Hi blog readers! This week we have had a lot of fun and interesting learning opportunities. On Monday we had a field study to Telus Spark. First, our class split up into small groups to explore the area. They even had a new exhibit where you could lie on a bed of nails, see how much water is in you, and even drink out of a toilet! In the second half of the day, our class made shadow puppet shows including one about a knight, one about space, one about a baby polar bear and one about a cube. We have been exploring with light, shadows and mirrors to complete some challenges. We have discovered that light bounces off of mirrors and goes where you didn't think it could go. Shadows are interesting because they are the opposite of light. In our exploration, we tried to see if you can detach shadows from your body. Some of us think you can and some of us think you can't. Have you ever tried finding news online? How about news written at a level that can be changed to suit your reading ability? Well, we have just discovered a website that is called Newsela and it is a great resource to practice reading comprehension and learning about current events. There are topics like geography, government and economics and wildlife. In government and economics, there are articles about the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and other things related to that. We just finished making a "million cube". It is like a giant version of a one centimeter square cube and it represents one million of those "mini" cubes. We used our million cube to help picture the number 30 million. That is the number of bison that roamed the plains before the Europeans came. We used ribbon to show the edges of a rectangular prism that would be made if we had enough million cubes to represent 30 million. The prism would be one meter high, ten meters long and three meters wide. If each one centimeter cube represents a bison, we can imagine the difference between 30 million bison and the number left after the Europeans killed them - 1000. In less than 100 years, that is a BIG difference!
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Hello, blog readers! On Monday, we had our Fish Creek Park field study. Half the day we were inside studying the past and how people adapted to their environments. The rest of the day we were outside on a scavenger hunt for plants and cultural artifacts.
The Fish Creek Valley has been home to many different people with many different cultures. The first European to settle in Fish Creek Park was John Glenn, from Ireland. He was married to a woman named. Adelaide was Meti. John and Adelaide irrigated the land and built a cabin in the the Meti style. Before the Glenns settled there, the valley was home and bison hunting grounds for First Nations people for thousands of years. At Fish Creek Park, we learned a lot about bison. Did you know there are many uses for bison? For example, First Nations used bison bladders for water bottles and for saving food. The First Nations people used the natural shape of the land to hunt bison. They chased them down a steep hill into a pound. The First Nations used every part of the bison - they just took what they needed; but the Europeans killed bison wastefully and only used certain parts, leaving most of the animal to rot. Our class has been using Lego Mindstorm pieces to build catapults and wheel and axle systems, which are both simple machines. We are excited to find out more about pulleys and gear systems using Lego Mindstorms! We are excited that Ms. Raeewal, a student teacher from the University of Calgary, has become part of our learning community. She will be with us for the next five weeks.
As part of our ongoing study of shadows, we have been collecting data each month about the length and direction of shadows cast by a meter stick at different times of day. Through this work, we are observing that shadows are affected by the position of the sun relative to where we are. We are also learning about the meaning of cardinal direction (which is shown on a compass). We have had a number of really interesting conversations about important concepts such as compassion, diversity and rights. Through discussion, we have generated lists of things that make us diverse learners, including how we have different problem-solving strategies and different ways of seeing things. Answering the question, "What is compassion?", we created a list of things such as "It is to care about others and to really have feelings." Reflecting on rights in the learning community, we created a long and very thoughtful list that includes such things as "we have the right to have our voices heard and considered" and "we have the right to a safe learning environment." Many of the ideas brought up in these conversations were reflected in the poem we wrote and presented for the Remembrance Day assembly: "In order to have peace, we need to remember..." Reciting our poem as we lit tea lights felt quite meaningful to us. We also enjoyed the two songs we sang at the assembly: "Why do we have Remembrance Day?" and "I've got peace in my heart." There were two more student presentations this week. By the end of these two presentations, we realized there is much more we want to learn about the issues of woodland caribou habitat loss and the disappearance of songbirds. We hope to revisit these and other issues in the months ahead. Our mathematics learning has led us to some interesting discoveries about the relationships between adding and subtracting. Today, we played with numbers to see that, if a + b = c, then b + a = c and c - a = b and c - b = a. We tried different numbers for a and b and these equations always worked! We have been working on organizing our ideas into paragraphs and connecting ideas with phrases such as "In addition to...," and "In fact,...". We have all practiced using topic sentences and elaborating with examples to organize our writing about the wild rose plant. We have continued our exploration of the changing face of Alberta, including a look at what this place might have looked like during the last ice age. We have also continued our work creating plant and leaf collages. We look forward to our day at Fish Creek Park on Monday! Welcome to our first blog! We have been really busy lately!
We are working on giving speeches. Every Friday, there are two types of speeches: a prepared speech and a surprise speech. Our confidence giving speeches is growing as we practice. Remembrance Day is next week. We have written a poem about peace that we will be performing at our assembly. In math, we have been working on writing equations that match story problems. We need to decide what is "unknown" - the start, the change or the result. Then we write the equation with the "unknown" shown as a box or question mark. So far, all of our problem-to-equation work has involved either addition or subtraction. We are learning to make our writing more varied and interesting by using appositives. Here's an example of a sentence with an appositive: Ms. Blair is enjoying learning with her students, an intelligent and very enthusiastic group.of scientific thinkers. Do you know which part of this sentence is the appositive? In order to to better understand that Alberta has changed over time, we have been thinking about how Alberta might have looked through 250 million years of history. We have listened to some catchy songs about geologic time and created a series of "storyboards" that show vastly different pictures of Alberta through time. Each table group in our class has prepared a presentation and has been asked to lead a discussion on on an environmental issue. The first two groups led discussions on light pollution and plastics in the ocean. All members of the classroom audience showed great interest in both issues. Interest in other issues, such as the "disappearance of birds" and problems with groundwater pollution have arisen as the result of our recent visit to Bowness and Bowmont Parks. There, besides sparking our interest in groundwater and birds, students observed and reflected on the differences between vegetation in different areas, the springs that feed into the Bow River and the surprising and often artful arrangement of roots. |
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February 2018
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