Grade 5 & 6 Class Blog: Ella

Showing posts with label Ella. Show all posts

Friday, 1 May 2015

Nerd Day.....'Cause We're just cool like that!

Or maybe not so cool......but we had a lot of fun!!

--Miss Leonard

Vancouver Aquarium Field Trip #3

Our last field trip this year was to the Vancouver Aquarium. We left the school early and started our program as soon as we arrived at the aquarium. In groups, the students got to learn about, touch, and perform some experiments with sea urchins (Experiments with no harm to the animal, of course!). Some students tested whether the creatures preferred light or darkness. Some found out sea urchin food preferences. The coolest thing was touching the urchins! Pinkies only, please!
Here, Tory enjoys touching the spiny creature! Everyone expected them to be slimy, but they were not gross at all!

This group listens attentively; and below, you can see our instructor and some of the aquarium volunteers reviewing the scientific method with the students.

Jeremiah posed with a magnifying glass, looking very official!

After our classroom experience, we went on to the Wet Lab. Here, there were four tanks, each with a different variety of creature. As the students visited each tank with their aquarium volunteer, they got to learn about and touch creatures in each of the tanks.

All of our volunteers were very good. They were very interesting and kept everyone very engaged in learning about the underwater animals.

After about an hour in the Wet Lab, it was time for the class to explore the aquarium! Each group could pick the parts of the aquarium to explore and what shows they wanted to see. I think the favorites were the 4-D show (Which I loved as well!), the dolphin show, and the beluga show. Here are Zack and Justin in the 4-D show with their awesomely cool glasses!

The Amazon display with all manner of snakes, frogs, and spiders was another favorite. Above, Gideon checks out one of the frog displays.

The day was over all too soon, and we headed back to BCA. Everyone had a great time and wrote the next day in their school journals that it was an awesome day and on of the highlights of our year.

A special thank you to our parent drivers and to the students who were so enthusiastic and represented our school so well.

--Miss Leonard

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Gingerbread houses and Christmas party!

We headed off to Christmas break so quickly, that I never got our last Christmas blog posted! That last week was so busy and FUN! We got to help the Pre-K to 2s with their gingerbread houses again this year. The room was super crowded and full of sugary kids, but they did a great job on the houses.

Each younger student was given an older student (or 2) to work with them and be their buddy. Our kids worked so well with the younger ones--guiding them on their designs and helping them not eat too much candy!

I also have to comment on how well our class helped clean up the HUGE MESS that was left in Miss A's room after the younger kids had been cleaned up and sent to lunch. Several students in our class gave up part of their lunch to help myself and Miss A deal with the crumbs and sticky tables. We were so grateful and appreciated the help!

I hope the little ones had as much fun as our class did!

The next day we had our class party. Thank you so much to the moms who were in charge. Here you see our class playing a game.

And after games and yummy snacks.....Everyone's secret buddy revealed themselves, and they got to open their gifts! We had everything from stationary to Nerf guns! Everyone was very excited and thrilled with their gifts. It was a great wrap-up for our secret buddy activity.

I love looking at these pictures to see all the excitement and happy faces. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I would like to thank everyone for the sweet gifts that I was given. There are so many wonderful and thoughtful families in our class! I appreciate you all!!

We are off and running with all sorts of Term 2 excitement including the BCA Social's Fair, Book Reports, Studying the Canadian Government in Socials......the list goes on and on! Looking forward to a great term 2!

--Miss Leonard

Thursday, 2 October 2014

Wheel Day! --Student Blogger

Silas Roller Blading

Jonah on a borrowed scooter.

Last week on Thursday the 25, the Grade 6 students organized a "Wheel Day" for the school. Students brought $2 to bring bikes, scooters, rip sticks, etc., at school. Fun, right? The grade 6s used that money to fund-raise for our grade 6 grad trip. Miss Leonard put Zack, Jack, Bethany, and me in charge of the day. In the morning, the students gave their 'wheels' to us, and we stored them in the space under the stairs, so they wouldn't get stolen by greedy people. I call that the 'Wheels Rush'. Whooo, Big Job! At recess we lined the bikes against the wall. Then when the kids came out, Bethany and I collected the money and gave them stickers to signify that they paid. The 'Wheel Rush' happened at lunch, too.

The grade 5/6 class had PE at the end of the day. We did races with the bikes, scooters, rip sticks, and skateboards. During the scooter race, I had a wipe-out, but I'm still alive, so all is well that ends well! Right? Anyway, after PE we put all the 'wheels' out so the kids could grab them when they came out of school. Ah, such a good day, and such a relief that all that work is over!

--Anais

Some Skate Boarders

Ella on her bike.

The Whole Group

Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Student Council

BCA Student Council elections were a great hit! We had four excellent candidates that campaigned from our class. Anais is seen here giving her speech.

Ella handed out campaign buttons and gave a very confident speech regardless of being the only grade 5 in the running!

Bethany also gave a nice speech with many campaign promises.

And then Super Man showed up....or is that Joey?...Yep. That is Joey.

AND THE VOTES ARE IN!!

Newly Elected Student Council Member for Elementary...

JOEY

Student Blogger--Bethany

This year we are having a group called the Student Council. The high school students were voting for President, Vice President, Treasurer, etc. The Student Council needed a kid from the Grade 5/6 class for an Elementary Representative. Everyone in 5/6 voted for a classmate they thought would be the best representative for the elementary students. Eight were chosen. Four stepped down, and four ran for the office: Ella, Joey, Anais, and myself.

On Monday we started campaigning. We hung posters and handed out slips saying stuff like "Vote for Bethany as your Representative". ON Friday, everyone in Elementary came into the 5/6 classroom to listen to our speeches. After that, we all voted. Joey won by one vote!

--Bethany

Congratulations to Joey. And thank you to all who ran and campaigned hard! Good job, everyone.

--Miss Leonard

Thursday, 18 September 2014

Relief Maps of Canada

Salt maps....I remember making a salt map of West Virginia when I was in grade 4. What a great idea for teaching the major land forms of Canada! We started with amazing parent participation. Everyone sent in 2 cups of Salt. THANK YOU!

The students had previously traced the outline of this very complexly shaped country onto a pizza box (Very kindly donated by Panago). The pizza boxes were then spray painted by each student, covered in an economy sized garbage bag as a smock--don't want a bright royal blue on those uniforms!!

Miss Leonard supplied the flour, and the next step was to make the dough. It was a bit of a messy process (upon reflection, I would cover the entire room with a drop-cloth next time!), but we managed to get it all mixed up without any major damage!

The next step was to start filling the outline with dough. It is not as easy as it sounds and took some of the students a LOT longer than they thought!