of a Valentine's Day blog-hop with an awesome group.  To see how we created the craft below just click on the picture and it will take you to the blog hop where you may find some goodies along the way.  

This year I will be handing out Valentine's Day cards for my students to create as a class.  Since some of my students are from low income homes, I don't want that to stop them from handing out cards if they wish.  I have created this Valentine's day Card package for my students, but plan to post it on tpt.   This set of cards include one Spanish, one French, and eleven English cards wishing others a Happy Valentine's Day.  

Students can colour and individualize them to hand out to friends.

Lastly, Jeff has been hard at work creating a Light and Sound unit for his grade 4 students.

Feel free to check it.

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Valentine's day!

This is one of my favourite holiday's!

This year we are running a school-wide Candy Gram sale.  Students can purchase a candy gram for their friends for fifty cents.  Many staff members have secretly decided to ensure that all students will receive at least one candy gram (did I mention we have amazing staff?).  

Thinking of doing candy grams at your school, here's the sheet we have used.  

You Can also find it on our TPT page.  

As a class we decided to combine Art and Math for a fun Valentine's day craft.  

First, students created patterns on a blank sheet of paper.  

Next, We talked about symmetry. 

We discussed where the line of symmetry was on various shapes (focussing on the heart shape).

Then, students folded paper in half and cut out half a heart.  

Here's the end result 

Wishing everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!

An InLinkz Link-up