Month: October 2015

Thank you to everyone for a great field trip on Friday! A special thank you to our parent volunteers, Emma’s mom, Amy’s dad and Naomi’s mom, too. We really appreciate your time. Students enjoyed the Body Works gallery that had some human organ specimens to look at, on loan from the UBC library. We enjoyed watching the 45 minute IMAX film Human Body which showed the complete workings of the human body, giving us all a very realistic glimpse of our insides. Everyone had an opportunity to enjoy all the other galleries, and I noted our group particularly enjoyed the Eureka Lab with the shooting water cannons and plastic ball mazes, as well as the KEVA block room where thousands of KEVA blocks were available for building complex structures. It was a beautiful day, with a gorgeous view of False Creek. Thank you for your support to allow the students to go.

Caribou Test results are available online. Congratulations to all who participated. The Caribou Cup is an ongoing competition through the year, such that scores, including time and points, are accumulated and ranked with all other students of the same age in the world. Grade 4 will continue to be free, but grade 5 has to pay for future competition dates. If your child is interested in continuing, we can make arrangements for this.

Have a great weekend!

REMINDER: Field Trip tomorrow. Please be on time to school, as we leave at 9:15 AM for the trip to Science World. Students should bring a disposable bag lunch and their jacket. Please do not send money with them, as they will not be able to go to the snack area or store at Science World. We will return to the school at 1:45 PM.

I have sent home parent conference notices with your assigned time for Oct. 21/22.

We have a Pumpkin Patch event on October 28, so see the yellow notice sent home.

Today we started by introducing the TUNING IN booklet I spoke about on parent night. We went over non-fiction features of articles that give us the information we need, what makes a good reflection, and explained the criteria for this language arts reading and writing activity. All of the articles are at reading levels appropriate to the group, and many come from kid science websites with vocabulary at the back of each article should it be needed. They can spread out the work on this booklet over time, and reflections for this round are due by October 30th. They have a letter in the booklet explaining the program. Please sign it so they can show it to me either tomorrow or Monday.

Then to continue our discussion about how personal choices impact the body systems, we read about food and diet choices and had a discussion about the types of sugars, GO/SLOW/WHOA, and food ingredients. I encourage all students to look more closely at the labels of their foods at home. Over the next three days they are to record what they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We had some great questions and discussion about strangely worded ingredients in the things we eat, such as cochineal extract, monosodium glutamate, sucralose, aspartame and more.

Students are finishing up their lab report on the bacteria, fungi and molds found at school sites. The last part of their lab is the write a conclusion with statements about what they think now that they have this data. We discussed how scientists have a responsibility to report on what they know. What will we do with this data? Who will we tell? What ACTION can we take on this learning? They are to record their ideas on the report and we will see which ones we may have time to do, as there was great interest in sharing their data.

The afternoon was music class, followed by an Earthquake Drill. Then we worked on an art project utilizing acrylic paint. We wouldn’t usually do art so much in one week, but there is a Burnaby City contest with entries due on October 20th for the grade four group, and this will give them an opportunity to participate. We will see what we have time for in terms of finishing projects, Math and discussing French tomorrow afternoon when we return. If not, back on track for Monday! Also, don’t forget that on Monday the Book Fair begins. There are posters up at the school with information, and we will get a preview as a class.

Thank you again for your support!

Today we had a full day of activity. First, we completed the Caribou Math Test. Some students had difficulty logging in due to receiving codes for the wrong grade level, but after solving our technical glitches, everyone was able to participate. If they use the code I provided today, they can log in tonight to see their scores.

Our second task was a class meeting dedicated to organizing details for our Halloween Party on October 30th, creating a Cards Club for free choice time and setting some parameters for participation, and discussing some concerns that have come up in class.

Afterwards we did a final check on our petri dishes and documented the results. Tomorrow we will discuss the results and see where the worst bacteria, mold and fungus could be found and what we will do with the data!

In preparation for an art project for the winter card competition in Burnaby, we went over the element of COLOUR and created a complex colour wheel with primary, secondary and tertiary colours. If anyone did not finish theirs today, it was homework. This will prepare us for working on a larger monochromatic painting of a winter scene using acrylics.

Finally, we had a session of PE in the Gym, with some fitness exercises and some volleyball time.

Tomorrow we will return back to our Math work begun on Tuesday, discuss what French learning will look like, talk about “Go, Slow and Whoa” as related to diet and its effect on our health, and finish the lab write up for our experiment with bacteria. The students will work together on diagnosing a disease in groups, as well.

A reminder to return any blue parent conference sheets, as I have already begun scheduling. If you still have the white blog permission slip, please get it in. The field trip is on Friday — please do not be late as we leave at 9:15 AM. We will not return until 1:45 PM. Be aware that students are not allowed to go and purchase lunch, snacks or souvenirs during our visit due to time and logistics. They should bring a bag lunch that can be easily disposed of after eating. Thank you for your help!

Just some reminders for this week!

First, remember that Ms. D is away tomorrow due to a school visitation.

Please still do turn in the blue parent conference forms passed out to you on Friday. The substitute teacher will collect them for me! Parent conferences will be on October 21 and 22.

Those of you who are still finishing your body systems project, it is due by end of day Tuesday. When you turn it in, please include your writing, your diagram, and the description of the project I gave you. On the rubric from that sheet, please take a highlighter and evaluate yourself in categories 1-3. Staple all of this together and place in my inbox.

If you are in the marble maze group, please know that I had to move your mazes to a larger white box, which is yours to organize them in, and is located on the shelf in the cloakroom. It will have to be kept there, as we have other items on the wall where they were before. A carpenter will likely be coming in sometime this week or next to also put new book shelves in, so we have to keep the area to the right of the notebooks clear, please. Also, please don’t take supplies without first discussing with Ms. D! If you talk about it with me, I will likely help you with supplies, but just have a conversation first. Thanks!

The Caribou math competition is on Wednesday, October 14th, when Ms. D gets back from her trip. I have the codes for everyone, and for the sake of getting everyone organized, I would like all of you to participate. You may use a piece of paper and a pencil, but no calculators. You will not need to log in until Wednesday morning when we go to the computer lab.

Also on Wednesday we will check our petri dishes to see how the bacteria, mold and fungi are growing. We will likely need to dispose of them after that day.

Our field trip to Science World is on Friday, October 16th. Please know for that day you will need appropriate jackets and a paper bag lunch that is easily disposable. We will be leaving promptly at 9:15 AM that morning so please do not be late for school that day.

Have a great day! Remember the substitute teacher is taking notes for me, so please welcome them and per our essential agreements do what is needed to help make it a good day for everyone. Thank you and see you soon!

Thank you to everyone who came to the parent night this evening. If you missed the presentation and need a copy of it, just have your child ask for one from me tomorrow.

Today we continued to work on the body systems project. This project is due on October 13th, Tuesday. If anyone has completed it tomorrow they can hand it in, but if they need more time, there will be some class time tomorrow and some on Tuesday. Just a reminder that students are to do the writing by themselves in class and not at home. The diagram can be done at home, though, to save on time.

We also continued our discussion about diseases. Students did a disease sorting activity, matching the name of a common disease with its symptoms. We created a T-chart on the board of SYMPTOM versus CONDITION/ILLNESS/DISEASE, to try and tell the difference between the terms. Students began to see that symptoms are the things a doctor or patient observes or feels, and they are the clues that lead to a diagnosis. The diagnosis leads to the doctor saying you have a particular condition or illness. We had some great discussion overall!

During math we continued working on problem solving related to median, mode, range and mean.

Ms. DeTerra handed back some work to students and we went over the check plus, check, and check minus marking system again. We also reviewed expectations in terms of communicating ideas well by finishing all questions assigned, providing enough detail to answer the questions, and being neat enough so all information can be read clearly. Students were able to say out loud themselves how this skill, of being a good communicator, can be important for the future (for example, scientists documenting their research.)

Finally, before we cleaned the classroom thoroughly in preparation for the presentation this evening, students checked their bacteria plates created last Monday. They documented what they could observe on Day 4 of the experiment by drawing pictures of the plate and writing details about what they saw (colour, shape, texture, etc.) We had some gross stuff growing in there already! Some had fuzzy white blobs (likely fungi), while others had some fuzzy green or black (molds). Some even had circular, flat white things beginning to grow, and these are likely bacteria. We will check them again on Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow we have some special visitors from the medical profession!

Have a great night!

Today, we began with some work time on our projects, quickly followed by a discussion about diseases. What diseases are genetic or out of our control, and which ones are impacted by our personal choices? We took a doctor quiz online to see if we could successfully diagnose some common conditions based on a set of symptoms. Students also shared some of the diseases they have been researching in connection with their expert body system project.

Ms. D shared a book (which we have four copies of in class) about 10 of the top most extraordinary diseases that generally do not have cures, which created a lot of great discussion.

During math, we continued looking at data analysis and wrote down a poem that will help us remember the definitions of median, mode, mean, and range. Please ask your child to share it with you. Students worked on some sample problems to ensure they understand these math terms, and if they didn’t finish the page, it was their homework for tonight. We also did some review of division involving decimals, as this is newer for some students. Work was done by hand; however, when finding the mean, at times calculators were used for higher number division.

In the afternoon, we continued our read aloud and then watched a video called Portion Distortion which was all about getting the right portions when we eat, as well as the stomach’s actual capacity inside for food. Afterwards we had a discussion around food portions as students reflected on what they eat at home and school. This will prepare us for next week’s discussions around personal choices involving food, sleep, and exercise.

Finally, we ended the day in the gym, getting great exercise through running and play. We played a relay game involving cards, and after playing we reflected on what parts of the game (with winning as our objective) we could control, such as running faster and strategizing, versus the things we couldn’t control, such as which cards we were going to pick up on each relay. Students discussed how this is related to real life, as well. We then played virus tag, which was great fun! Have your child explain the card relay game and tag to you. For next Wednesday, students have been asked to think of a relay game we could create that would involve both factors we can control and ones we cannot.

Thursday night is our parent night 6-7 PM in the portable. Hope to see you then!

This morning we had a class meeting where we talked about our upcoming Halloween Party, the Caribou Math Contest, and ideas for other field trips in the future. We decided that as part of our party decorations we will be doing Halloween Origami, and there is a committee of students in charge of finding origami examples and making samples the whole class can see. We will also do stain glass pumpkins later in the month, led by Ms. DeTerra. We also recognized Jay for winning an award recently for golf and celebrated Adrian providing us with the Caribou Math idea. Our next class meeting will be on Wednesday of next week.

Some time was given for working on the written part of our body systems project. Ms. D checked in with students to remind them to use the rubric and project outline to stay on track. We also talked about the writing process and how students were organizing their writing or doing rough and final copies. Afterwards, we watched several great videos on immunity and realized just how complicated the immune system is! We watched short videos from NOVA, GIZMODO, and Kids Health.

We have started a read aloud of the book End of Days by Eric Walters, which many seem to be enjoying. It involves the story of a gifted boy who works with a group of top mathematicians and scientists from all over the world to save the world from disaster!

The day ended with a new exploration of the art element of LINE, as well as SHAPE and FORM. We explored quilling, which is a scrolling, paper art. For information on quilling, you can see the pictures I showed in class at Dick Blick’s art lesson plan page.

Homework: Journal Entry needs to be finished on systems, bring field trip $ by Friday, work on diagram for project if needed, and reminder about Thursday parent night 6-7 PM in the portable.

Thank you and have a great night!

We started our Monday with an experiment all about germs! Students explored the question: What surfaces in the school, that we touch every day, would have the most bacteria and fungi? They each made a hypothesis about which four locations would have the most germs. Then, students visited those areas in the school, took samples of the surfaces using a wet Q-tip, and put the sample on homemade petri dishes Ms. DeTerra brought this morning. Each dish had food (a solid gel mixture of beef bouillon, gelatin, and sugar) to grow our germs into larger colonies, since at the microscopic level we have no idea if there are germs are not! Students took careful observations and wrote a detailed lab report. They also practiced lab safety by taking great care to wash their hands, not contaminate samples, label everything appropriately, and dispose of Q-tips afterwards with chemical to kill the germs. Now we wait! It may take the entire week to grow something visible, so we will need to take observations over time. By looking at shape and colour, we should be able to tell whether we have bacteria, mold or fungi.

After recess, we did some math designed to look at probability. Students created a 12×12 grid and played a game using two dice and playing chips. They looked at the strategy for winning the game and tried to determine the probability of getting particular results that lead toward winning. This was an introduction to talking about experimental and theoretical probability, which we will do more activities for tomorrow.

Ms. DeTerra began a read aloud of a new book called End of Days by Eric Walters, which the class enjoyed. She asked everyone to not go to the library and read this one, as that would mean less fun for them during read aloud; however, if anyone is interested in reading other Eric Walters books that are not the sequel, there are many options out there!

We then had physical education and started some fitness measurement through a kilometre club. Students ran 1.2 km outside, and we will chart their results over time. We also charted how many sit ups could be done in a minute. We can also use this data in connection with our main unit and math, looking at our results for the range, median, mode and mean.

The last part of the day was dedicated toward working on the body systems writing project, which is due on Friday.

Reminders:

• Science World Field Trip on October 16th, notice due Friday
• Blog/Social Media Consent Form was sent home today, due ASAP. This is so students can receive a user ID and password to work on this blog as well as other applications like google apps.
• Parent Night Thursday, October 8th, 6:00 – 7:00 PM in the portable. If you can’t make it, please let me know, and I can send you a photocopy of the presentation.

Have a great night!

We had another busy day of activity! Today, we began with some journal time, and students were asked to write about how their systems were interacting together as they were sitting and writing their journal entry. This gives us both writing practice and also allows me to see their thinking regarding systems.

Afterwards, we did some math! We started with a discussion about how to calculate the number of calories one burns in a day. They were given a sheet detailing the number of calories per pound used up for a long list of activities. To find the calories burned, they would multiply that number by their weight (in pounds), and multiply that by the amount of time they were doing the activity (expressed in hours). We discovered through this activity that many of the students did not know their weight, which made it difficult to make the calculations. So, as part of homework, students need to find out their current weight in pounds. They do not need to share this with anyone, as it is an individual activity of charting their calories. For those who do not have a scale at home, I recommended trying a friend’s house, a pharmacist such as London Drugs or Shoppers (they often have one if you ask at the desk), or a scale at home. I will also bring one on Monday if we have trouble finding one, so we can continue with this activity related to both math and our unit.

We then moved on to a math activity all about mean, median, mode and range. Students each received a small box of Smarties and had to do data analysis on their box and that of other students in the class. For those who needed an extension of the activity, I also asked for percentages and fractions related to our class’s data. Following the activity, we had a long conversation about how the class is made up of different levels of math strength, so we will be doing activities that allow as much as possible for everyone to feel challenged appropriately. Students also shared their ideas for activities the whole class could do related to data analysis and mean.

Our class is a very energetic and dynamic group of individuals, and we are learning how to work together as a classroom community. To this end, we did an activity related to the language we use to talk to ourselves and to one another, and we also discussed how creative ideas grow best within groups (versus getting shut down.) Students have a chart related to this activity, and we shared aloud our thoughts about the chart and ways we could communicate with one another. For homework I am asking them to go over this chart with you at home.

The latter part of the day was dedicated to music, read aloud (Ms. DeTerra bought some new books!), and our free-choice time on Fridays. Homework is to look at the chart with your parents, think about where we would find germs in the school for an experiment we are doing Monday, find out your weight so we can continue our math activity, and bring in a jar/YPC $ and Pizza $ for Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Reminder that we have our MACC Suncrest parent night on October 8th, Thursday, at 6:00 – 7:00 PM in our classroom space. It is a presentation designed for parents. Just to avoid confusion, this presentation is not for parents who are interested in the MACC program and would like to apply. That presentation is at Burnaby Central on October 8th at 7:00 PM.