Welcome Back from Spring Break!

Hello Everyone!

Welcome back! I hope you had a relaxing two weeks and did something fun during the break. I look forward to hearing about how you spent the time away.

I have made some updates to the website I hope you enjoy. On the Home Page, you will see a new slider of photos, and our Projects Page has new photos of our Burnaby Art Gallery work and the Reifel Bird Sanctuary trip. We have many more photos than what I was able to post, and I hope some students will help me make a cool slideshow or movie at the end of the year that we can share privately among the community (rather than publicly on a website.)

We will be jumping back into our Literature Circle, so don’t forget to bring your book with you tomorrow if you took it home over the break. We will also finish the final draft of our immigration narratives, so please bring any notes or drafts you have at home so you are ready to work.

As our scale model plans are done for our buildings, we will begin making a real model this week. For Wednesday, please look for any supplies at home you can use to build your model (thin cardboard, stick materials, cups, etc.). Don’t bring anything for Tuesday. We will talk about it tomorrow so you know what kinds of things to use.

We have library tomorrow, so please bring any library books you have read over the break so you can exchange them!

We will be starting our new unit tomorrow, too! If any of your parents have expertise in any of the following areas and would like to talk with us, I need to know asap:

  • Buying and selling products
  • Running/owning an independent business
  • Resources/Resource Management (mining, fishing, water, forestry)
  • Government (regulatory bodies, government-related jobs, etc.)

Also, if you haven’t noticed already, we have been fortunate to receive some new planters with soil at Suncrest, and our class will be in charge of three of the planters. It will be up to us to decide what we would like to do with these, and it is SPRING, so time to think about planting! Please bring any ideas you have. We will be having a class meeting tomorrow to get us started thinking about exciting projects this term.

We will be doing some computer work during this unit, during which it would be VERY HELPFUL for you to have your own headphones or earbuds. Please look at home for a pair, label them with some masking tape at school if you need to, and keep them in your backpack to use during the unit.

Have a great last day of break. See you soon!

Ms. D

Update:March 10,2016

Hi! This is Jonathan doing the blog!

Today, we did a lot of work in class. This is because of the upcoming spring break. Yay!

In the morning,we worked on our scale drawing or our Lit Circle assignment.After that, we had an inside recess because it rained really hard! A group of people played Settlers of Catan in a corner of the room.

After silent reading time, we used laptops work on our personal narrative. We did that from recess to lunch. After lunch we had music. When we returned to class, we watched a video that taught us the basics of football to help with Peter and Michael’s PE lesson from Wednesday, and a video suggested by Tove all about an efficient way to clean the plastics out of the ocean.

We ended the day by doing some reading about DNA and having a fun game of thumb ball as a group!

A reminder for homework: Do 15-30 minutes of drafting your personal narrative; Lit Circle meeting tomorrow (is your assignment ready?), and Read pg.25 of DNA packet if you did not already finish it.

Tomorrow we have free choice and treats! Please bring your treat for tomorrow so we can share during our Friday free choice.

Topic for End of Year project! Ms. D will have her list out and would like you to tell her your topic for the end of year project before we go to break.

Plastic Bags: Please bring a plastic bag if you need it to get all items out of the cloak closet area for the break time, so they can do a thorough cleaning of that area.

Have a great night!

Our Next Unit…. Look for articles… Do you have expertise???

Just to get us thinking for our time together after the break, here is our upcoming new unit. Parents, if you have expertise in, or know of people who we should talk to during our study of, this area, then please contact me!

The unit focus statement will be: Humans create a variety of systems and tools to get their needs and wants met.

We will inquire into:

–Government systems (aboriginal, local, provincial, federal, other countries, etc.)
–Natural resources as related to economy and trade
–Needs, wants, and systems we organize to get our needs and wants met
–How we use scientific information to get our needs and wants met (Rocks/Minerals/Geology)

During the next unit, TUNING IN will be a bit different….

While Ms. D will provide some articles around the unit, I am also asking students to help me find connections between our unit and current events. Each student should be looking for at least two articles (online, newspaper, magazine, etc.) that are connected to ANY of our inquiries into government, natural resources, needs, wants, geology, rocks and minerals, etc. They should start bringing these in when we return from the break. We will post as many as we can under our Articles of Interest Page, and then when Tuning In is done, students will choose from those articles.

Also: If anyone has a Settlers of Catan game at home they would be willing to let us borrow, please let Ms. D know asap. Thank you!

Looking forward to the new unit!

Just for Fun post-Peter

Hi everyone, Peter here. Here is a post on a 5 day challenge by Google against the world champion in a game called Go. Here’s a website on How to play go. The world champion’s name is Lee Sedol, and the name of the robot by Google is called Google Deepmind. Here’s the article, Google Deepmind vs Lee Sedol.

 

Just recently, Google Deepmind won the first match. Lee made a prediction that he will win 5-0( kind of a bad guess).

March 9th Update!

Hello Everyone,

Today, we looked to finish our math scale models, had our next Literature Circle meeting, worked on narrative stories, continued creating our ZINES, and had a great PE lesson from Michael and Peter on football!

Report cards were distributed today, and please get your parents to sign the envelope and return it to class by Friday,  March 11th.

Tonight, choose whether you would like to work on developing the draft of your narrative for 15-30 minutes OR work on your math scale drawing. By Friday end of day, we would like to have drawings done and a rough, rough draft of our narrative done. We will continue working on making a final draft when we return from Spring Break.

On Friday, we will have our next Literature Circle meeting, and I will give you time in class tomorrow to do the assignment. It is a good idea to do your reading for the next meeting tonight.

On Friday, we will have free choice PLUS SNACKS! Each person in the class is committing to bring something so we can enjoy it during free choice and celebrate us going to Spring Break! Please let Ms. D know what you are bringing before end of day Thursday. Only bring a small amount! Last time we had too much. No pop/soda allowed.

Thank you and have a great night! I will be posting about an event at KidsBooks later about our Lemoncello book we read, because you can meet Chris Grabenstein who is coming for an author visit at the store on Broadway!

Tuesday March 8th Update

Hello everyone, my name is Jay and I will be writing the blog post today.

Math: In the morning we worked on our scale drawings. It is expected for you to have straight lines, proper 90 degree angles, and a key that shows your scale factor on the drawing. It is a good idea to circle or put a square around your key so Ms. D can find it when you turn it in. Use fine liner to go over pencil lines. If you think you are way behind then homework is to work on it.

Library: Today we returned our library books and checked out new ones. There were 6 overdue slips handed out so we should work on returning our books back every week. The next book exchange is three weeks later on Tuesday March 29th. If you forgot your books you could go to the library at lunch tomorrow and on Thursday. PLEASE do not forget your library books when we come back.

Literature circle: Today Ms. D gave us time to work on lit circle. Make sure you are putting enough detail into your answers for lit circle, as Ms. D had to hand back a number of papers today for re-dos. If you have the question role for the next meeting, you will lead the conversation with questions. The next lit circle meeting is tomorrow.

Art: In the first part of art Ms. D taught us how to draw 3-D shapes. (like cubes, cylinders, etc.)  Then we made ZINES! We used this website to see how zines were made. Zines are miny magazines (aka fanzines) which you give out to people and use them as trading cards. Many zines also communicate a theme, message, and/or belief that you want to share with others. We will make one copy and then Ms. D will help us photocopy them so they can be shared.

Genetics: We will be going to the genetics lab of the BC Cancer Agency on April 22nd. Notice will be distributed March 29th after break. Today in Science/Genetics we had a sheet of paper which had the genetic traits of a dog. We talked about how DNA is made up of chromosomes, which have many genes on them in a certain order. These genes and their order give us our traits (hair colour, left handedness, etc.) Then we were given a envelope where you were supposed to choose a chromosome strip (which were symbols in different orders) and match that them with series of genes for each dog trait (body shape, hair colour, legs, etc.). We are going to see how many different kinds of dogs we can breed. Homework is to draw the dog on a full page (on the back of the handout.)

Extra notes:

  • Pizza Day is tomorrow.
  • Do two paragraphs on your Narrative.

Have a great evening!!

March 7 update, start of week!

Hi everyone, I’m Peter and I am doing the blog entry today. Ms. DeTerra was not here today because she was sick. Thanks to Mr. Lucarello for subbing in for her.

Here’s our day:

We started of our day by reading until the music from the speaker was over, remember, when you come in everyday, read the instructions on the board and take out a book to read.

Then we did MATH, which is our scale drawings. NOTE: Scale drawings are due on Wednesday. We worked on them until recess, if you need help doing them, check here, and go to the math section of our Articles of Interest.

It was inside recess because of rain. After that we had SILENT reading.

Later, we had our Lit Circle Meeting. When meeting, make sure everyone is participating and doing the right role. Make sure everyone contributes something to the discussion that shows they have read the book, and try to ask one another deeper questions that keep the conversation going. When we finished we started working on our activity for our next meeting, which is on Wednesday.

After that we had lunch, this time it was outside. After lunch, we had buddies, when we did math flashcards to help them with basic math facts. Our buddies were at Primary Days of Music until lunch.

Right after that we had P.E. where Vlad and Daniel did a lesson for the class on soccer. Thanks a lot for that fun lesson! Next lesson on Wednesday will be presented by Me(Peter) and Michael. What are we doing? Well, that’s a mystery.

At the end of the day we worked on drafting our narratives on an immigrant or explorer experience. They should be finished by the end of this week.

Try to answer these questions! If you can try do it for the whole week on the blog (responding to each update blog entry) that would be good:

  • Write your favorite part of the class
  • Write something you learned in the class
  • (optional) Share an article you saw that you liked
  • When will you do your P.E. lesson (Mondays and Wednesdays)? Pick a next date that has not been taken yet!

Have a good day, but bad news, it will probably rain tomorrow:(.

 

1 … 55 56 57 58 59 … 71