Oh No... Not Another Obsession

I like to keep my obsessions to a minimum. My love for dark chocolate m&m's, my kindle, scrabble and owls are some of those very obsessions, in addition to my ever expanding blog roll. Just two weeks ago though, I discovered something that is life changing...Pinterest. Yes, I know, you may be saying "Miss Rorey, get in the game, get with it, where have you been?" but the answer is, I have been in AFRICA! So I guess that is a good enough excuse.

Pinterest allows me to do a few of my obsessions at once. These include find great educational resources, connect to other people around the world, collect photos and ideas and organize things. Pinterest allows me to do all of this. So if you have not discovered Pinterest for yourself (say you are living in Africa, or under a rock) check it out and be sure to follow me. I have a great growing page of owls, language arts activities, vegan food and inspirational posters, just to name a few.

Student Post: Maiya's Museum Visit

“Daddy look at the big skeleton of the dinosaur," I shouted. Although this was just at the front desk.

We waited in the line for the tickets to go in. When we got the tickets we walked in the big beautiful Museum. We walked up the stairs and my dad saw a gigantic tree trunk that showed some rings, every ring for a year, the tree was more than a thousand years old!

We saw a sign that said "T-REX encounter" and a door next to the big pretty thing. I tugged on my dad’s red and blue shirt and pointed at it. We walked in the large door and all of a sudden I heard a gigantic roar.

We walked around the corner and saw gigantic, I mean enormous, robot dinosaurs. Well they weren't roaming around or anything but they even had like fake skin. 

    They were so horrifying. This is the fun part. At the back of the room was SUE! The Tyrannosaurus Rex or T-Rex. Maybe you haven't heard about Sue, well she is the biggest dinosaur they've found and is the most complete. Amazing huh. THE END

IST Gives

Hello Families and welcome back from the long holiday! As many of you already know, we had extensive flooding, not only on the IST teacher housing, but throughout all of Dar es Salaam. The water damage was extensive and many people lost everything in the flood, some people even lost their lives. On Friday we had an assembly discussing the aftermath of the flood. The students saw some photos of what occurred, met some lifeguards who work at our school who teamed up and saved lives in the community to become local heroes, and got information about IST Gives.

 

The school has organized a giving drive to assist families in need. All this week we will be accepting clothing, shoes, bedding, housewares, dried or canned food and money donations to help out families in need.

Our new PYP unit is about Heroes and this is an easy way for you and your family to become heroes to someone in need. All next week, please send in items to be shared with people in need and become a local hero too!

Day In My Shoes

One blogger I follow started a fun linky party and I wanted to join along. It is called Day In My Shoes and fellow bloggers are telling all about their day so here it goes.

• 5:20 am Alarm goes off, get in swimsuit, grab a glass of water, keys and goggles.
• 5:25 Walk downstairs to meet a few fellow teachers and walk across the field to the school swimming pool. Get in the brisk water and swim laps for 30 minutes.
• 5:55 Walk back home and take a shower. Get ready for the day. Make some tea and breakfast to take along, check email, facebook and blogs, get lunch out of the fridge, pack school bag, pray I did not forget something, walk back across the field with Cody to work.
• 6:30 Check in at staff room, morning greetings to fellow co-workers in Kiswahili, check pigeon-hole and walk to class.
• 6:35 Enter room, usually with waiting students. Turn on the lights and air con units, get out computer, eat breakfast while setting up for the day. Make sure the schedule is up, the students have gotten their stickers from yesterday. Greet my teaching assistant, and every student and parent entering the room. Talk with parents and students until the morning bell rings.
• 7:10 School starts. With students set daily goals and give super stars for great team behavior the day before. Morning work and then start Language Arts block. Spelling, Daily 5 and writing.
• 9:15 Read aloud story while kids eat snack. Right now I am reading a book about animal heroes to go with our most recent PYP unit.
• 9:30 Recess bell rings. Wednesdays I head out for break duty.
• 9:50 Specials for the students and prep/team planning for me. The special schedule changes daily so the times are often slightly different.
• 11:20 Lunch for staff and students. I eat in my room and continue to get more work done, taking a small break to check my blog reader.
• 12:05 pm Math block. Currently we are studying geometry.
• 1:30 Pass out homework books and homework, pass out homework bags and wrap-up the day. If there is time, play a class game until the bell rings at 1:45.
• 1:55 Grade papers, speak with parents or colleagues and get ready for the next day. On Thursdays I help lead my Girl Scouts after school activity.
• 3:30 Head home back across the field. Get snack, check email and do various computer things. Right now I am addicted to pinterest and have been spending too much time organizing my teacher resources here.
• 4:30 Yoga, pilates, running, volleyball or football with colleagues living on campus depending on the day.
• 6:30 Start prepping dinner with Cody.
• 7:00 Dinner and a movie. We do not have TV so we typically put something on to watch. We brought a lot of DVD's to Tanzania.
• 9:00 Get ready for bed, read and lights out between 9:30 and 10:00

Water Cycle Presentation

Class 3R would like to take some time to thank Tashia's dad for coming to IST today to share with all of grade three lots of wonderful information about the water cycle.

We learned many things!

You can make crops in the desert- Vansh
You can use lots of water just by brushing your teeth and not turning off the tap- Tristan
Just to grow an apple, it takes 70 liters of water- Travis
It takes 184 liters of water just to make a package of potato chips- Luka
It takes 16,000 liters of water to produce 1kg. of beef- Ethan/Stan
21 million wholes are dug in India to find water under ground- Tanay
You can find water in the desert- Evan
If you pollute the water and drink it, you can get sick- Elrad
Chemicals pollute the water and when it goes in wells it is not good for human use- Christophe
Many cities around the world use ground water- Meet
Sometimes the water is so polluted you have to wear suits to touch it- Travis
It is better to stop the water when you are not using it during the shower-Maiya
When you are brushing your teeth, turn off the tap- Noelle
Don't use too much water when you are washing your hands-Jescah
Don't take a shower too long-Elin
The world mostly uses water for farming- Magali
Farms use more water than factories-Zoey
In the desert there is a lot of water underground but you can't see it-Alma
Stop your mom and dad while they are taking a long shower- Adrienne
There are many different places that you can find water- Zoey
Don't use too much water for a bath- Noelle
You need water for many, many things- Magali
You should not use underground water too much- Alma
If you use too much water from underground in the desert, you can take all of the water from underground and there won't be any more- Maiya
When you brush your teeth and leave the tap on, you waste 97 liters of water a month- Jescah
Don't throw chemical and trash in the ocean- Elin
People dig wholes 500 meters down for water- Magali
Did you know that some children have to walk 5 km a day to get water- Adrienne
Don't put chemicals in your plants because it will get into your well- Maiya
Sometimes many people need to walk a long, long time to get water- Alma

Can You Count to a Googol?

Unit 5 in Everyday Math teaches students about place value and numeration. Today in class, I shared the book "Can You Count To A Googol?" by Robert E. Wells. The students were fascinated with it and the book got them inquiring about other numbers and just what it means to be a HUGE, TREMENDOUS, BIG number.

As we were reading, I posted "What if...?" questions and the students loved it. For example, I asked questions such as "What if you saw 10,498 lions while on safari?" or "What if you ate 9,207 kernels of popcorn?"

After the book, the kids got to create their own "What if...?" sentences with large numbers. Check out their questions!

What if...

… you had 1,000 boxes of ice creams? Jescah

… you ate 9,846 cookies? Adrienne

… you had one million dogs? Vansh

…a there was 607,896 air in the world? Tanay

…there were 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000… students in the school? Christophe

… there were 900,000 fruit flies in the class? Travis

… there was a googol children in a 4X4 meter room? Luka

… 77,777 spiders were born in one egg? Zoey

… you had 88,888 million bunnies? Noelle

… 9,000 people made trucks? Elrad

… you had googol pets? Evan

… 9,640 of your friends each had 7,000 kids? Magali

… everyone had an octillion chocolates? Stan

… you had 10,000400 dog? Tristan

… you have 99,999 toys? Elin

… there was 7,504 hats on each person? Maiya

… you had 100,000,000 pets? Alma

… you had 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 dollars? Ethan

… you wore 1,000 t-shirts? Meet

Check out the book with your class and post your own "What if..." questions below?

Writing Focus: Expository Paragraphs

This past week, to correspond with the introduction of our new unit about water, the students began learning about expository writing. This type of writing provides answers to questions about the world. The main purpose of expository writing is to explain and inform the reader.

The most important of the 6 writing traits to teach during this genre are ideas and word choice. I wanted to share some activities you could do at home to practice these traits. Here are three ideas from our Write Source curriculum to help your child start thinking about expository text:

• Invite each family member to show and explain a skill or trick that requires at least three steps. Use the terms such as first, next, and then to help organize the concepts being explained.
• While waiting in line or traveling in a car call out a general noun such as pet, insect, sport, food, movie, book or plant. Ask your child to name specific nouns that fit into that category. Then switch roles. I still play this on road trips as an adult. We call the game “categories”  and you can get really creative with the topics you choose.
• At meal time, ask each family member to name two objects that are important to them and explain why they are important. Have the family vote on the item that would make a more interesting writing topic.

Enjoy!
Ms. Rorey

Multiplication Practice

The students keep chugging along and are learning more and more each day. They have been working hard on their multiplication facts. Earlier in the week, we used some shells and slips of paper to model the concept of multiplication being a set number of groups with a set number of items in each group.

 

Homework: Multiplication Finger Game

image: canstock.com

For homework today, I assigned a game for students to play with someone at home. The goal of the game is to practice multiplication facts. We learned it today and although the classroom got very, very loud, very, very quickly, the students all had fun!

Here is how you play thanks to the website googolpower. Similar to the game rock, paper and scissors, students pair up to play a game where on the count of three they each randomly put out fingers from 0-5 (or 0-10 if they have more advanced skills.) Then it is a race to answer the math fact.

For example if child # 1 holds out five fingers and child #2 holds out three fingers, they would yell out the product 15. This game can also be played with younger students to reinforce adding skills. You can also play in teams or groups of three by having the third person answer the questions and taking turns.

Here are some more links to online multiplication games and practice:


Multiplication Idea Bank
Kids Games for Learning
Multiplication.com

International Day at IST

Friday we celebrated International Day at IST. It was a wonderful event and the highlight of the year so far for whole school events. The parents really pulled off an A+ event and I want to thank each and every one of them... especially the parents in my room!

The day kicked off with a little bit of rain, but that didn't stop us from parading around the school. The kids lined up with their families at the country that the were represented and waited for the parade to begin. I was lucky because I had Tanzania (the country for which I dressed up supporting) and the US (my home country) right next to each other. Here is a photo of the Tanzanian group waiting to walk.

 I found some teaching friends from the US right next to me. Here is our grade 3 team leader, Ms. McKillip! She loved my Portland shirt, because she is also from Portland, Oregon... small world, huh?

 As each country walked through the school and down toward the field, each group got their picture taken. Here is a photo of the Tanzanian group.

 Waiting for us on the field as we walked to the assembly were some local Tanzanian dancers and musicians. What a great way to start an event!

 The US group was large and loud. The chants of USA could be heard across the field. Everyone was wearing their red, white and blue, and families came with huge American flags.

 When we got to the covered court, the children were chanting, waving flags and having a great time. The event was festive and joyous. It was so nice to see everyone dressed up representing their country.

 Once the assembly was over, classrooms went back to their rooms and waited until it was their turn to go back out onto the field and look at all of the tents. Each continent had a different area of the field and the students got to go out and play games, do crafts, learn facts, taste food and experience different cultures.

Treats and Facts at Mexico

Jump Rope at Canada

Treats at the United States of America

Origami Tops at Japan

Games in Asia

Treats in Africa

Travis and Evan with Travis's mom learning about South Africa

Learning about Spices from Zanzibar

Fresh Coconut from Tanzania

Soap made from plants at the Zanzibar presentation

3R posing in front of the Tanzanian animals

Painting at Europe

Answering questions and getting treats from Europe

Meet bobbing for apples with a little help from Tim

Miss Irene and Miss Rorey dressed to represent Tanzania! Thanks to Miss Irene for the wonderful outfits.