Hesed House - The Season Of Giving!

My Dearest Room 222,

     Your generosity and caring hearts make me feel so lucky to be your teacher. You and your families gathered so many thoughtful donations for the Hesed House. You turned our small pile of donations,

...into a great collection of spirit in just 3 short weeks. 

Your generosity was much appreciated when our donations were dropped off.

You made a huge difference in the lives of many people in our area. Thank you for being so awesome and doing your part to make our world a better place.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love, 

Mrs. Bright

Kaneland Writing Night

*Teacher note: This blog post was written by K.K., M.W.B., K.G., A.C. and L.S.

We went to Barnes and Noble for Kaneland's Writing Night to meet authors. 

When we walked in we saw our friends and teachers.

Then we went on to meet many authors. 

One of the authors that we met was Amy Logan. She wrote A Girl with a Cape.

She read the book and some of us even got to raise our hands and talk to her! It made us feel really happy to talk to famous authors.

We also got to see Steven Layne, author of Love the Baby.

We saw more of our friends listening to him as well. He told us a story about his daughter Victoria and her new baby brother. She was not happy about the baby. He also has a few more books about the baby. 

We can't wait for next time so that we can go back and listen to authors again. We also want to get more books. 

Hour of Code in Room 222

The Hour of Code Project was alive and well in Room 222 today. In today's world, computer science is one of the most important topics a student can know about. So today we spent an hour with some amazing apps and sites that will get us thinking about computer coding. 

We started with a great introductory video from Code.org.

Then we got started. Our first App was Kodable. It looked pretty easy at first but got more challenging as we kept working. This was really fun. 

Then we moved on to Tynker. This is a great 1st try app. The kids loved this one! They helped me figure it out when I got stuck. 

Then we moved on to my favorite, Lightbot. This was also the favorite of the class. I think they like it because it was the most challenging. They really had to work together on this one. 

Check out the collaboration and problem solving from one of our most successful coding partnerships:

Code from LBright on Vimeo.

For the list of apps and sites we use, click here.

Get Ready! The Hour of Code is Upon Us!

Tomorrow, Room 222 will be participating in 

The Hour of Code project. 

Interested in starting tonight? 

Feel free to check it out as a family!

Get ready by visiting these site on a laptop/PC or downloading these apps on your tablet.

Laptop or PC:

Flappy Bird - http://studio.code.org/flappy/1

Frozen - http://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1

Apps (all Free!):

Kodable

Tynker

Lightbot

A System and a Skype

We had a very exciting week in Room 222. We have some projects that are in the works and a special Skype visit was planned.

Room 222's Mail System:

During a particularly exciting round of our Creative Workshop, a few weeks ago, A.H. and B.W. brainstormed a possible Mail System for Room 222. 

Since then, their passion project has motivated all of us to inquire into this topic and learn more. We are wondering if this is something that could work in our room.

So we have split into 4 teams to start discovering all we can about our topics. Our teams are stamps, delivery and sorting, mailboxes and rules/jobs. The students were able to choose the small group that they were most interested in and they began working. 

Right now, we are in the discovery phase. We are discovering all we can using our resources. We have been reading books and watching videos all about mail systems so that we can best prepare our own. 

At the end of each session, we gather at the carpet and share what our group worked on or questions that we may have. 

While the iquiry process is super fun and informative, we have discussed that the collaboration is what we are really focusing on. 

We have been practicing our collaboration skills while trying to focus on the following skills:

• Active Listening
• Eye Contact
• Asking Questions
• Kind Words

Check out this video and see how our groups have been doing:

Inquiry Groups - Mail System from LBright on Vimeo.

Our Sharks 4 Kids Skype Visit:

We are starting the process of informational writing and to do this, we need to gather information. What better way to do this than to talk with an expert...

On Friday, we talked with our 1st expert of the year, Miss Jillian, from Sharks 4 Kids. To prepare for our talk with Miss Jillian, we talked about types of questions. We wrote our questions down so we wouldn't forget. 

We also did a bit of our own research so that we were prepared for our expert.

On Friday, we all came in very excited! Some of us even wore our most shark-rific attire!

Sharks 4 Kids and Skype in the Classroom even tweeted about us!!! It was a very exciting moment. 

Finally, it was time to officially meet Miss Jillian.  She called us from Bimini Island in the Bahamas. How cool is that?!?

She told us all about different kinds of sharks and their cool characteristics. 

Several of us were also able to talk to Miss Jillian and ask our specific questions. 

It was amazing!  Check out our reflection video that was made immediately after this exciting event:

*note: this video contains a password because it contains names and faces. 

Shark Reflection from LBright on Vimeo.

Last, but certainly not least, is the most important part of our week... Reading. We celebrate books every day in Room 222. We celebrate by reading our favorite books to ourselves, reading fun and silly books with our buddies and often sharing a new book with the class. C.D. shared the classic The Three Little Pigs. We loved listening to him read this to us. 

Thank you for checking in with us. Please feel free to leave us a comment. We read aloud and celebrate every comment that we receive.