Day: November 5, 2018

Hello Everyone!

Some of you are still working on finishing the math tasks, which is fine, but you may need to use more of your personal time now to catch up. Come show me your completed tasks as soon as you are done.

For those who are ready, please begin working on your own math game!

Learning Intention: Create a game for a specific audience that will teach or practice specific math skills.  

Requirements:

• Choose an audience for your game. It could be our class, intermediate students, or primary students, such as our buddy class.
• Choose a format for your game. It does not have to be something complicated. Think about all the games we experimented with during our unit. 
• Think about what will make a game appealing. When you compared games, what kinds of things did you notice will make an interesting game?
• Many of you said you enjoyed critical-thinking games that involve strategy. What strategy will you need to use to win your game?
• Think about a unique idea. Avoid playing another version of a pre-existing card or board game. You can use elements of games you have played, but we are not copying games.
• Determine what materials you will need. Either create or gather what you will need to play the game.
• Write a set of rules for the game on the computer in size 12 font. Rules need to have the game title, game objective, game materials, game strategy, the math you are practicing through the game, and the steps you will need to play the game.
• Have someone play your game. 
• Evaluate your own game for its success!

Last year, we made complicated board games for the human body unit. The purpose of those games was to practice specific knowledge from the unit. For this project, however, the intention is to use math actively, and to involve critical-thinking skills and strategy! So, the game can be more simple in its format, but you need to put some time into how the game is played.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Ms. D

Hello Everyone!

As we finish our unit on the concept of STRUCTURE, we are going to communicate our understandings using the tools of PowerPoint or Google Slides, our presentation voices, and the research we did during the unit on an animal’s structure.

Earlier in our unit, we discussed the human skeleton and how its form is related to its function. We then expanded our thinking to look at animal skeletons, observing how they are different from the human one, and thinking about the function of their skeletons based on habitat, adaptations, predators, etc. Each student chose an animal they were interested in and did research to answer these questions:

1. What is the form of the animal? (Skeleton, features, etc.)
2. What are the adaptations of the animal? (Adapted to environment/habitat and protecting itself from predators)
3. How does it get its food source? (what form/features does it have that help it get its food)
4. Any other interesting facts about your animal?

This was a great introduction to research we will do throughout the year during our inquiry projects. We talked about how to use a question to drive your research AND how to document findings through note taking in the journal.

NOW….we are going to make a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation to show how form is related to function.

If you are new to PowerPoint, here are the things we are learning how to do. (Know the basics, and then if there’s time, use other fancy features. The fancy features are not required.:

1. Create a PowerPoint by choosing a theme/design
2. Insert and add to text boxes
3. Creating titles
4. Using different fonts and changing size and colour — making fonts clear to read!
5. Adding images from the internet (and not using copyrighted images!)
6. Changing the colour of a background on a slide — but not using red or black!
7. Viewing the slide show
8. Changing order of slides
9. Limiting slides to title, image, 1-2 sentences or bullet points

Most students chose to do their animal for this PowerPoint, while a few decided to do a different object or animal, and that is fine. Just take into mind that this choice results in a bit more work to do the research part again! For those new to PowerPoint or in grade four, I highly recommend you do the animal we already researched to save time.

For the presentation, please include:

1. A title slide — title, name, date
2. A theme or design you use throughout the presentation
3. Talk about an animal or object, and how its form follows function.
4. Have 10 slides maximum.
5. Talk about:  What is the form? 
6. Talk about:  What is the function?
7. Talk about:  How are form and function of this animal or object connected?
8. No bibliography is required for this presentation.
9. Keep text to 1-2 sentences or bullet points per slide.
10. You will be presenting this out loud. If you want to add notes to slides to help, you can do this.
11. Remember, PowerPoint is a visual tool! We use it to illustrate the things we want to say! You can always SAY more than you WRITE when you present.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Ms. D