Focusing on the positive choices we can make for good health!

Hello Everyone!

Here is a quick update of what we have been doing in class. Hope you had a lovely weekend with the sunny, October weather (not today, though!)

Unit Studies:

Students have finished researching a disease of their choice, and they are now making a 10 slide Power Point to explain the disease. Ms. D spent some time on Friday teaching students who are new to Power Point how to use this tool. For many grade fours, this is a new presentation method. For grade fives who were with me last year, the focus this year is to make your slideshows more aesthetic and effective. We will focus on how to use fonts, colours, pictures, and organization to make them more effective! Here are the criteria for this assignment:

  • Please do 10 slides for your presentation.
  • One slide will be a title page with your name, title, date
  • Title the other slides using the questions from the notes page Ms. D gave to you
  • Spread out the information so you use up 10 slides. Don’t put too much text on any one slide.
  • Use bullets and shortened phrases to present information, not paragraphs.
  • Don’t have a last slide that says, “Bye!” or “Thank you for watching!”
  • Avoid using really bright colours such as red, yellow, or bright blue on top of black — it is very hard to read.
  • Avoid using red, orange, and yellow unless you really want to bring attention to your words.
  • Do use pictures, interesting fonts, etc. BUT please don’t use silly pictures. Pictures should help the presentation, not just be entertaining.
  • Make sure pictures don’t have copyright symbols like “Shutterstock” over them.
  • No bibliography is needed for this presentation.
  • Make a script for your PowerPoint. You can do this in the “notes” section on the PowerPoint itself, or write a separate script for yourself.

We have two more people who need to present their Human Body Corporation letters tomorrow, and then we will be moving on to our DISEASE GUESSING activity in groups, during which you will use some of the human body expertise you have gained.

On Friday, we began a formal lab on GERMS. Everyone dressed in safety glasses and had sanitized swabs to take samples of surfaces we think may have germs in the school. We brought the swabs back to the classroom and swiped them across agar plates (homemade ones). Tomorrow (Tuesday), we will look in on them to take our first data observation and see if anything is growing. The goal is to collect information and answer the questions: Where are there germs in the school? If you touch a specific spot in the school, what is your probability of getting a germ, out of all the places tested? We will be using science, close inquiry and observation skills, and math to analyze our results.

Next up? Looking at healthy choices! Today we talked about how stress and positive thinking can play a role in your health. We practiced mindfulness breathing that anyone can do if they find themselves in emotional situations, to calm the brain and begin to think rationally again. This week we will discuss diet, exercise, and other personal choices we make that help the body. Thank you to our Community Health Nurse Students from Douglas College who came in on Friday to talk with us about some of these personal choices and their impact on immunity!

Some Other Quick Things:

  • October 18/19 we will be doing the Caribou Math Test Competition. It is free for everyone on this first test of the year. You practice ahead of time by going to Caribou Tests online 
  • We are finishing an ART IDENTITY Project which requires everyone to find interesting words to describe themselves and then to present them in an artistic, colourful way. They are looking amazing! If you hadn’t finished the paper gluing portion, it was sent home today. We hope to have these done tomorrow.
  • In Math we did some more review of decimals, converting decimals into Mixed Numbers, and also practicing addition, subtraction, and multi-digit multiplication of decimal numbers. Most people finished the first page in class. Please try page 3 or 4 of that handout for 15 minutes tonight.
  • In Beginning French, students are working on French-Games.net on the vocabulary in the sections on Human Body, Food, and Number Words. Students must finish all the lessons in each section. For example, Human Body actually has three sections to it, and each one has four lessons. If you don’t have earbuds, please get some and have them for class, as listening and repeating the words is an important part of practicing. Once complete, you must take the quiz. Don’t take the quiz until you are ready. YOU MUST TAKE THE QUIZ in class for each section and show the completed screen and score to Ms. D; it can’t be done at home. This instruction was given in class during our last French lesson. If you did a quiz at home you will need to re-do it for class purposes.
  • French Immersion French students were given a booklet from the A la une series to take home for one night only. They are to read it and make a list of 20 new words for themselves in their journal. An alternative choice is to choose one article or story and write a quick French summary of what they read. After they complete some of these booklets, they are to work on French-Games.net using the Advanced settings, which will mean doing more reading and writing of French than our beginner level students.

Let’s have a great week! Remember, we are working on COMMUNICATION SKILLS as our area of the Core Competencies to unpack during this unit. Please continue to work on being active listeners and caring, thinking collaborators with one another.

Ms. D

Communication Skills!

Hello Everyone!

We had a good day today, researching our disease, going to music, playing some more Deal or No Deal to practice fractions and probability, and doing a cool experiment about “patient zero”! Did you find out who patient zero was? Tell me tomorrow if you figure it out! 

A key focus during this unit is COMMUNICATION. As part of the B.C. Curriculum students focus on three areas of lifelong skills called Core Competencies. You can read more information about them here. This year, we will be giving special focus to one-two areas during each of our large units. 

On the poster in our classroom, one of the words we focus on to be a lifelong, successful person and learner is COMMUNICATOR. We have brainstormed what this means, we talked about the “I CAN” statements today under Communication, and we discussed how this skill is used in MACC projects and other things we have done in the past, at school or at home.

Each morning, we have are having a special morning meeting (in addition to class meeting) to talk about core competencies and to get our day going! To practice COMMUNICATION, we did an activity from the book ZOOM, read the book I’m Bored, played the game TELEPHONE, and practiced how to have a conversation. In class, while listening to people read their Human Body Corporation letters, we have talked about active listening. What does active listening look like?

All of these things help us in our daily interactions with peers, adults, and our family. I encourage each of you to talk about COMMUNICATION at home. Do your parents have to be aware of communication skills in their work? How do effective communication skills provide you with new opportunities? How does communication help us get our needs met?

Ms. D

Diseases Project Research! Websites to help you, too!

Hello Everyone:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you to everyone who already presented their Human Body Corporation letters. They are very entertaining! 

We had a good time today playing Deal or No Deal to think about probability and chance, having a visit from the school counsellor who read us the great book Invisible Boy to talk about how to build a better community through inclusion of everyone, and working on a new unit task!

Everyone has now chosen a disease or illness they would like to know more about so we can make a quick PowerPoint and inform others! To practice note-taking, Ms. D handed out a list of questions and a piece of paper to keep track of your notes. We are working on understanding how the best research and note-taking begins with a question AND involves writing down the parts you read that help answer that question! So, keep some bulleted notes about what you find out!

Homework this weekend is to spend 15 minutes researching your disease and to check out last night’s blog entry with math websites to go through. Also, please look for a rock (due Oct. 16th) that is flat and round to use for art as I described in class.

Here are some websites to help you with your research. You will need to use four websites during this project. Keep checking back, as Ms. D may add more during the weekend now that I know what your diseases are! If you haven’t given me your disease, email me! Have a good weekend!

Kids Health Diseases and Conditions

Kids Health Parents Diseases and Conditions

Suncrest Elementary World Book Resources

Mayo Clinic Diseases and Conditions

World Health Organization Health Topics

Healthlink BC for General Health Information

BC Cancer Agency

CDC BC Centre for Disease Control

Diabetes.org for Diabetes 1

Hemophilia National Association

Web MD AIDS HIV

Canadian Lyme Disease Association

Canadian Cancer Society What is Lung Cancer?

American Thyroid Association: Hypothyroidism

CDC Ebola Virus Outbreaks

Canadian Cancer Society Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

World Health Organization Smallpox

CDC Influenza Flu Virus

Government of Canada Tuberculosis

Healthlink BC Mad Cow Disease

My Health Alberta Mad Cow Disease

NHS in the UK Rickets

Epilepsy Foundation What is Epilepsy?

CDC Anthrax

International FOP Association What is FOP?

Canadian Cancer Society What is pancreatic cancer?

Canadian Cancer Society What is colorectal cancer (colon cancer included)?

WHO Pneumonia Fact Sheet

Have a great weekend!

Ms. D

Happy Thanksgiving! Thursday, Oct. 4th Update

Hello Everyone!

Sorry for the delay in putting up a post, as it has been a crazy, exciting week full of learning and special visitors or events!

DEVELOPING OUR MEDICAL EXPERTISE, UNIT WORK:

Everyone is done with their letters to the Human Body Corporation, and it was a great opportunity to learn about:

  • Time-management skills and using class time appropriately
  • Using our laptops, Google Drive, and Microsoft Word to type
  • Specific information about an organ of the body and how it works with the other systems,
  • How to find information and take notes while using non-fiction books and internet sites,
  • How to write a business letter successfully, and
  • What makes an effective public speaker!

Ms. D enjoyed hearing the first of our letters today, and tomorrow we will continue hearing more from the various organs of the body who are complaining about the Human Body Corporation’s plans to lay off employees! 

***I noticed during this activity some students need to practice their typing. May I suggest everyone take the time to practice BBC Dance Mat Typing at home, doing all of the levels? Students need to learn to type with two hands. The “hunt and peck method” just takes too long, and this will help them speed up their work process in class.

***I also noticed some students get easily distracted by noise. You are welcome to bring noise-cancelling headphones or use the earbuds, which are important to have for class, to listen to music if that helps you focus.

Now, we are learning about microbes, pathogens, diseases, and the immune system, including what we can do to protect ourselves from getting sick! Yesterday, we played a fun game called “Catch the DZ” in class to see what it is like to be an epidemiologist trying to figure out why a particular population is contracting a disease. Students were asked to read two articles on immunity and pathogens before Friday as we continue to talk about this topic.

Last week, Patricia’s grandfather came in to speak with us about his work as a neurologist, and we learned some amazing facts about the anatomy of the brain! Thank you to Patricia and her family for helping us make that connection! After Thanksgiving, next Friday, we will have a group of Community Health nurses coming to make a presentation about their roles in helping educate others about how to stay healthy!

MATH:

Continuing our work on Crunching the Data, we worked on median, mode, mean, and range and talked about how these can help us find the data that is most “representative” of an answer to a question we could ask in a survey or data-gathering experiment!

Students are also learning about and can practice at home:

  • How to read decimals and place values appropriately (tenths, hundredths, thousandths),
  • How to add, subtract, and multiply decimals (and divide, for those who are ready), 
  • How to represent parts of whole using decimals, fractions, or percents, and
  • How to use fractions to represent the chance of something happening, or the probability.

Tonight students are working on some probability questions for 15 minutes only. Tomorrow, we are going to play a version of Deal or No Deal to practice our fractions and probability thinking. Here are some websites you can use to practice the things we are doing in class, only if you need it:

Your Median/Mode/Mean handout should have been finished by now. The Graphing Handout has been marked and turned in. Please check your red math folder. We are also keeping math notes as we go in our JOURNALS.

FRENCH!

Today, we started up our French program. We will be doing French typically twice a week for thirty minutes on Monday and Thursday, although sometimes more often. 

French Immersion Students are currently working in the book Eureka Le corps humain by Scholastic. It is all in French and the exercises, experiments, and questions are all in French. Students will be reading the text, responding to questions, and writing answers in French in their journals. During the year, Ms. D will be looking for texts to connect with our units and that are written, like this one, at the grade 4/5 French level. Lucky for us, the District Library has some French Immersion resources to use! Up next, some readers on a variety of cool science topics! Thank you to the French Immersion students for diving into this work today.

All other students will be working on Core French through three resources:

  • Web Resources: Students need to practice saying their French alphabet and be able to say it to me by the end of October with correct pronunciation. You can practice it here.   We will also be reviewing basic numbers in French, the body parts, and foods. To do this, we will be using French-Games.net which has minimal ads and does a good job of organizing lessons. Students may do more than the assigned sections if they wish. They will go through all parts of the lessons using earbuds in class. Then, they take the online quiz during class time and show it to me when done.
  • Book Resource, Activie 1 Bonne Collation, Bonne Nutrition: This book will provide us with basic French phrases and prompts around food and health related to our unit. Again, the idea is we will be quizzed on aspects of this by the end of October/early November.
  • Book Resource, Activie 1 Au Jeu: This book will provide some basic conversational French phrases for us to practice together in class.

Students will be taking notes in their journals about French and can study this at home.

FREE CHOICE FRIDAY:

If you would like to share a game with your peers, please bring a board game to school tomorrow. It will need to be a game with a shorter timeframe, not Monopoly or Settlers of Catan, as those games are much too long for our Free Choice time. The idea is to observe and to play some new games as inspiration for our end-of-unit game project coming up soon.

CARIBOU CONTEST:

The past two years, we have participated in the Math Contest called Caribou. The first competition is for free for all students, and it takes place at school (must be done from a school computer) on October 18th and 19th. After the first competition, students in grade four may continue for free; however, grade five and up pay a fee. We will all participate in the first competition, and you can go to the website to practice and learn about the competition details prior to the competition!

This competition is completely optional after the first one. We do not use the results or work on this competition in any way toward marks for students. We do this for fun only!

FSA:

We will begin the grade four only FSA process tomorrow. Should you want to practice, please do so here. You will need your PEN that I provided to you in class.

HAVE A GREAT THANKSGIVING WEEKEND!!!!!

Ms. D

 

Google Accounts and Responsible Technology Use

Dear Parents:

Thank you to Hong, Ashley, and Kathy who came with us to Science World! I look forward to the next trip together! Thank you also to Ms. Geddes and her class who came with us!

Each student has received school credentials to access a Burnaby School District Google Drive account. We will learn how to use this tool to produce and share work in our class. 

Please discuss these points about technology at home to help students use tools responsibly:

  • All technology activity for school is monitored and responsible use is important. Please remember you have signed a District Digital Media agreement detailing responsible use. 
  • All work for class is done on Burnaby Google accounts please, not personal Google accounts.
  • Technology is for school use, not personal use. Please stay focused on the task your teacher has given you and avoid using devices for other purposes. 
  • School Google accounts do not have chat or email. We do not use Google accounts for chatting back and forth, except when sharing a document and editing it together for class work.
  • Please use positive language and respect when communicating with technology.
  • Talk as a family about technology safety at home. I recommend having technology devices in open areas of the home where everyone can see what you are working on. 
  • If you have questions or concerns about what you are viewing online, stop and talk to an adult. Only use websites and tools you can understand and that are appropriate for you.
  • Monitor how long you are on a device and put it away at least a half hour before bed to avoid problems with sleep.
  • When using earbuds, please monitor volume. If you can’t hear people around you, or if we can hear what you are listening to, then the volume should be turned down.
  • Should you receive any inappropriate messages or have concerns about technology, please tell Ms. D immediately and she will help you.

Thank you in advance for discussing these things with your child. They will be talked about repeatedly during the year, and with reinforcement at home, Google Drive can be a positive way for us to share ideas and produce creative work together.

​Kindly,

Ms. D

Becoming Human Body Experts! September 26

Hello Everyone!

I hope you enjoyed your three-day weekend! TEDEdx in West Vancouver was amazing, and I spent Saturday hearing from interesting speakers around the theme “IMAGINE,” such as Dr. Santa Ono from UBC! Teachers need to keep learning, too!

Unit:

Students are working on becoming experts on one organ of the human body. Everyone has chosen a wide-range of body parts! Today we focused on finding our research in physical books, and Ms. D reviewed some skills related to non-fiction reading and researching, such as:

  • what kinds of things we would put down in our notes (key ideas, in our own words, interesting facts), 
  • how to cite our resources, looking for title, author, publisher, and copyright date,
  • how to use the table of contents and index to find information in the book, instead of reading the whole thing, and
  • how to look for headings, sub-headings, diagrams, the glossary, and other key words in bold that can help you find information.

We went over business letter format on the board on Friday, so you have a copy of a letter we did together in your journal. Everyone also received a handout explaining the Human Body Corporation project and showing the criteria to do well. Please keep this in your binder so you will have it to refer to and to evaluate yourself at the end! Letters will be due on Tuesday, Oct. 3rd.

We also did a BLOOD TYPES lab today, as we talked more specifically about what is in blood and what the main eight blood types look like. We discussed antigens, RH factor +/-, platelets, plasma, red blood cells, and white blood cells. During the lab, we used food colouring to simulate how blood types react to one another and to discuss how it is important to have the right type for a transfusion!

Please finish the blood type handout questions 1-4 from our lab if not done already. Then, play the Blood Typing game at home! (works best on a laptop/desktop, rather than mobile device.)

MATH:

Continuing our work on CRUNCHING THE DATA, we reviewed what we had learned so far and talked about how statistics may be used to find out information about a group of people so diseases can be best researched and treated. We defined four more words related to data: median, mode, mean, and range! Then we applied them during a fun activity of analyzing Smarties in boxes received by our classmates! If you didn’t finish the yellow handout for this, you can have a bit of time tomorrow. Remember, if you didn’t understand the percentages section, then please hang on and come back to it after we have talked more about percentages in class. If you know how to do it, though, go for it!

Ms. D has noticed we need to do some more talking about division and decimals. We will be covering this in class, but you are also welcome to practice some at home. I often use these websites if you want to take a look. TOTALLY OPTIONAL! If you are having trouble with division as we move on (division without a calculator) then do practice your multiplication tables to ensure you are able to quickly recall answers. This can help with division a lot!

Other NEWS:

  • LIBRARY TOMORROW: Our regular day for library will be Wednesday.
  • PE: Our regular days for PE will now be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings before recess.
  • Music: Music will always be on Tuesday and Thursday mornings
  • Field Trip!! Please be here at 8:50 AM on time to load onto the bus. We will return no later than 2:45 PM. Thank you to our volunteers who are helping! Students need to bring a water bottle, light jacket, bag lunch, and a snack. Please don’t bring valuables or money as we will not have time to get food at the cafe during our visit.
  • NOTICES: Please get in all of the notices for the school as soon as possible so they can be sent in to the office.
  • PAC MEETING: Please note the PAC Meeting for Sept. 27th has been cancelled and a new date will be posted soon on the PAC website
  • FSA TESTS: A notice will be going home for grade four students about the upcoming FSA, so please look for this tomorrow.
  • PEN PAL LETTERS: If you haven’t turned your second letter to your pen pal in to Ms. D, please do so tomorrow!

Have a great evening!

Ms. D

Becoming Medical Researchers! Sept. 22nd Update

Hello Everyone!

What a great week! It was nice to meet with everyone’s parents, and I hope you all have a great three-day weekend!

Ms. D is headed to an exciting conference on Saturday — TEDEdX West Vancouver! I hope to hear tons of awesome ideas about teaching and meet up with many exciting, innovative educators in the Lower Mainland!

Today, we each agreed to become medical specialists and do research on a particular organ. We must prove to the HUMAN BODY CORPORATION (as the company may be laying off employees soon) that we are indeed essential to the human body! Each of us will write a business letter to the Corporation explaining how our organ works with other members of its system, as well as the other body systems, and why it is important. We will have lots of time next week for research, but if anyone wants to get started now, you are welcome. It is not required. Please take notes as you go and cite where you find your information.

**If you have not yet finished the Body Systems Packet, there won’t be any more time in class, so please finish it for Tuesday. Most of you are done already!

We will need this specialized information on the body so we can diagnose some mystery diseases as a group in the future. I look forward to seeing the Human Body IMAX movie at Science World next week, which should provide everyone with great information about how the systems work together as a team. Field Trip on Thursday, September 28th! 

In Math today, we talked about why people need fractions, how fractions are used in probability, and what people would do to double recipes using fractions. We will keep practicing these things, so don’t worry if some of what we did was difficult. We are currently working on handouts to further our understanding of data management, reading graphs, making tallies, and organizing data. This will help us as we gather data about germs and bacteria in the school!

**Don’t forget to get your notices in! Here’s everything that should be returned:

  • Young Peoples’ Concerts Pink Form — due Sept. 29
  • Blue Mature Reads Form from Ms. Ho, our librarian at Suncrest – due Wed
  • Student Permission & Information Blue/Pink/Green/Yellow forms in a packet – due ASAP please so they don’t get lost

Thank you for your help with all the forms!

Have a great weekend!

Ms. D

Happy Wednesday, Parent Conferences, Human Body!

Hello Everyone!

Here is a brief update of what is going on in our class!

Parent Conferences:

Thank you to everyone who is coming to speak with me today! Our meeting will be short, but we will talk about student goals, math levels, and any information you would like to share with me. See you then!

Our Unit!:

Students have been working away learning about the different systems. Soon I will be asking them to specialize on a system so they can do some more in-depth research, so stay tuned! We had fun this week doing the lung capacity experiment using a milk jug, water, plastic tubing, and straws. Congrats to our top five lung capacity people — Vaughn, Dennis, Jim, Patricia, and Sherman! Did you know the general lung capacity for girls is 2,400 mL, and for boys it is 2,500 mL?

Students have been using Kids Health online, as it has a variety of kid-friendly articles and videos on a variety of health topics. There is also a section there for parents, so check it out! Thank you to everyone who brought in their ear buds or headphones so they can listen to videos without disturbing anyone. We will be using videos for information a lot this year, so if you don’t have ear buds, please look for some!

We hope to have a group of community health nurses and some doctors come to visit us in the near future. If you know of anyone who works in the health field who would like to speak with us, please let Ms. D know!

Library!

Our regular library time will be on Wednesday from 10:45-11:05. Please remember to mark calendars to bring back books on Wednesday mornings. All books have to be returned or renewed to be able to check out new books. Students are also receiving a notice about mature reads in the library. To receive permission to check out some books that are above the grade reading level, students need to have this form filled out and signed by their parents. Please look for the form coming home. Even if parents do not want their children reading higher level books with mature themes, the form still needs to be returned so Ms. Ho, our librarian, knows who can and cannot check out the books. Thank you!

Art!

We will be doing two things in art over the term — one is working with the elements and principles of art, and the second is trying art with new materials. We will also do art in connection with our unit related to mindfulness and stress reduction. Yesterday, we created a 12-square grid of art related to lines and multi-media! They are hanging in our classroom and looking beautiful! Pictures to come soon, and I will add them to this post.

Math:

As part of Crunching Data, we are working on understanding fractions, and we have done some probability work with fractions. Students are finishing their class data survey graphs, which are hanging in the classroom. Today we are playing the game of SKUNK to discuss probability. We will continue to do lessons and exercises related to expanding our knowledge of how to crunch, organize, and display our data!

LA:

Thank you everyone for finishing your letters to Cap Hill! They will be getting our letters soon, and we hope we will have time for a response before our field trip together on Sept. 28th.

Also, we will be continuing our work on Latin words, as we will be seeing a lot of health vocabulary with latin beginnings and endings! We started by looking at a giant list of Latin words and making up phobias according to Latin meanings, which was a lot of fun!

Notices:

Please return all notices ASAP. This includes the Field Trip form (now overdue), the yellow student verification form, the pink Young People’s Concert form, and the blue planner form. I know it is a lot, and thank you so much for your help in getting all of these things in as we organize our year.

Have a great evening!

Ms. D

Happy Friday September 15th!

Hello Everyone!

We have had a great week! People are starting to really get into their routines and we are starting to dive into our first unit.

Here are some quick reminders of dates and important notices going home:

  • ​Parent Meetings Sept. 20/21: Please return blue forms by Monday. 
  • Early Dismissal on September 20th, Wednesday 2:00 PM
  • Late Start on September 21st, Thursday, 9:55 AM: Mark calendar!
  • Field Trip Notice Sept. 28th Science World Trip: Due Sept. 20
  • Yellow Student Verification Forms:​ Check info, due Sept. 22nd
  • Professional Development Day / No School on September 25th, Monday
  • Work Not Finished: Math Fractions Pg 1, Letter for Cap Hill Student due Mon.
  • TERRY FOX: The Terry Fox run is coming up soon! Students will start collecting money for Terry on Monday.

MATH:

This week we have finished our math assessments, and Ms. D will communicate the results to parents next week. We began our unit Crunching the Data! Students worked with a partner to do a survey of their fellow classmates and then report the results in an interesting way on a visual graph. This was a great way for Ms. D to see: our data gathering abilities, our sense of how to organize data, our ability to work with a partner collaboratively, and our understanding of graphs and how they are presented.

We also talked about probability and played some games to get started. Today we continued with some “unfair” dice games and had to explain why they are not fair. Students often say that things are unfair, but this gave them a chance to explain why in words. We also began working on fractions, as we will be doing the conversions of fractions to decimals to percentages. The exercises presented are called “high ceiling / low floor” meaning some students will be working on beginning understandings of fractions, while others will stretch their understandings to percents, operations involving fractions, and other math for statistics.

UNIT:

Our unit focus statement is: Our personal choices play a role in the interconnected system of the human body. The key concepts we will discuss are SYSTEMS and CAUSE & EFFECT. Ms. D introduced the Universal Systems Model involving input, process, output, and feedback. We explored how the human body is a SYSTEM and then talked about how the universal systems model can apply to other things. What are the parts of the SPACE system? How is a GROCERY STORE a system? How is a ZOO a system? In partner groups, students made their own models in their journals of different systems.

We watched a video on nutrition and the digestive system, Ms. D talked about how she doesn’t have a gall bladder and explained what it does! Students did some creative pre-assessment drawings of human anatomy, and now we are using the posters, iPads, and book resources available in the classroom to figure out the parts we may have missed! Today Ms. D led everyone in the HOT AIR EXPERIMENT where students determined their lung capacity using a milk jug, plastic tubing, water, and a straw! You can do this at home and the instructions are in the unit packet. Also included are two optional activities.

CONGRATS BRIAN on trying out the egg experiment which explores how acids work in your stomach!

JOURNALS and DAILY WORK:

We each have a composition book, and it will be used this year for taking unit notes, writing down reflections on our work, sharing thoughts with Ms. D, and recording learning activities. Sometimes Ms. D will ask to see specific tasks and provide students with a check plus, check, or check minus to show if they are on track. Please try to keep up with daily work and complete journal tasks. If you receive a check or check plus and want an upgrade, just re-do it or add detail, then show it to Ms. D the next day. If you take the journal home, remember to return it to school. 

CONGRATS to SHERMAN today for receiving the first check plus plus for amazing thinking on universal systems!

PEN PALS AT CAP HILL!

Everyone has been assigned a pen pal from Ms. Geddes’ class at Capitol Hill — this is the other MACC 4/5 class in the District. Ms. D and Ms. G will be collaborating on several projects this year. We hope this is a great opportunity to meet a friend from across the District and to practice personal letter writing.

Letters and envelopes need to be finished on Monday.

PARTICIPATION RUBRIC:

In grade 4/5 we have letter marks given to us on the report card. Sometimes, these letter marks come from specific big projects and quizzes (usually at the end of units). There are a lot of activities in MACC, however, that don’t have a specific mark given to them. We are sometimes so busy learning, it is hard to give every activity a mark. So, we develop a participation rubric for MACC together. Today we discussed what the letter marks really mean in MACC and how you know if you are being the best participant in your learning.

Here is the Participation and Work Habits Rubric 2017, which you can discuss at home. Ms. D has put it in language teachers, parents, and students can understand, with input from the students. Each year, students seem to truly know what makes a successful student. We use this rubric to guide our daily interactions and learning.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND! See you next week!

Ms. D

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