Day: April 25, 2021

We will be reading the novel Skeleton Tree which is an exciting tale of adventure, survival, and interacting with nature!

As we read, we will be thinking of deeper questions that help us with greater reading comprehension. To do this, we will use QAR – Question Answer Response. There are four types of questions you can ask:

1.  Right There Questions: These are questions you can find right away in the text, such as, “What is the name of the main character?” These questions help us know the basics of what is going on in the story.
2.  Think and Search Questions: These are questions you need to look in two separate places in the text to answer, so they are more complicated to think about. For example, “Why did Johnny decide it was a good idea to ask for help from his neighbour?” In one part of the text, we may see the part where Johnny made the decision, but in another section, the author may explain why the neighbour would be able to help.
3.  Author and You Questions: These are questions that involve you thinking about previous knowledge and combining it with what the author says. For example, “Why would the main character want to have a dog come with her on the trail for safety?” The author may have said the character felt safer having a dog with her, and then you can add to it by saying dogs are protective animals that people often take with them on trails in case they encounter other animals or want to walk by themselves.
4. On My Own: You can answer these questions on your own without reading the text, but the question is related to your reading. It is just you won’t find the answer in the text. You have to use your previous knowledge and own critical-thinking skills. For example, “Do people need to be able to survive in the wilderness? Should wilderness survival skills be mandatory learning for everyone?”

As we read, you will keep a REMARK to mark your place in the book. We will make one quickly in class before we start reading. It is a bookmark with pages, so you can write down:

1.  QAR Questions and Answers
2.  New vocabulary and their meanings
3.  Random thoughts that occur to you while reading

When we are doing with our reading of this book, I will be asking you to do a mini book report in your e-portfolio, which will be due no later than June 11th. I will post criteria for it as we get closer to that point, so you know what to do and what to include.

We will talk more about this in class. I think you will enjoy the book!

Ms. D

 

 

Independent Project Update!

Your notes were due April 30th. If anyone wants to upgrade, they need to show me their notes during a silent reading period.

Many of you are still working on your primary research, which is due by Monday, May 31st. I have talked with each one of you about what kind of research you are doing.

If you are doing an interview, you need to provide me with a copy of the questions you are asking, even if it is an interview you are doing at home. This way, I can help you expand on the questions if need be. All questions need to be sent to me ASAP in email. Thank you to those of you who have already done this! Think about how you will use this interview in your presentation in a creative way. Document your interview and turn it in with your project.

If you are doing an experiment, you need to document your experiment with a lab report using the scientific method. Please take pictures of what you do, so you can include them in your presentation. We would like to see parts of your process, not just the final product!

If you are doing a model or creating something, you need to take pictures along the way. Document your process as well as the final product, so you can include it in the presentation.

If you are doing a survey, you need to send Ms. D a copy of your survey first, and then I will help you send out the survey to our community. Think about how you will report on these survey results in a graph or chart in your presentation.

If you are doing an observation or visit to a location,  you need to document it with notes and an explanation of what you chose to do. Please include pictures and any other information you found from the observation/visit.

Next, we will be talking about your presentation and bibliography. The Presentation and Bibliography are due Tuesday, June 15th.

We will do presentations for Cohort B in class on Wednesday, June 16th as a group.

Here is how it will work:

We can’t have the presentations to the greater community in person due to COVID, but we can present to our own cohort in our classroom.

1.  You are presenting to a group, and you need something engaging they can see or interact with. Each person will do this differently, so please don’t feel like you need to do exactly what everyone else is doing. You just need something engaging for your audience to look at while you talk. So, you can decide, do you want them to look at a poster, a trifold, your experiment, a series of photos, charts, graphs, a model, a handout of information, a cartoon, etc. Just looking at a computer screen isn’t enough. No one will have time to read all of your PowerPoint on presentation day, unfortunately.
2.  If you create something electronic, then that will allow you to share with the entire community who can’t be there on presentation day. For example, I can post links on the blog to any Book Creator books, PowerPoint slideshows, Microsoft Word documents with paragraphs of writing, or photos that you may have. While people won’t read all of your PowerPoint on the presentation day, PowerPoints can still provide a great slideshow for them to see, and then others can read your PowerPoint on the blog.
3.  During the presentation day, you can use: a computer, an iPad, one individual desk worth of space, chair, and wall space for putting up posters.
4.  You will want to think about the key points you want to share and have them ready. When someone comes up to you on presentation day, you want a short and sweet version of the key information you found out. I suggest writing it on an index card, which I can provide to you.
5.   Your bibliography can be in your PowerPoint, Book Creator book, or in an MS Word document. You don’t need a paper handout of the bibliography, but I will need to be able to see it in one of these formats.
6.   Somewhere in your multiple presentation pieces you need to answer these questions or have these parts:
   1.  What is your topic?
   2.  Why were you interested in this topic?
   3.  What were the questions you had when you started?
   4.  What are your key findings?
   5.  What kind of primary research did you do?
   6.   What new questions do you have?
   7.  Bibliography

We will go over all of this in class. We decided as a whole class group to not do ZOOM or another complicated presentation method, as we have 24 students who need to present, and more students were interested in doing a group share on the same day. Thank you to the students for helping with discussion and decision making about our projects.

We will have computers available daily, but some work will need to be done at home over the next month and a half, so please keep some time after school each day reserved for project work.

Ask questions if you need help along the way!

Ms. D

Hello Everyone,

As we continue our unit on the Nature Connection, here is a summary of what we are doing for Language Arts, which is intertwined into all of our activities:

• Latin Words: To better understand our discussions around taxonomy and the classification of animals in science, we are studying Latin prefixes and suffixes, which are often used in scientific terms. They are also useful for gleaning the meaning of words we don’t know, as Latin is the root of the English language. There are tasks in each student’s binder, and we will do these as we have time until the end of the year. Students also have a handout on Homographs that we will handle in the same way. These learning activities are ongoing until end very end of June, and I will do checks in class to see they are coming along.
• Descriptive and Figurative Language: As we go outside for our walks and discuss our connection to nature, we are working on being descriptive with our vocabulary. In class, we have done some exercises in our journal to begin this journey. We will practice giving active voice to the things around us in nature, even the things that are not alive, through the use of personification. We will discuss metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia, and other figurative language tools we can use to describe things more vividly for the reader.
• Poetry: Students will practice making haikus, cinquains, free verse, and other short forms of poetry, which also reading nature poetry available in a large selection of books in the classroom. We will be making a small journal of our favourites and presenting one to the class. Details to come in a later post.
• Skeleton Tree: We will be discussing how one can survive in nature, and the relationship between people and the land, through the novel Skeleton Tree. Students will use the Question, Answer, Response method as we read, which encourages them to think of deeper questions and to notice details while reading. We will do this together as a group, then students will produce a brief e-port book report.

More details to come about the specific assignment details and due dates. This is just a summary of what we are doing.

I encourage everyone to please keep journal entries neat for their poetry entries, which will make creating your journal easier, so you can find the poems you have made.

I also suggest keeping up with poetry assignments, as we may have one each day. If you need to take it home and finish, it can be homework to make sure your poem is complete, so that the next day we can move on to new work.

Thank you,

Ms. D