Please sign up for Story Jumper. This is the program we will be using to illustrate our stories. Use the above code and password to join my class. Make sure you put your parents email address in, so you can be approved to work at home. Use your CBE login as a username. 3 Pompoms will be rewarded to each student who does this. We had another great and busy week. We spent a large majority of our time editing our Narrative Stories and working on our Peace Belt projects. Student-led conferences are coming on April 19th and 20th! April 19th 4-8 pm April 20th 8-11 am PAT's are fast approaching. I encourage families to put the following dates into their calendars to ensure their child is present at school on the following days: Thursday, May 10th- Writing Exam Thursday, June 14th- Science Exam (Multiple Choice) Friday, June 15th- Reading Exam (Multiple Choice) Monday, June 18th- Math Exam (Part 1: 15 Question Computation (Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction and Division with decimals), Part 2: Multiple Choice and Numerical Response) Tuesday, June 19th- Social Studies (Multiple Choice) This week we:
TWAS is changing! I am sorry class, you are sometimes my guinea pigs (#firstyearteacherproblems #studentoffirstyearteacherproblems <-- Ms Hart gave me that one) and I am always learning what works and what doesn't. As we come to the end of the year and transition to Grady 7, and with PATs approaching, I would like revamp TWAS and use it as a homework tool. Students will still write a quick journal entry on Fridays, but they will take it home on Monday with a few questions to complete throughout the week tailored to the previous weeks Check-In. I have given quite a bit of thought to how to alter the format to make it individualized to each student and make this activity more effective, so we will introduce the new TWAS at student-led conferences. First Draft of Narrative Stories Due Monday Reminders: Student-led conferences are coming on April 19th and 20th! The times have yet to be finalized, but initial times for our class are: April 19th 4-9 pm April 20th 8-11 am (I have a Professional Development opportunity on the Friday afternoon in the NW and will have to end early so I can travel to it) Time slots will be 30 mins, and up to 3 families will be circulating the room. The students will be showing off their narrative stories, colonization projects, and other work they have been working on. This week we:
We seem to jam a lot into these short weeks! I hope everyone has a good weekend! Enjoy the videos made by Mira below: Reminders: We are back to school on Tuesday, April 3rd!
Badminton Tryouts: Tuesday, April 3, 3:15-4:15 Grades 6 & 7 Thursday, April 5, 3:15-4:15 Grades 8 & 9 Track and Field Tryouts: Wednesday, April 4, 7:30-8:20 Grades 8 & 9 Friday, April 6, 12:15-1:15 Grades 6 & 7 Homework: Students are to work on their stories on Google Docs. They should aim to have their introduction complete, and good progress on their middle section. I will be editing the stories during the break using Google Docs to give feedback. I can see who has worked on their stories using the program, and can give new suggestions as the students update their stories. Here are some items to work on: - Applying peer-feedback - Editing dialogue to follow dialogue rules: 2 x 2 rule, starting a new line and indenting it each time someone speaks, putting punctuation in the quotations, capitalizing the first word that the person says - Making sure that all the steps of the Hero's Journey are included -Including heroic traits for your main character (brave, courageous, lucky, have mentors/help, conquer evil) - Checking for proper punctation and spelling - Organizing your writing into paragraphs - Using descriptive language and replacing common words with more precise words. This week we worked on our stories and gave each other feedback. We also worked on the elements of a story using the Story Switch game. We finished up some sky science topics and worked on reviewing fractions and tackling some more challenging problems. They cooked and made their own videos for PAL. Today we had a nice break and treat, and watched one of the most "scientifically inaccurate animated movies ever made". Using Ice Age Five we thought critically about some of the scenes and topics related to sky science, and had a great discussion afterwards! I am going to keep this short and sweet! I hope you all have a wonderful, restful and safe break! Be ready to get down to work when you come back. We will be switching gears and learning about the Iroquois Confederacy, Air and Flight, wrapping up our stories, and switching to newspaper article writing (FAKE NEWS!?). As one of the students put it in their TWAS, we had another stupendous week!
Reminder: Bring in your old or broken cell phones to support the Grade 4 Class. Gorilla habitat is being threatened by the mining of Coltan used in phones. They are collecting phones to be recycled, to reduce the amount of Coltan that is being mined. This week students:
Reminder: Colonization Presentations will start on Monday. Students are expected to be prepared to present.
Order forms for DGS swag went home today.
Students were tasked with some independent research over the weekend. While I don't often give homework, students will need to be prepared for potentially receiving more homework in Grade 7. We had another full week at school!
We were visited by MLA Rick Fraser, and learned about what an MLA does and the characteristics Mr. Fraser thought were important for a leader. We continued learning about Ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, and compared the gender roles in Ancient Athens to Modern Day Canada. Next week we will continue learning about how democratic decisions were made in Athens, and what they had instead of Parliament. Our morning routines have slighted changed. We are now alternating between vocabulary and multiplication/division games. Additionally, we will be looking at one PAT question everyday until June, as a launching point to review key concepts, practice different types of questions and make new connections to what we are currently learning. We continued with our colonization projects and started a lab mini-project to test different materials and their ability to block UV light. Planet presentations will be held on Friday. In Math we focused on some key fraction skills, as students worked through numerous problems to represent fractions numerically, visually and on number lines. We started analyzing the Iliad and the illustrations in a incredible adaptation by Gillian Cross. We are using this to talk both about narrative writing and also the culture and society of Ancient Athens. Students were tasked with some independent research over the weekend. While I don't often give homework, students will need to be prepared for potentially receiving more homework in Grade 7. Choose a Hero from ancient Greece from the list below to research in order to prepare for your upcoming children's book project. You will need to become an expert on your hero as this 'person' will be the basis for your main character in your book. Don't think of it as a direct re-telling, but more of an inspiration. What characteristics does this Hero have? What events have shaped their character? What connections do they have to 'the Gods' or some sort of magical wisdom? What journey or quest do they go on? What is the MORAL of the story? What conflict do they face? With nature? With a villain? Within? etc. How can you re-imagine these so that a child OR an adult could understand and enjoy? The story WILL NOT be set in ancient Greece. One of the main challenges of the assignment is to make the story more relatable to young children reading today. Choose a new setting, a new character format (an alien, an animal, a robot, a regular child... etc.) Choose figurative language that will be clear and accessible to your reader. Greek Heroes and Heroines Achilles The Amazons Atlanta Cassandra Cassiopeia Circe Cyrene Hercules Hector Hyppolyta Jason Odysseus Penthesilea Perseus Prometheus Aeneas Orpheus Theseus.......................To name but a few. Here are some links for many MANY more... Specifically female: https://www.paleothea.com/Humans.html The Amazon Women Gods and Goddesses https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/heroes/ I hope everyone has a good weekend! I had a great professional development session on Friday learning about designing the best possible learning opportunities, and got to brag about how wonderful my class is ;) Flag Day Updates: Great job everyone so far and thank you to everyone who could stay on Friday. The assembly is on Wednesday, February 14th at 1:30 pm. Parents are welcome to join us!
Reminders: Next practices are Monday and Tuesday from 3-4 pm. Please try to come! We are still looking for costume pieces. Members of Parliament, a suit jacket or dress shirt and tie is all you need. If you have glasses, hats etc, please bring them! Everyone: we will be taking an arial photo to make the Canadian Flag. Our class has been requested to wear a white t-shirt (on Wednesday). We can change out of our costumes if necessary. The team that has been assigned to us for the Olympics is South Korea! We already have one gold medal! Should be an exciting few weeks! The Flag Day assembly has been an awesome opportunity to experience the different aspects of theatre. We have narrators, stage crew working the lights, actors and actresses, prop assistants, coaches, and assistant directors. We have still managed to get quite a bit of academic content in this week in too!
In the upcoming weeks, students will be working on multiplication and division facts in the first half hour of the morning. We will be moving towards automaticity, rather than speed. I will be sharing a variety of games with the students, and posting them on my blog so the students can try them at home. These activities are beneficial for students that understand the concept of multiplication and division, but need some practice at recalling their basic facts.
Hope everyone had a good weekend! Reminder I won't be there tomorrow, so please be welcoming to our Guest Teacher! Sorry for the late post! My laptop died at home over the weekend, and I can't log on without the CBE network :(
Last week was another great week! We continued our focus on Model Parliament and experiencing democracy first hand. Students finished up the Second Reading of the Bill, demonstrating respect and decorum during the debates. They then prepared a next set of amendments for the Committee Meeting and Third Reading. We studied the solar system. We started the week off by building a scale model in the hall, that stretched right out the door. We continued our exploration by looking at some interesting facts about all 8 planets, determined the difference between a planet and a dwarf and came up with a ton of inquiry questions about our solar system. We started learning about fractions in a very hands on way. Students were offered both paper lines and pattern blocks to investigate and demonstrate basic fractions, which we will continue to build upon this week. During Story Writing 101 we focused on figurative language, ending the week investigating popular songs and determining the figurative language used in the lyrics. Students have been tasked with finding a song (with the help of their parents) that demonstrates figurative language, with the extra bonus of finding a song not from this decade. We will be playing the songs on Friday before dismissal, during our Model Parliament wrap up celebration. I hope everyone had a restful weekend! |