From another school and want to converse with our class? This is a place for other classes to have discussions with us about class blogs, school projects, collaborative ideas, local culture, location, and more. We’d love to find out how your school is similar and different from ours!
Leave a comment below and our class will be more than happy to respond. Make sure to leave a link or web address to your blog so we know where to respond.
We look forward to learning all about you!
Hello Mr. Avery and Grade 4 class!
We are delighted that you have opened up an E-Meet area on your blog. Wow! Grade 4s are awesome! You have so many great ideas and projects on your website… two thumbs up!
We are so disappointed, however, to tell you that our hopeful “big snow day” turned out to be a “big rain day”. Some areas around us (eg. Abbotsford & Chilliwack) did get a big dump of snow, but our school area got only 5 to 10 cm. of snow overnight which turned into solid rain by morning. The districts further inland had way more snow AND a “no school – snow day” today!!! Our local mountains (Whistler, Grouse, and Seymour) are having wonderful skiing.
So…. we are very jealous of your snow! We love to make snow angels, make snowmen, and snow forts when we can. Right now, all we can make are big slushy messes on the doorsteps to our classroom! (Oh, those soggy socks!)
Happy to e-meet you!
Classroom 2 & Mrs. Boekhout
Coquitlam, BC, Canada
Dear Mrs. Boekhout’s Class,
That’s too bad that you didn’t get a lot of snow like you expected! 5 to 10 cm isn’t that much. We got a lot more than that Tuesday night and Wednesday. In class, we discussed how we use inches to measure and how you use centimeters. Your 5 to 10 cm would about 4 inches for us. We got about 12 inches of snow. We figured out that would be close to 30 cm.
We had a snow day yesterday. Some of us built snow forts, made snowmen, had to shovel, went sledding, made polar bear dens, and some of us sat inside playing video games or drinking hot cocoa.
We love all of your class pets. Ollie is our favorite! How many class pets do you have in all? We don’t have any.
We look forward to hearing from you again soon.
Your Friends in Massachusetts,
Mr. Avery’s Class
Dear Mr. Avery and Class,
Whew! We have been very busy this last week! Mrs. B’s Grade 2′s and their Grade 5 buddy class perform a Dragon/Lion parade down the school halls for Chinese New Year. We got our photo on the front page of our local newspaper! At the same time, we are also practicing square dancing for the Dance Fest next week… oh my! We have even MORE special days coming up in the next few weeks!
It’s time we answered at least SOME of your questions! Ollie is definitely the favourite class pet because he is SO cute and SO personable. (He is named Ollie the Olympic Hamster, because Mrs. Boekhout got him when Vancouver was hosting the Olympics.) We also have 3 green anole lizards with 2 long tail grass lizards, various tropical fish (guppies, gourami, neons, catfish, algae eater), LOTS of walking sticks (bacuulum, pink wings, Indian, thorny), 2 firebelly newts, 2 firebelly toads, 3 leopard geckos (Mrs. B. brings them one at a time), and we breed mealworms too. Mrs. B. just brought in her compost bin with lots of red wriggler (nightcrawler) worms.
Our ornithologist of the week watches for birds in the bird feeders outside our window. This week we saw black capped chickadees, juncos, stellar jays, house finches, lots of bushtits, a European starling,a flicker, crows, and the big “Woodie Woodpecker” pilleated woodpecker!
We have different plants for our horticulturist of the week to take care of too. Right now we are waiting for our Amarylis and our Paperwhites to bloom.
Next time we write, we’ll tell you about the Classroom Stuffies!
We’d like to know what local birds YOU see in Massachusetts and whether you grow any plants.
Take care,
Classroom 2 Kids & Mrs. Boekhout
PS Mrs. B. has set up an area like yours for visitors to leave us comments or questions. We call ours the “Chat Line”.
Dear Mr. Avery and Class:
This is a very exciting blog you have here. When Marshall invited me to take a look at it, I was very intrigued but never did I expect the great things I saw when I opened the link to this wonderful site! All of you are doing a wonderful job and I think anyone who takes a look at it will be amazed and learn at the very least one or two new things before they leave. The pictures and information are spectacular and I intend to come back and see what new things you are learning frequently. Thumbs up to everyone who participates in putting all of this together and I hope you have as much fun doing this as I have reading about all of your adventures. I hope you all have a great vacation and come back well rested to start more wonderful learning experiences in such a great class.
Take care and happy learning,
Melissa
Mrs. Masi,
Thank you so much for your kind words! I’m so glad that we’re able to share all of our hard work with you. This blog certainly wouldn’t be possible without all of the efforts of the students!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Hello again, Mr. Avery and class!
Thank you for telling us about your local birds! We were just reading about the difference between Steller’s Jays and Eastern Blue Jays on the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology website!
We’d love to tell you about our Traveling stuffies! They are: Monty Moose, Woody Beaver, and Timber Wolf. They have traveled to classrooms in other countries and have also traveled with friends. Monty Moose is the oldest (13 years old!) and has been to 6 continents! Monty has his own website (http://www.montymoose.com) and has his own Facebook account too! He has lots of stuffed moose facebook friends! How funny is that!!! Monty went with a (grown-up) friend to Egypt and Africa in the fall. (Whew! He missed all the riots!) He has just come back from India. It was a trip to teach young girls in Jodpur how to make quilted bags to sell. We are looking forward to seeing photos!
We also have stuffies that stay in the classroom and join the class for shared reading times. (BlueBEARy, Little Bitty Betty, Mini Mike.) Buttons and Buttons Jr. have visited every student’s home! Right now we are sending Wilbur Wombat home with the students. Wilbur has been on a long visit from Australia. Haida Bear is on an exchange… this year’s class has never even seen Haida Bear!
Hope that answers some of your questions!
We’d like to know if you participate in “Pink Shirt Anti-bullying Day” or anything like that.
Mrs. Boekhout & Classroom 2
Hello Mr. Avery and students!
I am so impressed with your classroom blog – you guys are so talented! I teach university students in South Korea. I am very new to Edublogs and can use any website design advice you have. I like how organized your blog is and the background you created. Our class blog is for students learning English as a Foreign Language and it’s very helpful for my students to see correct examples of English. I noticed your Quad blogging project – great idea! If you and your students would like to talk with us, we’d love to set up a blog exchange.
Your new fan,
Melissa
Hi Melissa,
I love Edublogs. It’s such an amazing site. I usually just create my backgrounds in Photoshop. I love our newest one as I can switch out the pictures of the students all the time.
We’d definitely be interested in a blog exchange at some point. Feel free to use the contact page at the top to get in touch with me. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr. Avery,
I have visited your site a number or times and admire a lot of the work that you and your students do. I’m curious about how you built a network with other classes abroad. I had my students begin blogging last year. I would like for them to make more connections next year. I would appreciate any advice that you have.
Jim
Hi Mr. Hobley,
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you!
One of the best recommendations I can make is just to visit other blogs and leave comments for them with a link to your blog. You might not hear back from everyone but it’s a great way to get started. I have quite a few links to some other great blogs which would be a great place to get started.
Also, if you’re on Twitter, there’s an amazing network of educators on there. Every time your class writes a post, tweet about it with a link and the hashtag #comments4kids. You’ll definitely make some connections that way!
Any other questions, feel free to ask at any point!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Mr. Avery,
I love the videos that you and your students are creating. I’ve started shooting a weekly news program with my fifth graders and posting it to Vimeo. My finished product is not nearly as clear as yours. Would you mind telling me about the camera and software you are using and the type of Vimeo account that you have? Thank you!
Sandy W.
Hi Sandy,
For our math videos, we use software called Pinnacle Studio 15. It’s on the cheaper end of video editing software. For the longest time, we just used a Flip video camera. This year we were able to upgrade to a Sony Handycam HD video camera which has been nice but again, the flipped worked very well for a long time. I currently just have the regular version of Vimeo. We’ve been able to post all of our videos despite the weekly limit they put on a normal account. I hope this answers some of your questions! If you have any more, feel free to ask.
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Hi Mr. Avery!
We have one day left to garner votes for our Classroom Video… if you could help out… please vote for the NRG SuperKids!
http://energydiet.canadiangeographic.ca/home/video_gallery/170/mrs-boekhout#the_title
NRG SuperKids Mrs Boekhout Grade 2, Nestor Elementary, Coquitlam, BC
The News Report is in! Word has it that there are NRG SuperKids teaching “Old Folks” to save energy! Check out our News Reporter’s street interview! Watch an exclusive video of NRG SuperKids in action and on the job! Kids CAN make a difference!
Thx so much!
Nora Boekhout