MS. DETERRA'S MAKER STUDIO

Hello Everyone,

Since we have a snow day, I thought it would be a good time to update everyone on what we are doing in class!

MEDIA LITERACY involves COMMUNICATION and CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS!

We have had great conversations about media literacy, including:

• What media literacy is and why it is important (Check out Crash Course’s video on Media Literacy if you missed it!)
• What kinds of media are out there, what are their features, and who are their audiences! (We looked at Vancouver Sun, The Province, The National, The Globe and Mail, magazines, etc. and identified their audience and reading level.)
• Tricks and gimmicks advertisers use to sell products in the store, as well as in online, radio, TV and print commercials and ads (Watch some ads that are okay for kids here.)
• How the media can manipulate graphs and numbers to tell their version of a story or to prove a point of view
• How to check for reliable websites and to do effective searches online
• The parts of a newspaper article/story (Check out Science News for Kids and Teaching Kids News for examples of news stories at our reading level.)
• How editors of papers or producers of shows look for exciting things to report so the news programs can make money on advertising
• How radio announcers deliver the news
• The parts of a news broadcast
• How to tell if something is plagiarism (Check out Byrne Creek Secondary’s Learning Commons Website as a follow up from our discussion in class.)
• How to gather information to write your own news story.

PARENTS: I have been using Media Literacy 101 online, and there is a parents section you may want to check out for tips about media and digital literacy for children. Click here!

We had an editorial meeting of our Division 5 News Team (to be renamed by the group), and the Chief Producer (AKA Ms. D) asked for the team to PITCH story ideas for our own broadcast we will create about Suncrest Elementary News. Almost everyone has a story idea to work with now, and we also have a few commercials to make.

Everyone will be asked to write a news story for production, which will mean gathering data and doing interviews. That is for our next conversation as we get started!

As brainstormed in class, we will also need a team of builders to make our news desk, some anchors to do transitions, a new logo and news title (please bring in your suggestions!), visuals in the background for different reports, the proper clothing to wear for this kind of presentation, videographers, and editors. Our goal is to have something for people to see on March 14th.

In the meantime, here are things you can be doing to prepare for our broadcast!

• Gather the who, what, why, when, where, and how details for your story as soon as you have been assigned an idea, which most of you have.
• Write up some interview questions for important people you may need to talk to and get the questions approved by Ms. D. You will also need a press pass from me in order to go and ask questions.
• Create a visual in the background for your story (simple pictures in a slideshow work)
• Watch news reports online or on TV for examples of what a broadcast looks like
• Listen to the radio, like News 1130 to hear how broadcasters and interviewers talk.
• Listen to podcasts online. These are radio news broadcasts with longer stories and can give you ideas of how to report. Here’s a list of the Best Podcasts for Kids from Common Sense Media (I highly recommend you check these out, even for future research or ideas for projects, as there are all sorts of fascinating stories you will enjoy. My favourites are Brain On and Tumble — scroll down the list for the science ones.) Another list is Best Podcasts for Middle Schoolers. Get some help at home on how to listen to these. Most just require a computer and some headphones.
• Pick out a nice outfit. Start looking at what news reporters wear. They don’t wear fleece hoodies or sweat pants. 🙂

MATH and SCIENCE:

We have finished up our Math Conjectures posters and slideshows. Ms. D is handing back feedback after reading all of your self-assessments. Some of you still need to hand in your notes and research by sharing it in Google. Thank you for getting those in so I can see all of your work!

In connection with our media unit, and as a follow up to mathematics work in our problem-solving unit from before, we have been working with our student teacher Ms. B on better understanding fractions, decimals, and percentages. On Twitter, Ms. D posted pictures of our Fractions War game, the concentration game, and the two clothesline activities we did, learning about equivalent fractions AND how to order fractions and decimals.

For science, we did a cool lab experiment on chemical reactions, so we could discuss the ways in which you can know a chemical reaction has occurred and also review the scientific method. Using this knowledge of how to communicate and document our science investigations, we created our own experiments on seed germination with Ms. B. Check out the pictures on Twitter and look at our windows, which are full of seeds waiting to sprout (or not!) We look forward to seeing the results!

COMMUNICATION is the key core competency area during this unit. How is math used to communicate ideas or to persuade others? What are statistics? What kind of graph or visual representation is best to present information? Here are some videos and websites on this topic:

• TEDEd  How to Spot a Misleading Graph
• TEDEd How Statistics Can Be Misleading
• TEDEd How to Visualize One Part Per Million
• Dolphins Worst Graphs of 2017
• Crash Course What Are Statistics?  more advanced!
• MooMooMath and Science Creating Science Graphs

FRENCH:

We continue our efforts to replace more of our basic conversation in English with French! We are finding it effective and fun to use French songs to do this. Please see the French posting, which will be updated with websites as we use them! Please practice the websites and phrases we have reviewed. On Friday, we partnered up to begin constructing dialogues. But that is just a practice. Ms. D will reveal the real French challenge soon, so keep practicing those phrases!

PE:

We have been working on endurance, improving our running times each opportunity we have in the gym! We are also mainly working on communicating ideas through movement, building communication skills for theatre and drama activities while also getting exercise. As our weather improves, I look forward to doing more of our gym outside, and we will be doing some walking after spring break!!

ART:

Students are finishing their masking tape sculptures, and we will be painting them soon!

More to come soon! Have a safe evening!

Ms. D

Hello Everyone,

Quick Update!

Math: We are working on finishing our mini posters or slideshows on a conjecture, pattern, or illusion from our investigations of math curiosities. You have had some time in class, and we will look to have them all done by Friday, February 8th.

Problem-Solving Projects: Everyone turned in their plans, which were reviewed by Ms. D. We had discussions about next steps, whether it was finishing models, posters, and educational items, or preparing to talk to Ms. Driussi about permission to proceed with solutions in a meeting next Tuesday. Everyone had to make an e-port entry on the solution they came up with for their problem.

Unit Review/Goals: Some of you have not published it, but everyone was asked to complete a unit review a while ago. Please check to make sure you published it on your e-port. We also took a look again at our term one report cards to review our goals for term two. Please finish your e-port entry on how you are addressing your goals by the end of next week. Great reflecting, everyone!

MEDIA! We have done a lot of great work this week talking about forms of media, how media affects us, and advertisements. This weekend you are asked to look at a paper advertisement of your choice and fill out the handout I gave you today. Please use the list of advertisement tricks I gave you as you analyze your ads. I look forward to our discussion on Monday. If you want to look at some kid-friendly TV ads to look at how gimmicks and other tricks are used to sell messages and products to you, here is a web link to find the commercials we were viewing in class.

Other updates on Twitter and in email.  Thank you and have a great weekend, especially for those of you joining in any Chinese New Year celebrations!

Kindly,

Ms. D

Hello Everyone!

In class today, we began the process of building our vocabulary together a small bit at a time to gather the tools we need to communicate in French in a basic conversation.

Each day, we will practice a few words and phrases together. We will decide as a class which 3 words or phrases we will add to our repertoire of words that we are actively using. In class we will actively use the words with one another, doing exercises to practice, but…..

The bigger challenge will be going the whole day using our new words (and all the previous ones, too), substituting Francais for Anglais slowly.

Here you will find our list of words as we continue to add to our challenge. You can watch any video of basic French greetings online to practice, and here is one we are using right now to learn the first phrases. Stay tuned as I gradually add to this list. My apologies for not using special French characters on some of the words, but we are copying them correctly in class.

Je — I  (the pronoun to refer to yourself)

merci — thank you

bonjour — hello

bienvenue — welcome

je m’appelle — my name is

je suis — I am 

Comment ca va? — How are you? 

oui — yes

ca va bien – I am good

ca va mal – I am bad

ca va pas mal — I am okay (meh)

ca va comme ci comme ca — I am a this and that / I am so so 

ca va! — I am okay

GREETINGS SONG  Comment ca va!

BEGINNING CONVERSATION SONG  Bonjour mes amis!

BONNE CHANCE!  (Good Luck!)

Hello Everyone!

Time for a new unit! Here’s what is going up on the UNIT board today!

Title:  Communication is the Key

Unit Focus Statement: Being an educated citizen requires reflection and critical thinking about how we communicate and receive information.

An Inquiry Into:

• Forms of media and how they work
• Fake news and social media safety
• Questioning and research skills
• Effective use of communication skills (presentations, writing, team sports, drama, visual arts)
• Science Labs and Communicating Results
• Communicating with others using French
• Numbers in the news
• The power of an “educated citizen”

CONCEPT FOCUS:  Power, Patterns, Relationships

CORE COMPETENCY FOCUS: Communication, Creative, and Critical-Thinking Skills

More to come on this as we begin to unpack our unit!! This unit will take us through Spring Break and the end of term two. For term three, we will be doing a unit all about interconnectedness with nature, another shorter unit on government and action, and our independent project.

Stay tuned!

Ms. D

Hello Everyone!

Time for an update on what we have been doing! We are finishing our unit on problem solving and moving on to something new! As we move forward, we will finish a few odds and ends to show our learning. 

Language Arts and Socials:

Students finished their mystery stories, showing excellent creativity and including all the important parts of a good mystery! Ms. D is going through them slowly and will be providing feedback. Students also had an opportunity to receive peer feedback.

We have been working to strengthen our writing skills through daily, fun practice of skills. For example, we are expanding our vocabulary and using creative writing techniques from the book Rip the Page, which provides fun ways to explore new words and expressive prose. We also have had fun doing Ian Byrdseed’s Grammar and Parts of Speech Party to practice things like conjugation of verbs, noun-verb agreement, and sentence construction.

For reading comprehension, and to connect with our recent unit, we read the book Seepeetza, and students appeared to enjoy reading the story aloud as a class. Everyone had their own copy of the book and we read along together, discussing new words and the history of residential schools as we went along. To show their understandings, students created venn diagrams comparing their life with Seepeetza’s, and they also answered questions about the novel on their e-portfolios.

To practice proper paragraphing and research skills, and to show knowledge about discrimination in Canada, each student wrote a paragraph on one example of discrimination in Canada. If anyone has not put this on their e-portfolio, please do so as soon as possible.

In December we enjoyed a great visit to the Museum of Vancouver to see “City Before the City”, an exhibit dedicated to exploring belongings, language, and the story of the Musqueam First Nation. We discussed the idea of reconciliation in connection with problem solving from our unit, and we had the opportunity to look at specific First Nations’ belongings, pretending to be museum curators organizing them according to categories of economy, community, and ceremony — three ideas that helped shape our discussion of what it was like in First Nations’ villages.

CSI Science!

We have conducted a variety of labs that provided opportunities for students to use science, critical-thinking, and observation skills to solve crimes, which was lots of fun! We learned how to document a crime scene and how to evaluate fingerprints, bullet hole cracks in windows, bones, dental impressions, and unknown substances to determine identities of suspects and victims. We did several labs that allowed us to discuss physical and chemical properties of substances, such as the Crummy Cake Caper, and we even used fire to determine the chemical composition of fibres from a crime scene! We also had a visit from the BC Coroner’s office, and three members of their team explained some real-life solved and unsolved missing persons cases. 

Math

We continued to work our way through Math Curiosities, trying out a variety of real-life math conjectures, as well as interesting patterns, math optical illusions, and more. Each student is now responsible for making a mini math poster, Google Doc, or Google Slides presentation to explain one conjecture or pattern they particularly enjoyed. They will do some research on the topic, explain the conjecture and how it works, see if they can find out how long people have been working on the conjecture, and then use visuals and numbers to present their knowledge.

We have also been doing problem solving using Singapore Math visual diagram strategies from the book Word Problems from Literature, which involves word problems from Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and other popular stories. We have also enjoyed doing word problems from The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math, which we solve collaboratively using a variety of math strategies. During all of this we have been discussing strategies for solving word problems: reading carefully, using visuals to represent information, documenting your thinking, being patient with yourself when you can’t get the answer right away, and slowing down your thought process to ensure you have considered all information.

Finally, we enjoyed doing problems from You Do the Math: Solve the Crime. Students worked collaboratively to solve problems, and then as a class, we went through the answers and did mini lessons as needed. These problems cover area, unknown quantities, coordinates, measurement, decimals, fractions, and more from the curricular content and competencies in math. 

Art:

Before break, we were maker crazy, creating many cool items to either hang on the tree or share with others. This included some colourful wool creations, as well! Upon our return, we worked on the ABCs of Life, which is an alphabet giving advice to everyone on how to be happy. It is based on a print Ms. DeTerra has in the classroom. We voted on the words we wanted to use for each letter, which was a thorough discussion! Then we each took responsibility for different letters. Look for this to be on display in the school hallways soon! Coming up next, we will continue our discussions about elements and principles of art, which we began before break, and I look forward to doing some collaborative art with everyone soon.

PE and Health, French, Music:

We are monitoring our fitness levels in PE, competing against ourselves! Each time we meet, students try to beat their own times for sprints! Also, we have begun working on a drama unit, focusing first on different types of movement you can use to create characters. Our theatre games and movement exercises are noisy and chaotic, so they are best done in the gym! Starting Tuesday, we will be focusing a bit more on French, with the goal of developing sounds and basic words to have a conversation with someone who already knows French in the school community. More to come on this later!

In Music, students will be working on the recorder soon. Please see the gold notice that was sent home to order a recorder if anyone doesn’t already have one to bring to school to use.

Other News:

Our new unit is on MEDIA — I will make a separate post with the details that I am putting up on the board today.

No School on Monday, Jan. 28th for Curriculum Pro-D Day.

We will be having a student teacher join us for the short SFU practicum, for three weeks from Feb. 4-22. I will send an email to all of you with details. I am still doing the main teaching, and the student teacher will have opportunities to work alongside me for three weeks and learn, and to teach some lessons along the way. Please welcome her on Feb. 4th!

Field Trip Notices are going home tomorrow for our trip to the UBC Biodiversity Museum and Earth Science Museum on April 23rd, and to the GVRD Watershed on May 8th. The notices are going out early and at the same time because we need to pay deposits for these activities early. Thank you for getting payments and forms in by January 31st.

Learning Conferences for Report Cards will be from Feb. 27-Mar. 5, and our Student Led Conferences Event will be on March 14th from 2:15 – 7:00 PM. There is an early dismissal at 2PM on both Thursday March 14th AND Friday March March 15th. A notice will be coming to you on February 1st with more information so you can sign up for your time to come.

Thank you to everyone for filling out the field trip survey. We are going ahead with 3 of the trips, which includes the GVRD Watershed, the UBC Biodiversity Museum, and Dragon Boating on three days in late May/Early June. But we may not do the Deep Cove Kayaking as we don’t have enough parent drivers based on your responses and the bus cost to Deep Cove, in addition to the kayaking cost, is prohibitively expensive. I will be looking for another end of year option for us. Stay tuned!

Coming in Late— As a reminder, the doors to the classroom open at 8:50 AM and school starts at 8:55 AM. We have had a number of lates (so many I have regular stacks of late slips), and I want to encourage everyone to do their best to arrive at 8:50, which allows students time to get settled, find their seat, put away their coat, and not walk in when everyone has already started work. Thank you as always for your support!

Okay, enough details for now. Stay tuned for more information as we start a new unit!

Hello Everyone!

We are in the process of finishing up our math games and slideshows on form and function, and next week we will begin presentations of what we have created! We will have opportunities to share learning with one another and to practice communication skills like public speaking.

This week, though, we have begun a new unit!

Title:  Solving the Conundrum

Key Concepts: Perspective, Problem-solving

Unit Focus Statement:

Problem solving involves careful observation, critical thinking, and consideration of multiple perspectives.

An Inquiry Into:

• Tools for problem solving (consensus building, “7 Norms of Collaboration”, the “Ladder of Inference)
• Math and Science used in forensics to solve crimes
• Problem solving in math
• Mystery Writing and Analogies
• Group art creation through sculpture
• Ethics
• Human rights (Personal, Children, Aboriginal, International)
• Past discrimination in Canada (Japanese Internment, Chinese Head Tax, Residential Schools, Komagata Maru)
• Reparation and Reconciliation

Upcoming Activities:

• Crime Scene Investigation
• Visit to the Museum of Vancouver on Dec. 5th to see the exhibit “City Before the City” about the Musqueam peoples
• Investigation of math conjectures and counterexamples
• Discussion of ethics through pictures books, followed by class debates around hard questions
• Discussion about culture, our own identities, and how those things colour our beliefs about the world, and our perspective
• Writing a mystery story!
• Hour of Code and Ozobots
• Looking at the UN Declaration of Human Rights and Convention on the Rights of a Child, and comparing it to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• and more!

More to come as we start to unpack the unit! Stay tuned on Twitter to see some of the things we are doing in class and talk at home about some of the hard questions we bring up during the unit.

Have a good week!

Ms. D