Over the next month we are going to work on our story writing. So far we have looked at the below picture, and planned what our stories could be about. The story can't take place in Calgary, as there is no way that a whale could wind up on our shore. Students planned where their story would take place, and most have a problem along the lines of needed to help get the whale back in the water in time. We are going to work through the writing process one step at a time, in hopes of producing some wonderful stories!
To start our geometry unit we learned about translations, and how that is simply moving the shape left or right and up or down. This week we have started reflections, and how a shape can be mirrored over the line of reflection. Next week we will look at how to rotate a shape!
In science we have been learning about and building circuits, and exploring the movement of electrons. This week, students channeled that movement to create a magnet with just a nail, wire and a battery!
After finishing our book about Spiders in Language Arts and learning how to analyze what we are reading, we are now turning all the facts we learned into a little report. This is the first time students have written multiple paragraphs on a topic. While the example below only has an introduction and one paragraph, students will end up having an introduction, 5 body paragraphs (appearance, habitat, food, life cycle & interesting facts) and a conclusion to this piece of writing. It has been a learning experience to write a paragraph on facts so that we are simply not just listing them!
Our latest art project is combining a bit of math with art. We are working on 8-bit pixilated pictures to recreate images! The ones below are some of the samples that were shown to students. Theirs are not quite finished yet, as it is turning out to be a harder process than we thought!
In Language Arts we have moved on to a unit about Analyzing, and how we analyze what we read. To demonstrate these techniques, as a class we read a book about spiders. We were not all excited about the prospect of reading about spiders, but we realized that we are often afraid of things we don't know about. Our strategies about analyzing that we discussed are listed below!
We are starting to talk about the Famous 5 and the role they played in Canada's identity. Students don't know what the Famous 5 is yet, but they will very soon. Yesterday we did an activity to help them to start to think like the famous 5. I listed jobs on the board and gave them sticky notes and they had to pick the best person for the job. Most of our results were as expected, "male" jobs like firefighter and mechanic, had mostly boy names. "Female" jobs like secretary, and nurse, had mostly girl names. This started a great discussion about what things were like during the time of WW1 and how if you were a girl you were a seamstress, cook or maid, and if you were a boy you were a carpenter or a farmer. Many students expressed how if they were alive then, they would want to change it. :)
Our sugar crystals have grown a little bit bigger... probably about as big as they are going to get though. Instead of having a chemistry test, students are working on an experiment write up on google docs for our crystal experiment that includes all the elements of an experiment. It should look something like this.
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June 2016
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