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Whats happening in

Gill-Ville Jr. Area Comp . January 2012

http://teachers.wrdsb.ca/GILLK

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Mark your Calendars

R.M.i. Lunches Wednesday, Jan. 11th During the month of December, our focus was & Jan. 25th

Character Education:

Skating News:

on the BALANCE key. We talked about balanced Character Ed. diets and lifestyles. This Assembly month, we have selected th Jacob as our student-ofFriday, Jan. 13 the-month winner! During the month of February, we PD Day No School will focus on the Friday, Jan. 20th Commitment key. With the start of a new year we Trip to Millen Woods will have opportunities to set some new goals, Wednesday, Jan 18th develop action plans, and stick with it when it becomes difficult to Winter Carnival accomplish goals. Well School Spirit Day learn that its important to Friday, Jan. 27th be reliable, stick to our word, and finish what Little Chefs Cooking weve started.

In February we will have two opportunities to go skating. Look for more information coming home soon regarding these days. Students will need their own skates in order to participate. Let us know in advance (ASAP) and we can try to assist in finding a pair to borrow. Students without skates can stay at school and participate in alternative activities or share the photographer job at the arena.

Holiday Projects:
We hope you enjoyed the reindeer ornament gift your child made for you. We sent these ornaments to our 1st quadblogging partners in the UK and Florida as well! We also hope you liked your Christmas postcard your child created for you. We made postcards for 30 other classrooms around North America as part of the Holiday Card Exchange Project. We enjoyed receiving our cards in the mail also!

Lesson Monday, Jan. 30th PD Day No School Wednesday, Feb. 3rd Winterhawks Game Saturday, Feb. 11th Report Cards Come Home Monday, Feb. 13th

Homework:

We will return to our regular homework routine this month. With the exception of the week of January 16th when homework is due on Thursday, Friday will remain our regular due date. Please continue to read the weekly checklist page for special homework instructions and contact us for homework help when needed.

Reflective Writing about 2011

In our final week before the winter break the students wrote a reflective blog post about their best memories, learning, and accomplishments of the past year. For many of our students that are in the class for their second year, the writing progress seen in this post compared to similar ones written back in January is phenomenal! Check out our first blog posts in January on our blog site from last year: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville2010 and compare them with our latest posts written on our current blog: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville. Leave us a comment and let us know what your favourite memories and accomplishments are! Wed love to hear from you!

Name that Holiday Tune

Just prior to the break, our class hosted a very exciting online game of Name that Holiday Tune using Adobe Connect to broadcast out to other classes. We had 6 other classes from Ryerson joining us to listen to 30 song clips. Some clips were really easy to guess, some clips were harder. We had so much fun using technology to play this festive game!

Our Concert Performance:

We hope you enjoyed our video presentation for our winter concert (and your own personal copy). We really enjoyed creating our digital dance. The students selected the song and poses for the pictures that we used for the project. Ms. Watt, our technology support teacher, showed us how to do stop motion animation using Frames 4 (a new Ministry licensed software). We had a lot of fun creating it and are really proud of the final product!

We finished our first round of quadblogging with our friends in the United Kingdom and Florida. We are beginning a new round of quadblogging, with new partners all located in the United Kingdom, starting the week of January 16th. Well follow a similar four-week rotation, visiting each others blogs to leave comments and learn from each other. This partnership will last until the end of March. You can see the comments they leave us on our blog as well! There are links to each of our new quadblog friends sites on both the classroom blog http://blogs.wrdsb.ca/gillk and class website as well.

Teddy Bears Around the World Project:

Last year our class mascot, Gill the Goldfish, joined the Teddy Bears Around the World Project Blog. We will resume writing in this online space soon. We look forward to making more global connections and learn more about our friends around the world! You can follow the project at the following website: Upon returning to school in the new year we are learning about New Years Eve traditions around the world. Students received a world map passport to stamp after completing various activities. We had fun participating in a variety of events that had us writing, preparing and eating special foods, making lots of noise, and recording oral sharing.
http://www.langwitches.org/ blog/travel/teddybearsaround theworld

Gill the Goldfish

(our class mascot)

Traveling Mascot
In addition to blogging on the Teddy Bears site, Gill the Goldfish (and his fish family G2, Lil Gill, and Lil G) travels to places around the world and share his (their) learning with us on our special wiki website: http://gillthegoldfishgoesglobal. wikispaces.com All four of our fish friends are currently away on special adventures. One fish is in the United Kingdom, one is in Florida, another is in British Columbia, and the fourth fish is on a crossCanada trip! Over the next few weeks we will reintroduce ourselves to our traveling fish and learn about their most recent adventures.

Upcoming Trip: Millen Woods P.S.

On Wednesday, January 18th, we will be joining Mr. OConnors grade 5 class in Waterloo to learn about geocaching! We will use Global Positioning Systems to orient ourselves and find special objects located near Millen Woods P.S. Stay tuned for more information coming home about this exciting trip.