Thursday, April 28, 2011

TWAS

This week at school we did a postcard projeck.we got one from clagary,Bragg creek,vancover,Edmintin,tisdale.we had fun because we like to write.it was AWESOME!!! Mrs Dent scarcello made groups.this week at school we had reading buddies outside. Alyssa p cached a slimy small cute frog or toad.everyone did not want to pick it up.people said they dont want to pick it up.
byAlyssap and Araya

Postcard project.

We are doing a postcard project about canada. We asked the class if they could ask people they know in canada to send our class a postcard to our class. We want to know some information about canada. When we get a postcard:
  • Miss dent gets it in the mail.
  • Then we read it to the class.
  • Then we mark it down on the map.
  • Then we write the informaion down on a piece of paper.
  • Then we talk about it.
  • Then we read more.
  • We add it to the google map on our wiki.
  • Then we do it over and over again everytime we get a postcard.
Hopefully we get a lot of postcards.
-Taylor P and Madison

Click on the blue markers to see the facts we learned about each location.
View Larger Map

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Spork!

In Daily 5 we have been working on retelling the main events from the stories we read. Today we used the strategy of a Story Map to retell the story "Spork" by Kyo Maclear.

At first some of the kids thought this story might be boring because the cover looks black and white but most were intrigued by the title. After looking at the cover and reading the first page we made predictions about what it would be about. Here is what the first page said:
"Spork was neither a spoon nor a fork...but a bit of both."
Some of our predictions were very thoughtful and interesting:
Cole – Spork is an eye scooper like in the army.

Anna – About his life as a spork

Alyssa P – He goes to a school and people make fun of him because his name is spork

Matthew – Everytime he goes out somewhere he slips and falls everywhere and gets messy.

Jayden – He gets teased a lot because he is a spork and there is no other one.

Madi – His mom and dad get used a lot and Spork feels lonely because he is a mix and he doesn’t get used a lot.

Noah – At school everyone makes fun of him but then they realize he is the best because he does something good.

Brody – He goes to school and he is the best spoon/fork.
Here is a sample of our story maps:

Monday, April 25, 2011

What About the Fish?

Today we were talking about what the fish do during a flood. Our question is, do the fish from the river swim anywhere there is water during a flood? Or, do the fish from the river know where the river is and stay there?


17 of us think the fish swim everywhere the water goes.
3 of us think the fish know where the river is and stay there.

What do you think? Leave us a comment with your answer.

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello's Class

The Bridges

Over the weekend, a friend and teacher in Morris posted some photos of the bridges in Morris and St. Jean. This is another angle of what we see on the Flood Cam.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Twas

this week at school we had a EASTER EGG hunt today yum yum yum and we also had a earth day hunt today we also brang garbage and gloves to.this week at school we had gym it was fun we player a shark game at the end of the day keanna gvie us candy by carter.yeo

Earth Day Poetry

Pick Up Garbage Haiku

Earth day in April

Pick up garbage for the Earth.

Use the whole paper :)

-Anna

Planet Earth

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

We won’t litter,

Or kick our shoe.

Turn off the car,

Save some power,

We will have it for an HOUR.

(We will have it for more than an hour is the truth )

-Noah

Incredible Aerial View

Today we saw a really neat video on The Winnipeg Free Press showing an aerial view of the current flood waters in the Morris and St. Jean areas. This is really incredible to see. We have been checking the webcams each day and have seen photos from the air but this video is much more real.
We think it will be really neat to see the St. Jean bridge webcam when the water goes over the rails and the wood starts to flow by. We think this will happen tomorrow or on Saturday.
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello's Class

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Earth Day :)

It is one of my favorite special days of the year - Earth Day! We have been discussing, writing and creating all things Earth Day lately. We created a very cool looking art project using tinfoil and paint. We have also done a lot of discussing about what we can do to help out the Earth and then writing about this as well. Today we moved on to writing poetry and explored some of the different styles of poetry we can write. We have discovered it is amazing how much we can do and what a difference we can make. After all, we are the future and the Earth is in our hands.





Cole is especially interested in taking care of the Atlantic Ocean, sharks live there!





 Happy Earth Day,
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Flood Progress

Every morning we check the Flood Cams to see if there are any changes in the water. Anna, Jayden, Taylor and Brooke have noticed some changes:
  • water stared to rise
  • roads are covered in water
  • streetrs are closed
  • thay make the dike bigger
  • houses are flooded by water
  • the water went up and there are more trees at the St. Jean brige.
  • they made a dike on Monday
  • there are LOTS of wood
  • highway 75 is flooded and closed
There is also a man near Morris who has a plane and takes photos of the flood every few days. Head over to his website to check out his photos.

Ms. Martens' class has also been updating the Flood Watch page with updates and photos. Also, a Morris photographer, Risk Photography, has posted some photos of the flood in the last few days.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Sign of Spring - Here Comes the Sun :)

Watch Our Flood Watch Page for Action on Hwy 75!

According to the news and newspaper this morning, crews will begin closing Highway 75 today. We will be watching the Winnipeg Free Press Livecam on our Flood Watch 2011 page to see the progress on the dike and closure.
Winnipeg Free Press:

Water set to swamp vital route
Highway 75 to U.S. in peril; Assiniboine causing grief
The flood will close Manitoba's main route to the United States as early as today, and ice jams on the Assiniboine are threatening dikes near St. Eustache.

Crews are slated to begin closing Highway 75 at Morris today, about a week after the province originally estimated the flood-plagued highway might become impassable.
Crews will begin "ramping" the dike by building it up with gravel and closing the highway at Morris to all but local traffic. That's in preparation for full closure, which could also happen as early as today, said Manitoba Water Stewardship's Steve Topping.
Already on Sunday, one northbound lane of the busy trade highway was closed near St. Jean Baptiste due to water on the shoulder.
The province said it's monitoring the highway hourly, hoping to keep it open as long as it's safe. In 2009, the road was closed for 36 days, which was about average for a flood year. That closure added $1.5 million a week to the cost of trucking goods back and forth between Canada and the United States, the Manitoba Trucking Association estimated at the time.
At their daily briefing, provincial flood experts said ice jams along the Assiniboine between Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg are another cause for worry.
"We're starting to see significant impacts on the Assiniboine," said Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton, who is also in charge of emergency measures.
The Portage Diversion is maxed out, taking as much water as it can out of the Assiniboine and funnelling it into Lake Manitoba.
Several large ice jams along the Assiniboine between Poplar Point and the Baie St. Paul bridge near St. Eustache have forced water over new, higher dikes in some places. But crews are following the flow of the ice jam -- which moves about as fast as a person can walk -- and shoring up the dike as they go by adding extra soil on top. So far, no properties have been affected by water overtopping the dike.
The province has an Amphibex ice-cutting machine at the ready in Portage la Prairie but is trying to determine whether it can access the ice jams.
Another concern: Water is seeping under the sand seam of the dike on the north side of the river. Crews are checking whether the leaks are serious enough to warrant the construction of a backup dike.
Once the ice jams break up, Winnipeg could see a short spike in water levels along the Assiniboine. Levels could rise one to 1.5 feet.
The province will update the flood forecast on the Red today to account for the snow that fell over the weekend.
The crests of the two rivers, the Red and the Assiniboine, are still due in Winnipeg at about the same time, between April 27 and May 3.
"This is not even the end of the beginning," said Ashton.
This year's flood covers the largest area in Manitoba's history.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Flooding in Selkirk

Keanna's mom sent us an email with some photos of the flooding in Selkirk, Manitoba. Thanks for thinking of us Mrs. M!


this week at shcool

this week at shcool we had gym. we did roke  papr sizrs. it was fun. and we had art. we did a gelobe progeked. we had hot lunsc. i was foll. and stefft.
-cole s.

Flood Update

Our guest bloggers, Ms. Martens' Class, posted some of their flood observations along with photos this week. You can check it out on our Flood Watch 2011 page. Ms. Martens also sent me a link to some unbelievable aerial photos of the flooding in Fargo, North Dakota. It is really worth a look!
~Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)
Here is one example:

Monday, April 11, 2011

What can we do to help the Earth.

Earth day is coming up.  So we  were though of lots of things to write about Earth day  here are some  of are ideas:
  • don't litter
  • Pick up garbeg
  • never ever ever smok
  • use less water
  • Do not litter wait tell you see a garbeg can
  • Do not.  use styrofoam it gose to the sea
  • reycle.
  • When you are not you.sing your car well waiting tern it off
  • do not plout the Earth.
  • if canada picked up garbeg that would a big diffrince.
  • If pepole recicaled lots and lots in the world it woud make a very very very big diffrince.
  • do not plout the planit
-Anna, Taylor P and Brooke

The students brainstormed ideas to answer the question "What can we do to help the Earth?". Each group had their own colour. When they were done writing their ideas, the kept the same colour and visited other groups to circle ideas that were the same and add ideas in their colour that were different. Here is what they came up with!
~Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)




Sunday, April 10, 2011

Throwing a Life Vest to our Friends in Morris

On my way home from work I was listening to the news and heard that Highway 75 will likely close in 2-4 days due to flooding. This brought back many memories from my days working in Morris, Manitoba. I was also thinking about our friends in Ms. Martens' class, the students we have written with and met on Skype. Being in Winnipeg, we hear about the flood on the news and perhaps drive over a bridge or past the river to notice how it is rising. But unless we live on the river, we are not as affected by the flood as our friends in Morris. So after hearing the news I got in touch with my friend Ms. Martens to ask how things were going out there. After getting updated, I thought it would be neat to post here so we could see what the Morris Bridge usually looks like and follow it as the water rises. There is a live webcam on the bridge all the time that we can check at The Winnipeg Free Press. It takes a minute to load, so be patient. I am also creating another page on this blog (check the page list on the right) so that our friends in Morris can post updates for us to follow.

Morris River Live:



Highway 75, the Morris River and the Hwy 75 dike during the 2009 flood (while I worked in Morris):



One crazy section of Hwy 75 just before they diverted us to the other lanes!

The dike on Main Street, Highway 75 in Morris.

The Morris River. This is not even at crest. I am pretty sure it eventually went right over the rails.




I also went for a drive this weekend to see what the river and floodway look like now:
The Floodway as it meets the river, Lockport.




The Locks, Lockport



Friday, April 8, 2011

TWAS

This week at School we have "Read'in Buddies. They are go'in to read us books. We wonder if they will read us cool books. We will hopfully like there books.

We made a story map. what the story map is, is when we have a blank peace of paper. Then we we have another peace of paper that says " Beging middle middle end". Some of  us are finished, some of us did not.

This week at school we played who has. Brayden didn't to play. Because he didn't finish his homework. He was  almost done.

We listened watched scardy squirrel on Miss Dents Computer. We think it was better than the normle one.That was to deminstrait what to do for our Story map. It was on Tumble books.

We went on Google earth. Noah did not find his house. Miss Dent found the school for him. On Miss Dents computer, she found Soby's.

By Noah And Brayden

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Everyday Should be Earth Day

Another Earth-friendly fact for you:
DID YOU KNOW?

Only 10% of our home water supply is used in the kitchen and as drinking water but a whopping 65% of it is used in the bathroom.

What We Know About Canada

We are having an interesting conversation about what we already know about Canada. We know many things like:
- Cities and provinces that are a part of Canada
- Inukshuks
- Lakes and rivers
- Lots of trees
- Lots of animals
- Lots of people live in Canada

This last point sparked a wonder about Canada. How many people actually do live here? Some of our guesses include:
- 9000
- 1 000 000
- 100 900
- "it never ends because people keep having babies"
- 9316
- 10 000
- 1 010 056
- 200
- 3 000 000
- 9 000 065
- "infinity never ending"
- 10 000 000 000

We decided we needed a reference for our guesses. We looked up the population of Winnipeg so that we would have a starting point. The population of Winnipeg according to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and the 2006 census was 694 668 people.

Some of our new guesses are:
- 1 trillion
- 10 billion
- 15 trillion
- 11 billion
- 18 trillion
- 900 000 000 000
- 900 trillion
- 500 trillion

We used http://www.wikipedia.org/ to look up the actual population of Canada. It is 34 410 000 (as of a 2011 estimate). We were surprised that it was only in the millions since it is such a big country. We think this might be because lots of people live in the USA, lots of people live on the other side of the world and because there is a lot of land here but it is too cold.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Bookmaking

In February and March, we made hardcover books with Mrs. Dent (Mrs. Dent Scarcello's mom). We wrote the stories, made the books from scratch (even sewed them together) and published our stories in them. We are just about finished illustrating our books and some are already done! We loved making books with Mrs. Dent, THANK YOU!
All of the steps to making a hardcover book are on this blog! Along the right side you will find the pages in this blog. Click on bookmaking and you are all set!


Everyday Should be Earth Day!

In April we will celebrate Earth Day (April 22nd). But since we love the Earth soooo much, we will talk about it for much more than just one day. Watch for interesting facts, challenges and special projects we take on this month. Here is your first little tidbit:

 DID YOU KNOW?
A decade ago, every man, woman and child in Canada were producing an average of one ton of garbage a year. How much are you throwing away? What can you do to throw away less garbage?

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Cookbook

During I Love to Read Month we collected recipes. Each child was asked to bring in a favourite recipe to share with the class. I decided to create a book of the recipes so everyone could have a chance to take it home. I have ordered a hard copy of the book for our class and embedded a copy here as well for you to check out!


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