Students have been developing new skills this week as we experienced canoeing at Deer Lake!  Out door education in our local environment proved to be lots of fun and challenge as they learned how to hold a paddle and do a number of different strokes to maneuver  their canoes around on the water.

Do you remember what the names of the parts of the canoe were?  Do you remember the names of the paddle strokes you learned? Write a note in the comment section here to let us know what was hard and what words you were thinking to overcome the challenges.  I also encourage you to write a reflection in your e-portfolio.  Next lesson is next Wednesday. 

We have been busy learning about bears and our cultural understanding of bears.  Today we watched a video call Bear Witness.  You can watch the video here.    It raised the topics of trophy hunting, and First Nations cultural beliefs about bears amongst many other things. Feel free to watch this again and see if you notice any other ideas of interest to you.  It was interesting to see this after our day at Grouse Mountain where we got to see and feel real bear fur, skulls and claws.  

As well, today we learned a little bit about Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. to start to develop an awareness of “Black History” and why Viola Desmond’s picture will be on our new ten dollar bill (replacing Sir John A. Macdonald). 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hey everyone, check out these contests you can enter.  We will look at them in class, but if you have a fantastic idea, just let me know and we can get you going! 

http://sd41blogs.ca/math/3-act-math-video-contest/

http://sd41blogs.ca/science/video-contest/

I bet that got your attention!  Well our class is investigating how our culture influences our beliefs, attitudes and practices.  Today we shared what we know and think about bears and our scribes Mindi and Ryan put all the words up on the board to create our class web diagram.  We had some amazing visual journal responses to the word BEARS which allowed individuals to highlight their ideas.  Our beliefs and knowledge about bears really impacted the visual journal entries.  Check out a few samples included below.    We had a good mix of fairy tale bears and real bears but interesting we also saw Buckingham Bears represented too! 

I hope you all enjoyed reading some good books and playing in the fresh snow. We had a wonderful holiday here with all my children home for the break.

My backyard

We have been enjoying “place based learning” with all this snow landing at our feet.  Our class seems to hold the record for bringing the most toboggans or other toys to make sliding down the hill more efficient.  Many students have been challenging themselves building ice sculptures.  What did you like most about snow at school? 

The “Hour of Code” also took place at Buckingham this week.  Our class helped the primary classes learn how to turn on laptops or ipads, and log in to the school internet (not always trivial), and then search for “Code.org” to get them started.  Check it out at  https://code.org/.  A highlight I noted was a grade 4 student teaching a teacher how to code using this website.  I know they both enjoyed the experience.  I think all the students enjoyed working with buddies.  What do you think make learning to code fun? 

As well the class started coding today. They had lots of fun. Please comment below about what you learned when coding.

Exciting learning happening in Div. 3.  Today our “complex machines” started taking shape.  Students have been working in groups to design and gathering recycled materials to create their vehicle or musical instrument. Soon we will have our “Toy Show”. The “company meetings” have given them an opportunity to  share ideas and solutions for design problems. Here are a couple of examples of what has been built so far.  Do you see any simple machines being used to do work here?

Hi  everyone! Sadly I’m at home with a miserable cold but my brain, while foggy and tired at times, won’t stop thinking about how to make our learning environment meaningful and fun. I sense that most students had fun designing and modifying their catapults. I heard lots of interesting conversations while you shared your ideas and then tested to see if they worked.  What is your definitions of it “working”?

QUESTION:     What did you learn that will help you next time? Did you learn how to manage your feelings when you get frustrated? Did you learn something about building a simple machine? Did you learn what words others used that made you want to keep trying or maybe quit? Please add a comment below to tell me about what you learned.

Patterns.  Thanks David, for figuring out how to show  this pattern with tiles .  I wonder how many of our visitors can figure out what the pattern is and what comes next.  If you can guess, let us know by posting your answer on the comments section. 

Today’s homework:  page 8 #2 and #3.

Today in science, we started to learn about simple machines. We watched a cute brain pop jr. video introducing this topic. You can watch  Intro to simple machines here to review the new vocabulary.