What a great week! Happy Friday January 27th
Hello Everyone!
CSI Forensics: This week, we had exciting labs about fingerprinting, fibre identification, and bone identification.
Thank you to Laura, our guest from the B.C. Coroner’s Office that services the province out of the SFU campus, for coming to the classroom and sharing details about her work and a recent case! We talked about DNA, how people are located, Missing Person’s reports, and more. Everyone asked great questions!
Also, we completed our fibre identification lab, which involved testing six different types of fabric (cotton, polyester, rayon, acrylic, spandex, and nylon) using flame, looking for smoke colour, burning behaviour, and smell. Each fabric has unique characteristics that allow forensic scientists to identify fibres found at a crime scene. It was great to see everyone learning scientific skills related to lab safety, careful observation, and the use of specific tools to handle items you are investigating (tongs, safety gloves, etc.)
Today, we used math to calculate whether or not a found set of bones belonged a specific male or female suspect! Next week, we will continue by dusting for fingerprints and looking at how tool impressions are used in the lab, as well. We will have a quiz on what we have learned from our labs during the week of February 6th. Students should have turned in and received back their labs so they can review them, unless they turned them in today. Please check your binders to ensure all labs have marks and have been submitted.
LA, Mysteries, Debate:
Next Friday, we will have a quiz on the editing work we have been doing around the book Phunny Enuf, looking at quotations, dialogue, verb tenses, and more. Students will receive an example for editing similar to the practice ones we do every day.
We have continued our discussion of ethics, and our most recent book to analyze was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. We had an interesting conversation about what the true meaning of love is and whether or not the main characters in the book truly care about one another.
Our next step is to do an ETHICAL DEBATE! We will talk about persuasive language and arguments to help us, and then we will debate in teams of 3 people. Our debates will be over three different fairy tales that have some big, essential questions to ponder. Use the following links to review the stories. First, we have Jack and the Beanstalk, which asks whether stealing is ever okay. Should Jack have stolen from the Giant? Was that right? Then, we have The Master Cat (Puss in Boots) in which the key question is, is trickery (lying) ever justified? Finally, we have a Tibetan story called From the Elephant Pit which asks whether or not compassion or caring for others is practical (a good idea.) Students have told me which story they prefer to debate, and I will give teams next week. Teams will need to research further to find evidence to support a particular position around those questions. These will be shorter debates, and then we can do more if the class would like to do other topics!
We have identified the parts of an engaging mystery and analyzed Scooby Doo for these mystery elements. Ms. D will be reading short mysteries to you, but I also encourage you to find any of your own to read as examples. We will start our writing process for these mysteries next week.
ART: We are working on a special 3D sculpture with the dual themes of nature and games (by class vote) over the next three weeks. Be aware we will be using paint in class when you are choosing what to wear every day!
MATH: Everyone should be done with Applied Math Packet 1. We have been delayed on some of our math due to FSA testing, but we should be done by Tuesday afternoon. In the meantime, keep working on independent math goals. Make sure to ask Ms. D if anything is not clear on independent math homework. Next week we will mark applied math and discuss.
SOCIALS: We have talked about discrimination, Japanese Internment, and some of the history of immigration into Canada. Our next step is to discuss words like Canada Mosaic, pluralism, and multiculturalism. We will also learn about the Komagata Maru Incident. If you are interested in the Short History of Immigration Video we watched, here is the link. If you continue from that video to the second link that says part 2, you will be able to view the whole video.
SIX WEEKS until break and end of term two. Time is truly flying! No homework this weekend at all. Have a great weekend and get outside to enjoy the milder weather!
Ms. D