First Week at Owen

It was a fabulously busy and exhausting week.

It has been exciting to co-plan with Harmony...sorry, I mean Ms. Cooper. We remind each other of things and when we are brainstorming we talk at the same time and finish each other's sentence. It has been a great learning experience.

As our 'hook' for our culminating task we made these 2 movies to show the Grade 6s. One is set up as a movie trailer on the topic of the unit, Space:

http://vimeo.com/37484100

And a second one with the help of the wonderful ATs who were at Owen in November. This one is structured as a news broadcast:

http://youtu.be/5D9R8AWi3Rk

It was fun using iMovie. I hope the students liked watching them as much as we enjoyed making them.

One of the best part of the week was having the students teacher Leap Years and why we have an extra day this year on February 29th to grade 3 students. We have great photos of this. The students got really into the assignment because they knew that the grade 3s were counting on them. Ed. Psych had something to say about that. It also felt like an authentic mini assignment because teachers weren't the only audience, and it was relevant to the current reality (Feb 29) so it actually mattered.

Another highlight was Friday afternoon. Harmony and I had been very flexible about planning an alternative lesson because we wanted students to test the sundials they had built but since it had snowed and was stormy on Wed/Thurs we postponed the outdoor component.

Sure enough 11:30am on Friday and it is beautiful sunny weather. We quickly spent our lunch getting the original activity together and getting the kids outside. Thanks to the Kindergarden teacher who saved the day with a bucket of sidewalk chalk. The kids loved the hands-on activity and actually being able to tell time. This was one of our solutions to make "Space" as hands-on as possible. Stay tuned for photos and more examples...