Continuing the Unit on Creativity and Change – January 2024

Hello Everyone!

Before the break, we introduced our new unit and did quite a bit of work on the concept of creativity. Here’s what we discussed, for those who are catching up:

  • We did many alternative uses or creativity tests, to help us have discussions about the nature of creativity and how to cultivate creative-thinking skills.
  • We completed maker projects designed to exercise our creative-thinking, fine-arts and ADST skills, such as making mini snow globes, painting snow landscapes, designing mixed media snowflakes, and doing wool needle felting of winter objects.
  • We read articles from Time Magazine’s Special Issue on Creativity, discussing how creativity is best cultivated and debating whether or not creative thinking can be improved over time. Each of us read an article in detail to find out its key messages, so we could share this information with others.
  • We did activities with our buddy class to study creativity! We invited them to do our marble roller coaster ADST activity we completed earlier this year, and then we made observations about their building, as younger students, differed from our own. What difference does age make in creativity? What kinds of conversations happen when we are being creative?
  • We defined what technology is, talked briefly about whether its impact has been positive or negative on humanity and the world, and began discussing how humans have used scientific knowledge to create things they need or want to live. We will continue this conversation this week!
  • We looked at some old tools belong to Mr. L, Ms. D’s husband, who is a shop teacher. We had fun trying to figure out what they would be used for, as some of them were new things we hadn’t seen before!
  • We identified the basic simple machines and in our journals took notes on each type. This will be turned in to Ms. D. The research was done on books in the classroom provided by our school library and the District Learning Centre.
  • We watched Bill Nye’s Simple Machines along with several other videos. For those who were absent, here you go.
  • Discussion about simple machines definitely involves some math! Using the book You Do the Math Build a Skyscraper, we did math problems from grades 4-6, involving many areas of the curriculum — operations, graphing, coordinates, area, perimeter, word problems, measurement, and basic integers. All of the problems involve applied math. We are still finishing this, but should complete it in the next week. Students can only work on the Skyscraper Math at school, so those who were absent can do this during silent reading and free choice times.
  • After Skyscraper Math, we will be moving on to Multiplicative Thinking. More to come on this soon, but our emphasis will be better understanding multiplication, the math properties involved, area, and perimeter. All of this will lead to us building a fun model for ADST later this term.

Upcoming:

  • Field Trip to Reifel Bird Sanctuary on February 23rd. Notice to come next Monday, January 15th.
  • Catapult Building
  • Rube Goldberg Building
  • Timeline Project
  • Ted Talk
  • French Poster – Country Research
  • Machines PowerPoint Project
  • Tiny House Models
  • Migration / Exploration Unit before Spring Break
  • Deciding Independent Project Topics and Learning How to Ask Research Questions