Month: April 2016

April 12th Update — World Resources & Budgeting Like Adults!

Very quick update for tonight!

Reminders:

  • Class Photo and Panorama Shot tomorrow — dress nicely
  • Bring a pink t-shirt or accessory for International Day of Pink tomorrow
  • Bring math model supplies for tomorrow in a bag with name
  • Finish resources reading if not done (most of you have finished)
  • Next Lit Circle meeting is on Thursday (time in class tomorrow to work)
  • Math Budget created on excel — did you send it via google drive to Ms. D?

Check out the LINKS on the previous post related to our great discussions today about economics, world trade, and more. Peter suggested two articles you might like to read related to our discussions, as well, so I added them to the links page.

Today we started making a resource map of the world, identifying country names, level of wealth, and top exports using web resources such as the District’s subscription to World Book Online.

As part of Math, today we continued our work on budgets. Everyone moved in with a friend into an apartment (we pretended we were 25 years old) and was given a salary. Using that salary, students had to make a monthly budget and document it on excel. First, we had to brainstorm all the costs associated with being an independent person such as rent, electricity, gas, food, transportation, entertainment, taxes, savings, etc. You may want to continue this discussion at home. How does your family make a budget? Do you have a document for your budget? How do you make decisions about how money will be spent? How much is put aside for savings?

Everyone had some great questions today such as what it is like to receive a salary, how do you determine taxes, how much does it cost to rent a place in Vancouver/Burnaby, and what would a monthly food budget be like? Some great thinking was being done and I had a hard time getting students to stop working on their budgets! Some students even did some research by looking up information from real estate websites, BC transit, BC Hydro, and more, which was extending the lesson beyond my expectations. Good job, everybody!

More tomorrow! Have a good night. Oh, and did you know there is a shortage of coloured pencils worldwide? If you don’t know why, as our students. Wow, everyone came up with some great ideas about why they thought there might be a shortage. Congrats to Michael who came up with the answer at the end. Do you know why? And how is this related to economics and systems?

Resources, Fishing Frenzy, and More! Monday Update April 11

Hello everyone!

Hopefully you had a great weekend and enjoyed the sun! Some key items from today:

  • Our next Lit Circle meeting is tomorrow
  • Please finish your resource reading for tomorrow
  • Supplies for your scale model should come in on Wednesday
  • Library tomorrow, so bring your books!
  • Class meeting today was about end of year activities, and we are looking at an electronics day, water park visit, and a water fight…..more discussion about these plans next week.
  • Abel Test practice in Ms Branco’s room and Gauss Test in Ms. Juma’s at 8:15 tomorrow. At this time, all students are signed up for the tests they will take on May 11 and there can’t be more changes due to ordering of books.

We continued our talk about needs and wants today by looking at psychology research done by Maslow, who developed a “hierarchy of needs.” Beyond our survival needs, the physiological needs, what else gives us the motivation to do things? What makes us light up inside? What makes us want to get up each day? Is it belonging? Is it power? Is it about self esteem and achievement? We had a discussion and reflected on our personal motivations. How do we get our needs met beyond the basic survival ones? Do we choose negative or positive ways to get these needs met? Please talk about this more at home.

Fishing Frenzy!! We played a group game designed to simulate the problems with over fishing as we seek food resources from the world’s oceans. Students were asked in class to reflect on the experience. Our fishing resource experts reported on the fishing methods currently used and the pros and cons of each.

Fair Resources: To represent how the world has inequity in its resources, we did another quick simulation to show, if the world were only 24 people, how many would be the wealthy, the middle class, the poor, and the poorest. Ms. D read some statistics for each group so we could understand the distribution of wealth and resources out there.

Art for the Musical! For art, we made large 3D flowers out of paper that will serve as part of the set for the school musical in May. We have a lot of flowers to make, so it will be one of our ongoing projects.

This week, more on world resources, systems of government, budgets and saving money, and an intro to rocks and minerals!

 

Cookie Mining! — Update April 7th

Hello Everyone,

Homework/Reminders:

  • MACC Letters and Field Trip Notices due April 11th
  • Finish doing your budget for the cookie mining activity, find out how much money you made (profit), and begin to answer questions on worksheet.
  • Prepare for Friday Lit Circle Meeting
  • Did you finish and turn in your water flow chart today? Did you finish your water usage chart assigned Tuesday?

The last two days, we have been talking about resources as we continue our conversation about how we obtain our needs and wants. Each student is reading a packet on one of three resource types to become a specialist on forestry, mining, or fishing. Students are also doing a water chart to record how much water they are using. Today, we had a great discussion about the water cycle and where water goes after you use it. Students were asked to complete a water flow chart to show the journey of water and turn it in to Ms. D. If you didn’t turn it in, then you need to finish by end of day tomorrow.

We also discussed MINING and the finding of mineral resources. What is needed to get the mineral resources we rely heavily upon for the making of products we enjoy? Students brainstormed all the parts of the system of mining, including excavation, surveying, processing, reclamation, and more. We then participated in a COOKIE MINING activity, in which each student was given a pretend $20 to start a mine and had to choose a type of land to purchase (type of cookie), tools (for a fee), and pay for labour, time, and reclamation for the land. The goal was to try and make as much profit as possible by mining and selling your chocolate chips. As a bonus, we ate our mines at the end. Chocolate chip cookies are always delicious. Homework is to finish the budget and begin to answer questions from the activity sheet.

Yesterday, Ms. Larsen, one of the District’s LGBTQ teachers and consultants, came to lead us in a conversation about diversity, gender, and discrimination. Thank you to everyone for participating in this deeper conversation about how the words we say matter and do affect people.

Thank you to Max’s Dad Mr. Lee who came in today to share with us some information about the company he works for, Honeywell, as well as the special voice-activated Lyric thermostat his company makes. He talked about how the production of a single product involves factories and suppliers from all over the world in the global market. Mr. Lee also explained the thinking and many steps that go into creating and selling a product. Everyone in class will be creating and selling their own product, too, so hopefully this conversation helped us to begin thinking about this!

Have a great night! Tomorrow, we will talk a little more about mining and global trade. We also have our next Lit Circle meeting, music, finishing our excel budgets, and free choice!

Where are the resources? — Update April 5th

Good evening!

Reminders:

  • Please bring back MACC Returning letters and Field Trip Notices no later than Friday, April 11th.
  • Track your water usage for 24 hours, either starting tonight or beginning tomorrow morning. Use the chart and key I provided today.
  • Prepare for Lit Circle Meeting tomorrow
  • Grade 4s: Give your FSA packets to parents
  • Caribou Test tomorrow after recess

Today we spent the morning working on our nature drawing art, inspired from the book 20 Ways to Draw a Tree, and students also had a chance to try the daily puzzle (word/number puzzles that I am putting up on the board in the mornings.) We had a class meeting run by Michael, during which we discussed end of year plans, a possible potluck lunch, an iMovie project about the MACC program, our Twitter account, and more.

After some time exchanging books at the library we had a class and small group discussion about the math needed to keep a proper budget and to make plans with money. Students were given a pretend $100 and a book list with prices, with the task of spending the money on books of their choice for the school library. There were two options for documenting their math, either making a budget on paper showing their decimal work, or using Excel skills to make a budget worksheet with proper formatting and simple formulas.

In the afternoon, we focused on resources in connection with our unit. How many resources are used to make the products in our homes? What kind of natural resource is used the most? Students met in small groups, were assigned a room, and then created a list of items while organizing them into three categories: very important, quite important, and not very important. Then, using a points system, we assigned a value to each of the resources used to make these products. This allowed us to see that of all the resources listed (trees, plants, animals/fish, oil, water, minerals), minerals were used the most, closely followed by oil. We made conclusions about this data including:

  • Mining is an important industry that must make a lot of money given how much it is used
  • Even though we reduce our use of fossil fuels through the use of transit, biking, or carpooling, we also use these fuels in the making of many plastics we use
  • Do people realize the impact of the many items they own in their houses?

Everyone has been given one of three articles to read on fishing, forestry, or mining. Rather than doing all three, students are choosing to become an expert in an area and then to share this expertise with all of us. We will continue reading tomorrow! Also, we talked about water as a resource, and everyone will be charting their water usage for 24 hours.

Have a great evening!

The system of ECONOMICS — Update April 4th

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for your patience with our blog! It is now running smoothly and has greater capacity thanks to a change of server. You shouldn’t have problems accessing it now.

Reminders: 

  • MACC Returning Student Notice: Please return the MACC notice and let us know if you are planning to continue with the program ASAP.
  • Field Trip: Please return the Field Trip notice for the Genetics Lab Visit ASAP.
  • Lit Circle: Next meeting on Wednesday, April 6th.
  • Library Books: Library Day tomorrow
  • Resources: Make sure the resources sheets from your house are done so we can do the group activity tomorrow
  • Social Studies.Com Economics Terms: Only if you have time, please do the vocabulary copied down from the board at the website I provided.

 

Last Friday, we played the “Game of Economics” as a whole class, which was adapted from a game I found on the Economics Network. We split into six, small groups representing six countries, and we chose one person to be the commodity trader (Brian), as well as another person to be the banker (Max.) I must say that Brian and Max did a great job representing the officials in our world market! Each country was given a set of supplies, and the goal was to produce paper shapes (triangles, circles, rectangles) to trade in for money with the commodity trader, and to make the most money overall. During the course of the game, prices offered for shapes changed according to supply and demand, and countries had to make deals in order to complete their shapes.

The six countries quickly realized they were not equal in terms of starting supplies, as the two first-world countries were given excellent technology of tracing shapes, rulers, pencils, and scissors, but only one piece of paper for making shapes; second world countries received rulers and pencils, 10 pieces of paper for plenty of raw materials, but they were not given scissors, and shapes had to be produced with straight edges; and third world countries were only given pencils and four pieces of paper. Each country also received a set amount of money to start. Each group quickly realized that in order to be successful, trades had to be made! For 45 minutes, countries bartered back and forth. It was an exciting game, and afterwards we debriefed how everything that happened represented something in the real world market.

What is the study of economics? Students brainstormed all the parts of economics they know thus far, and then they were asked to read articles on economics found on Social Studies.com and define terms such as stock market, inflation, interdependence, budgets, and more.

We will continue to look at other systems of getting our needs and wants met as the week goes on. Max’s Dad is coming on Thursday to talk to us about his business and how it works! Students were also told about our final project for this unit, which will be to create a product of their own, to market it, and then sell it in a MACC MARKET for tickets. They will need to follow the design process as well as a budget, which will be documented in an excel document.

Today we practiced excel lessons via tutorials on K5 Computer Lab. Students are encouraged to continue these video tutorials using excel at their leisure. They can also use Google Sheets on our Google Drive accounts, should they prefer that application. Either way, they need to know to keep a budget, format a worksheet, use formulas, and make charts. This is part of our math content, as working with money, budgeting, and using a variety of operations with decimals are part of both grade four and five math curriculum.

So much more is happening this week — musical rehearsals, track sign ups, and the Caribou math contest on April 6th, Wednesday. On Wednesday, we also have a member of the District’s LGBTQ consultants coming to talk with us about gender, which is a school-wide workshop being done in celebration of “International Day of Pink” worldwide.

This week we also have the Abel and Gauss Math Contest practices starting up. If you have signed up for these, please come to practices for Abel on Tuesday mornings at 8:15 AM in Ms. Branco’s room. If you have signed up for Gauss, then please go to Ms. Juma’s room at 8:15 AM. The test will be on May 11th, and the practices run the next three Tuesdays. If you are unable to make the practices, please do some of the old practice tests here.

Our student led conference night is April 28th. Please reserve some time from 4-7 PM, as I am currently planning an open house/student conference for all students to participate in any time from 4-7 PM. Stay tuned for more details.

Have a great night!

Ms. D

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