Are you ready for a photo challenge?

We are excited to share that we are planning to participate in a K-12 photography and creative writing project called #eduphotoaday beginning May 1st. The project was started by two teachers in our school division. Here is how it works: For each day during the month of May there is a word or phrase in the photo challenge. We will take an Instagram photo that represents that word or phrase. We hashtag it #eduphotoadaymay and the word or phrase. The next day we will look at all of the Instagrams in the photo challenge from the previous day and use them as writing inspiration.

If you are an Instagram user, follow us @mrstresoorsclass. Our class account is private so you’ll need to request to follow and wait for approval by me before you’ll be able to see our photos. If your Instagram name is something anonymous (i.e. I won’t be able to identify that it’s you) please send me an email letting me know what your Instagram identity is so that I can accept your request. I am only allowing families, classrooms and educators to follow us.

We are excited and ready for May to begin.....even with the snow! Thanks to @200awesomedays and @mrhoeppnersclass for setting up this photo challenge.
- Mrs. T :)

Expert Projects

On Monday I did my EP presentation. I did it on the elements. I chose the elements because I wanted to know more about them. To present it I used power point. I was happy with how it turned out. There are three steps you have to do before you present. You have to research, type up your information, and then you get your presentation ready. There are lots of ways you can present your EP. You can use power point, prezi, and Haiku Deck. I already started a new EP project. I am doing Elephants. I can’t wait till I get to present it.

By Renee

On Tuesday I presented my EP that is about Titanic! Though it did not have enough pictures, I had added a link for an awesome Titanic sinking CGI from the National Geographic website! I used Prezi to make the presentation! I’m soon going to make another EP on maybe the HMHS Britannic, The Yamato, UFOs, the US or Canadian Navy, and more. I’m so excited to make my next EP!

By Brandon

T.W.A.S.

This week at school…

We did little skits with a bus loop expectations hidden in it. We were divided into groups and when we were we got a slip of paper that had a bus loop expectation on it. We couldn’t tell anyone what it was except our group members. When we were finished our skit we had to let others guess what our expectation was. My group expectation was use kind words. How we acted that out was me and Renee were two children on a bus and Hunter was the bus driver. Me and Renee had a conversation that was our skit. Then we did a cross-word puzzle about bus expectations.                                                                                                                                                                                     

We started long division it is simple if you understand it. You really have to know your multiplication facts Mrs. Tresoor told us. I do understand it but some of them are harder than others for me. If you come across a hard one than you come across a HARD one! We had long division today and I didn’t get it finished so it will be homework. There are different steps for long division D stands for divide M stands for multiply S stands for subtract B stands for bring down R stands for repeat. We came up with some really weird ways to remember that I like Dad, Mom, Sister, Brother, Relative.

In Social studies we are doing a fill in the blanks about habitant life. We watched a video that had the answers. Some of the things that we needed to fill in were like this in the summer the habitants fished and farmed. Things like that I had a little trouble keeping up for some reason. We watch a lot of videos in social studies and a lot of them are tapes. We still have to finish that one that we started a while ago.  It is interesting what we are learning about.

We did soccer in gym last time. The game we played was called every one scores soccer. How you play is you are divided into two teams and the first team to have every one score once wins that match. If you score a goal you have to sit out and cheer on the rest of your team.

By Jensen                                

Handball Tournament!

Yesterday we had handball. It was really exciting to play in a ginormous area which was their gym. It was so big there were 3 courts to play on. We had such a big group of people we got split into 2 groups; group A and group B. I was on group A and we only lost once and tied against the other Birds Hill team. We all had big lunches because we were really hungry.

Braden

Haiku Deck

The haiku deck is an iOS app that lets you create a slideshow. You add photos by taking them or you can use the pictures that you have already taken. You can also search for rights free images. It’s very easy to use. Here’s one our class made. Enjoy!

 -Braden

Earth Day

Spring Concert

We had a spring concert on jazz. It was called “The Sounds of Jazz”. The concert was filled with amazing songs called (in order) “lets jam”, “hambone”, “step back baby”, “old enough to sing the blues”, “one potato two potato”, “dukes place” and lets jam reprise!!! My part in it was the xylophone. I played 3 patterns. My favourite part was the lets jam reprise it was so live and full of energy. And the surprise ending was the best we totally tricked them. I really enjoyed the performing because it gives me a happy feeling inside. My mother thought that it was really nice performance. Great job everyone! Enjoy watching the videos of our performances.

By Sadie

Here we are performing One Potato Two Potato.


This is the Let`s Jam song. Our actions are really good!

We Are Silent!

Today all of our class is being silent for WE ARE SILENT day. Everyone who wants to do it bought a tag that they wear around their neck. The tags were one dollar and it has information about why we are not talking. We are doing it for all of the children who don’t have the rights that they deserve. I am impressed that so many people are not talking. Not even Mrs. Tresoor is talking. We have done some worksheets about today. The first one was called Children’s Rights. The questions that it asked were: what is the difference between adults and children, are children able to care for themselves the same way as adults, should children be granted the same rights as adults, and when children’s rights are not being protected, do other children have the power to help? The second thing that we did was we got

a paper with three scenarios on it and we had to choose one of them to cut out and glue them in to our writer’s notebook and write what we think about them. The first scenario was if you were working instead of going to school, the second one was if you had no home, and the third scenario was if you didn’t have clean water to drink. I did scenario number one and three.

I am trying to be silent for most of the day. We only have to not talk when we are at school. When we got to school there was a quote from free the children and it said: We stand in silent solitary with children whose voices are silenced by not having their rights upheld”. It is really hard to not talk for the whole day but I think it is worth it because we are raising money for the children who do not have the rights that they deserve. I wonder if we are going to do this next year? I hope so!

By Renee  

S.P.I.N. Club News

Our SPIN Club was recognized in the Herald today. This community newspaper features stories from East Kildonan, North Kildonan, Elmwood, Transcona, Birds Hill and East St. Paul. The SPIN Club at Bird's Hill School has been involved in a variety Free the Children campaigns throughout the year. It is very exciting to read about the great work these students are doing. What a wonderful feeling to know we are helping other people locally and globally. Alex from our class is featured on the front page with Abby from grade 6. Awesome work everyone! You can read the article here.

Mrs. T :)

Celebrations in Room 30!

Congratulations to Faith and Felicia for receiving the Patrol of the Month Award for February! It is wonderful to have students showing leadership and responsibility as they help to make our school a safe and better place.

Keaston's new chair arrived at school. It is adjusted to fit him perfectly. There was a lot of cheering and clapping as he was able to move from his wheelchair to his very own desk. The students are delighted (and so is Keaston) that he will be part of our classroom seating plan on a regular basis.

We are all looking forward to another great week. It's our spring concert on Wednesday so we are busy preparing for a great show! We hope many of you will be able to come out to enjoy, "The Sounds of Jazz".

- Mrs. T. :)

EP Project: Basketball



Branden with Dr. James Naismith



Hello blog readers. This week I presented my EP which is an abbreviation for expert project. I researched basketball. It had to be something you are an expert at or something you want to learn more about and I chose basketball because I’m good at it. When I presented I talked about who invented basketball. Who the best players are and lots of other stuff. I think that I should have added more information about the inventor of basketball and basketball teams and especially said more about my personal experience in basketball. I also brought in two medals and three ribbons. I won the medals from when I played basketball last spring and in the winter. Now I play on a team called Mayhem. They specialise in dribbling. Mayhem is my favourite team so far. I’ve only had five or six practices though. That’s how fun it is. My least favourite team was my team last spring.  I think I am going to do pollution for my next EP project. I want to do pollution because Amber Schuler said that you can always make a difference and I think that if people saw my EP on pollution and see how polluted rivers and oceans are the people that see it will try to make a difference.  

By Branden

Day of Pink



Group discussion.

Hello Room 30 readers! Today Braden and I are going to talk about the Day of Pink! The reason we had this day was because… A boy in Nova Scotia wore a pink t-shirt to school and got bullied. The two bystanders said to themselves “That’s wrong, no person should be bullied”. They asked their friends to all wear pink shirts to school. The pink shirt was a notification to stand up to bullying. Now we even have an International Day of Pink.

Braden sharing his poem....

Cameron's turn to share.

We did an activity today on bullying. There were three different groups. We randomly picked the Bully, the Bystander and the Bullied. I got the bully, and Braden got the bullied. In the groups we talked about what it would feel like to be the bully, the bullied and the bystander. We had to write a poem, it was called I Am... Since I got the part of being bullied the poem was written from the point of view of a person who was getting bullied and what it might be like. Cameron wrote his poem from the point of view of the bully. After we finished we got to get up and read our poems in front of the class. The first two words of the sentence were already written so you could add onto it. Each sentences first word would be "I "then another word like cry, see, wonder, hope, try and dream. Many of the poems were so powerful; they almost made you cry because they were so true. We hope people don’t just stop bullying on April 10th. We hope it stops forever.

Stand up to bullying!

By: Braden and Cameron
This activity was developed by Jen Runde. You can read more about it here at Runde's Room.


 

Outreach Speaker Amber Schuler Visits BHS!

Hello blog readers, I will tell you about a special guest that visited our school.

Today, a lady named Amber Schuler came to tell us about “Free the children”. If you didn’t know what free the children is, then I will tell you. Free the children is a non-profit organization to help people (focused on children) that don’t have enough things to survive. It started in 1995, so it has lasted 18 years.

Amber told us this story:

In 1987, four year old Iqbal Masih (pronounced Ikball Masee) was a boy who lived in a poor family. There was not a school nearby, and the closest one was multiple kilometers away. All the water was so dirty it looked like chocolate milk. These men, one day, had come to Iqbal’s small village to “give children a better life” (go to school, give them clean water and good food etc.). Once the men came to Iqbal’s house, his parents agreed hoping it would be better for their small Iqbal. His parents were given a contract, but they had not gone to school and did not know how to read, so they signed the contract with a fingerprint. The parents were paid 600 rupees (approximately $16 dollars) Iqbal was taken to a gloomy carpet factory, where his nimble miniature hands tied knots for carpets. He was all chained up to prevent him from egress (to leave).  He miraculously escaped the factory in 1993 (age 10) and for two years, traveled around telling the world about child labour and how wrong it was. In 1995 (age 12) he returned to his home in Pakistan to see his family. He was riding his bike with his cousins to visit his uncle. Laughing, having fun, riding his bike with his cousins that was the life. During the ride, a horrible thing happened. Suddenly, his cousin was shot in the arm and Iqbal was fatally shot by who is thought to be the carpet factory men for exposing the child labour secret. Halfway around the world, in Toronto Canada, a twelve year old boy by the name of Craig Keilburger, the same age as Iqbal, was searching in the newspaper before school for his morning comics and saw the horrific headline. TWELVE YEAR OLD PAKISTAN BOY MURDERED!!!  Craig went to school that day and asked his teacher if he could explain his reading. His teacher said yes, and he read the article aloud. After he read the article, he explained how important he thought it was to start a club to help the needy people of the world of all of these horrifying things. He asked if anyone wanted to join, and gradually, 11 hands of Craig’s friends rose. Their club was named “twelve twelve year olds” but when one turned thirteen, it was changed to free the children. Today, only Craig remains in the group, but plenty others have joined.

I got a very powerful message when this was told to us. At our school we have a club and we fundraise to donate to free the children, and that is how we got Amber to come to our school. We have helped to start building a whole school in El Trapiche, Nicaragua and when we do another fundraiser, this makes me want to be part of it more than before. I hope free the children can help many more places worldwide. People like Craig make this world a lot better. This was a very powerful message to everyone in our class and the other two grades that came.

Thank you Amber from everyone in our class.

-Alex

Village Group Activities

Hey 5T blog readers, I’m going to talk about village groups. We did lots of different kinds of stations in different classes and some of them were even in the hallway. No village group went to all of the stations. There were seventeen stations and everyone went to eleven. Everyone met in the gym so we could find everyone in our village group. I am in village number ten. After Mrs. Rand explained what we were doing we went to our first station. The grade sixes were in charge of the stations and the grade fives were in charge of making sure everyone got to their next station. Some of my favourite stations were beach ball volleyball, magic tongue sticker outer, and long rope skipping. For beach ball volleyball it was more like keep up. There were two games going on. All you had to do was hit up the ball to the other side of the mat. All the morning was fun and exciting. It is good to have village groups so you can meet people from other grades. I can’t wait to have village groups next. I wonder what we will do next?

By Renee 

Back from Spring Break!

Sharing our spring break news!

Hello blog readers. Did you have a good spring break? I sure did. I was looking forward to staying up late and playing video games. I did that every night. I had Easter with my family and friends.I did Easter egg hunting. Here are some of the spots that my baskets of chocolate were: In the living room behind some boxes, a big chocolate NHL player was behind there. In my room there was a basket behind my bean bag chair, that came with chocolate and a Archie book with 320 pages! The second basket was behind the dog food. The adult basket was in the washroom where the closet was,it came with 2 big Easter Bunny's and some other stuff too. Hope you had a good spring break. I'm really excited to go back to school and see my friends.

 Thanks for reading!

 Michael