Yes, yes, another short week and you know what that means……another jam packed week. 
We fit into 4 days what we normally do in 5! As always, we are very proud of all your hard work and focus all week long. We are so impressed by all of you!
The week started off with a new experience for us first thing on Monday morning. We had a fun outing to Michael J. Fox Theatre at Burnaby South High School. We joined Seaforth school to watch a performance from Kutapira, an African drumming band. 
The band played us a mixture of percussion instruments that make up their unique sound, from the Zimbabwean marimba’s to the West African djembe to the Afro-cuban conga’s and timbales to the drum kit which provides a steady driving groove. 
We clapped along to the wonderful rhythms and you were a wonderful audience. For our first time in a theatre together, we were really impressed with how engaged you all were. Most interesting to us was that the group learned their instruments and music right here in Vancouver when they were just teenagers.
We have begun to wrap up our unit on life systems by creating a “Visual Conclusion”. Using what we know are important components of a summary, we are sharing what we learned in a more visual way. 
Our reading fluency is continuing to develop as we read new articles with new partners each time we meet. We always read for one minute and we always get two chances at the same passage. 
Many of you are working on similar goals. You want to read smoothly, at a good pace while paying attention to punctuation. There has definitely been some improvement and the feedback you are giving each other has been very helpful. Would you agree?
Tuesday morning was another new experience for us. We had an online workshop come to us via “ZOOM” from Science World. 
The workshop was all about Bacteria and Artificial Intelligence. It was a technology focused workshop that was able to mix together learning about bacteria with learning about “chat bots”.
I had never worked with a Chat Bot before, had you? You all seemed to enjoy being on your computers, answering surveys, and learning alongside each other in this new way.
This week you were introduced to a new project we will be starting next week with a focus on Literacy. You are each going to choose a Genre to research. You will have a lot of time to research your genre here at school and collect all your information. From there, you are going to create a poster and a 3-5 minute oral presentation to share your genre with the class. 
We are hoping this will be a way to expand your reading horizons. Many of you are stuck reading the same author or type of book. If we learn about other genres and authors that are out there, we may try out some new books in the future. Make sure you give some thought about what genre you want to research as we will be starting on Monday. Don’t forget, the goal is to learn about a genre you do not already read!
Our tour of international festivals and traditions continued this week with an introduction to Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. The plan had been to work in small groups to watch some videos and take notes as a group; however, our technology wasn’t cooperating and with the wifi lagging and LOOOONG log in times, our session was cut short and we didn’t get what we hoped to accomplish done in the way that was intended.
So, on to “Plan B”… which involved all of us watching the same two videos ( one about each festival) and we took some notes as a class. Your homework is to go over the text, highlight any other information you think is important, and finish the last two boxes of your recording sheet. The videos are available on TEAMS, so if you want to watch all of them, you are absolutely able to do that! There are some similarities between both of these festivals as well as several aspects that are unique to each. Can you think of any of those?
We spent Thursday afternoon continuing with our unique schools building. All of you are so engaged and have been busy cutting, gluing, painting, and creating using a variety of materials.
Your projects certainly are coming along, and more and more progress is evident after each session of building. Time is ticking away… with only THREE more sessions of building before we set up our gallery and share these with each other and maybe another class or two??
YOUR BLOG RESPONSE QUESTIONS FOR THIS WEEKEND ARE……
- TELL US WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF KUTAPIRA AND THEIR MUSIC.
- TELL US TWO OR MORE THINGS YOU LEARNED FROM THE SCIENCE WORLD WORKSHOP.
We hope you enjoy your long weekend everyone. Rest up, next week is a full one!!!!
Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Gil