What is the cycle of seeds?

What are the parts of a seed and how can we determine if a seed is a monocot or a dicot? We’ll give you a clue… it is in the leaves! Look closely when you next look at a leaf, what do you notice? On Monday, we had a chilly garden day! We are preparing our garden and considering how we will plan our planting in the spring! There is so much to be done in a garden, even in the winter months!

“Because being different means we have so much MORE to offer each other.” – Jelani Memory

Thank you for sharing in such beautiful, open, thoughtful conversations, on Black Shirt Day, and always. We explored the things we have to offer because we are different. Stay tuned for our finished collaborative bulletin board full of so many voices.

We are so thankful for the beautiful books that help us explore diversity, human rights, and individuality!

This week, we did a few experiments to explore our math & science inquiry about time. We brought home our maps and our shadow clocks (sundials) to explain these concepts to you!

Day, night, and Earth’s rotation

This week we learned that even though it looks like the Sun is moving across the sky every day, it is actually the Earth that is spinning (rotating) around its axis. In the activity, students became models of the Earth and spun around to understand how this movement is responsible for the Sun rising and setting every day. We also discussed how the speed of the Earth’s rotation affects the length of one full day.

You can support learning at home. The next time you’re traveling by car or bus, you can point out that it doesn’t feel like you’re moving at all – even if you’re traveling at really high speeds! This is the same reason that even though the Earth is spinning incredibly fast, it never feels like we’re moving. Because the Earth is always spinning at a constant speed, we never feel it moving!

Earth’s rotation and daily shadow patterns

Our second big question was ,“Who set the first clock?” We made shadow clocks (sundials), learned about telling time by the Sun, and found out how (and why) people first divided the day into hours.

When your child brings the sundial home, I suggest you help set it up in the sun with the north-pointing arrow pointing to north. When you and your child watch the shadow move over the course of the day, you might point out that the shadow moves clockwise around the dial.

Exploring Time Around the World

As we considered what time it was in different places around the world, we started to share stories about places that are important to us. Can you share some stories and place them on the map?

Literacy Week: Travel the World Together

Next week is literacy week! Our theme is “Travel the world together”. We will have an assembly on Monday and Friday, and have many stories and activities throughout! Wednesday is “Wear words” day. Your children will also be bringing home bingo boards which are due back on Thursday!

We have had windy weather lately and it has given us much to explore!

What do we notice on the forest floor? How are the trees in different forests affected by the wind? How does all of this inspire us to create shelters and cozy beds and furniture?

What do we notice about the trembling aspens after a windstorm? How can we explore their contour lines with a new material – charcoal?

This week, we have been had a focus on exploring human rights and taking action in our communities. Here are some of the beautiful books we have been reading.  We are excited to keep learning, reading, listening, and wondering! “It takes one step to start a journey…”

This Friday we are recognizing and participating in Black Shirt Day. How can we start conversations in our communities?

Wishing all our Div. 6 community a happy new year!

As we begin this new year, we are keeping “remember-lutions” – collecting memories of favourite moments, accomplishments, appreciations, and more, in our jar. At the end of each month, we will share out the beautiful moments with each other. We already have many to add! If you are learning at home, please feel welcome to send me yours and I will put them in the jar too!

This week, we have been playing math games and trying math games to strengthen and stretch our mathematical thinking! We are looking forward to delving into concepts of time next week. You can check out our “math” page on the blog to find out a little more about content and curricular competencies for time!

We have been practicing our strategy of visualization as we begin again on our wishtree adventure. By listening and drawing our visualizations, we are able to reflect in new ways. We also learned that the author of wishtree, Katherine Applegate, noticed and appreciated our wishtree on twitter over the break!

Through stories and outdoor explorations and games, we are wondering about the ways in which animals sense, respond, and adapt to their environment! What does the game “camouflage” help us notice about adaptations? How can “Oh deer” help us wonder about what animals need from their environment in order to survive?

What kinds of winter shelters might we find around us? Who lives in this nest? We were so surprised to learn about some amazing nest from all sorts of animals around the world! Friday afternoon, we weaved nests using many diverse materials.

We are looking forward to our learning this year!

Dear Div. 6 Families,

Wishing you all a restful, wonderful winter holiday. My heart is so full with the love, joy, and care in our classroom community. Many thanks for your kind words, and for sharing your family stories, photos, and traditions with us as we learn about and celebrate each other.

On our final Friday before winter break, we shared wishes on our wishtree! It was beautiful to see the wishes from all the classes in our pod tied to each branch. What do you wish for?

See you in a few lovely weeks,

Ms. Carley

P.S. During the break, see if you can give yourself the gift of reading. Please remember you have Epic and Razkids available if you’d like them (let me know if you need support accessing them). You might want to explore the question: Where can you find math this holiday season? In your baking, in your holiday shopping, on your walks? 🙂

We were thrilled to have Noel present his “E Adventure” videos on Friday! Noel presented his seven videos with the class and then shared a how-to tutorial with tips for making great story videos! We had so many questions about how he created them, what he used, how he made choices for the story and dialogue! Ms. Carley followed his instructions to start making one, and we think it might be fun to continue making one as a whole class next week! Noel, thank you for sharing your amazing creations and for teaching us how to make them!

Here is Noel’s script with instructions on how to make your own:

Here are some of the tips he gave Ms. Carley to make her story interesting:

• you might want to choose an image without a background for your character (or use photo shop)
• make sure the dialogue is clear, by using multiple frames
• change the sizes and positions of characters
• think about creating interesting dialogue that moves the plot forward
• not all scenes need dialogue! How else can you propel the story?

We will post some more specific directions next week. In the meantime, here is a link to getting free images: https://pixabay.com/. You can also find the link on our technology page!

Next week, Ms. Carley will introduce students to their school district Microsoft accounts, which includes access Powerpoint, if they want to start playing with this medium!

Dear Families,

This weekend, your children published some new blogfolio posts and brought their portfolios home to share with you! I hope you enjoy looking through them together and celebrating the growth and learning from our first term together.

Here are some tips for accessing your child’s blogfolio, created by the Burnaby Learning Technologies team. If your password is not working, try pressing the “lost my password” button to reset! Let me know if that doesn’t work!

Thank you for being such amazing partners in your children’s learning!

All the best,

Ms. Carley