Congratulations to Science Games Participants

Congratulations to all of the Science Games participants who went to Science World today to compete! And thank you to all the parents who stayed as spectators, and a BIG THANK YOU to Naomi’s mom Sandy, who served as a team leader along with Ms. D and accompanied a team around to their events.

Ice Quakers (Michael, Vlad, Emma, David, Henry) created a vibrating diorama of an earthquake disaster, while Lava Power (Brian, Ella, Naomi, Kane, Ryan) constructed a working volcano. Both teams did a great job answering judges’ questions, made creative rockets for the paper rocket challenge, and used their thinking skills to break the code during the color coding (patterns/computer coding-related) competition.

Congratulations for all of your hard work! Everyone received a certificate of participation and some cool gifts from the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists (APEG) who run this event every year.

Special Congrats to Ice Quakers for winning the overall Gold Medal, placing 1st out of 16 teams competing this year from around the Lower Mainland in grades 4-7. They also won the Creativity Award Ribbon for their work during the games.

Pictures to come soon! I look forward to taking some more teams next year!

Have a good weekend,

Ms. D

Happy Friday, March 4th!

Hello Everyone,

Today we had some open work time for our scale model plans, math work on scale factor, immigration narrative, and lit circle work. We also had an hour of music, some great discussion about our end of year project, and free choice time sharing games and activities with friends.

Homework:

  • Next Lit Circle Meeting is on Monday, March 7th. Be ready with your pages read and your next assignment to discuss and turn in to Ms. D.
  • Narrative: Think about your story and if you haven’t answered the questions from the last week, just take some time to catch up, as those should be done now. Next week we are drafting stories on the computer.
  • End of Year Project Idea — Please give me these ideas before Spring Break

Science Games Teams:

  • Please show up at Science World at 11:45 AM
  • Please wear jacket and clothing for weather as we will be outside for part of the competition
  • Bring your diorama in a plastic bag if possible and/or protect it from the elements with an umbrella.
  • Bring your paper with bibliography
  • Bring a snack/lunch that can be easily eaten
  • Study the topics given to you for the competition
  • Parents may stay if they like, but space is limited, may be crowded
  • Parents need to come in with their child when they are dropping them off AND come in to pick up, too.
  • Please come at 4:15 PM for pick up to get parking, and then pick up by 4:30 PM.
  • GOOD LUCK!

Have a great weekend!  🙂

March 3rd Update

Hi Everyone! Ella here.

Today we did our skyscraper drawing, met with our Lit. Circle group, and worked on our Narrative story.

Math –  this morning, everyone got a chance to work on our skyscraper drawings, as well as some practice on scale factor problem solving sets.

Literature circle – After recess, we met for Literature circle. We discussed what we did for the last 2 days for our roles, the person with the role “questions” being the leader.

Narrative – After lunch, we had music, which led us to working on our Narrative on the explorer or immigrant we have done research on, and we talked about the conclusion and making a general outline.The final draft of the narrative should be done before Spring Break, and tomorrow we will start doing a rough draft of the story.

We ended our day with a delightful ball game!

Homework:

  • Exploration (if you haven’t finished)
  • Narrative~conclusion and outline questions
  • Literature Circle Reading (next meeting/assignment due on March 7th)

Reminder-we need more parent drivers for our 3 dragon boating trips. Potential dates are May 20, May 25, and June 1. If you have time, please email Ms.D.

Have a good night everyone!!

Quick Update March 2nd

Hello Everyone,

Today we had time to work on our scale model drawings, immigration/explorer narratives, and literature circle work. We also had some time to talk about upcoming field trips! And at the end of the day, we enjoyed a fantastic PE lesson on jumping rope activities from Emma and Sylvia. I look forward to seeing our next lesson on Friday!

Homework tonight:

Work on Plot and Problem for your Narrative! This means making a list of what will happen in the story and telling us all about the problem your main character will have and try to solve.

First Literature Circle meeting is tomorrow, so make sure you have read the pages assigned by your group AND that you have completed the first worksheet and Reading Power role for your meeting. We will have the meetings after recess tomorrow and Ms. D will listen in to the discussion!

That’s all for now, so have a great night!!

Social Media and Discussions TIP

Here’s some advice we have been discussing in class, and it applies to both social media conversation AND contributing to discussions or asking questions in class.

When you make a contribution to a discussion, ask yourself:

  1. Is it useful?
  2. Is it helpful?
  3. Is it interesting?
  4. Is it kind?

If you can’t say “yes” to all of those questions, then put yourself on “pause” and take a moment to reflect.

  1. Can you change the wording of what you are saying so it will be better received?
  2. Is there a better time or opportunity for what you want to say?
  3. Is this the right audience?
  4. Why am I saying this? To get attention, or to really contribute to the discussion?

 

March 1st Update

Hello Everyone!

Class Meeting:

We had some great discussion today as a whole class about the following:

  • Safety and appropriate behaviour when using google hangouts (Ms. D does not monitor any of those conversations, as this is not something we use as a classroom tool; however, please do come to me if you have any concerns.)
  • Zones of Regulation — Learning how to monitor our emotions as they change from Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green, and adding words to our vocabulary to describe our emotions to others
  • Field Trips — Please get parents to respond to the field trip survey
  • Easter Plans — Everyone is interested in doing some egg dying, crafts, and a pizza day for the class

Language Arts:

We finished Lemoncello!! There is a book two called Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics, and we voted to check this one out from the library and do a read aloud during term three. Our new books to read for Literature Circles have been passed out, groups have been formed, and assignments have been given for our first Lit Circle Meeting on Thursday, March 3rd. Please take good care of your books, as you are responsible for replacement, just as with any library book.

Unit Work:

We continued our work on making a personal narrative related to immigration and/or explorers. Today, students brainstormed details for their story under Character and Setting. They had to answer these questions:

  • Who is your character based on? (historical fiction)
  • What is his/her name (if renamed)? (remember YOU are the character)
  • Where did he/she live?
  • Where did they go or where will they go?
  • What are the push/pull factors involved?
  • What is their description? (appearance, age, occupation, likes/dislikes, personality, etc.)
  • What was their homeland like? (Biome? City/Village? City vs rural? Water nearby? Farms?)
  • What is it about their homeland they will miss (on their journey or by leaving)?
  • What is it about their homeland they want to leave?
  • What is the place like where they will go?
  • What is their home (living place — house, town home, shack, etc.) like?
  • What is their transportation to the new place like? (airport, ship, train, etc.)
  • What is the first place they go when they arrive in the new place? (airport, Pier 21, a new city, border checkpoint, etc.)

Math:

Everyone received their white scroll paper to begin working on the floorplan/rendering of the building they have designed. Each group needs to use one side of the paper and fit both a footprint and a rendering on that one side. The footprint is the outline of the base of the building, and it marks entryways, elevator shafts, stairs, outside outline, etc. The rendering is a picture of the actual building in colour. The drawings need to be to scale. Typically, imperial is used, but you can also use metric if it is easier to do the conversions. Start with the size of the building in real life and then look for how you will represent that distance with a smaller measurement amount on the paper, just like we did for the classroom. For example, how much distance will 1cm equal on paper? There are example boards to view in class and articles about scale models under Math in Articles of Interest.

Have a good evening!!! 

Field Trip Survey — Please get parents to respond

Hello Everyone,

Please ask your parents to help you answer this survey as I plan two field trips in the future. These are trips I have not committed to YET, and this survey will help me plan whether we do them or not. If these trips don’t work out, don’t worry, I have some back up plans, and we can always plan something for end of year!

  1. If we were to go to the BC Cancer Agency for a half-day genetics lab and tour of their facilities on April 22nd, would your parents be willing to pay $10 for the cost of the bus? The PAC funds I receive would help lower it to $10 per student.
  2. If we were to do Dragon Boating in May/June for three sessions at $28 per student (cost = $7.30 per hour session), would you want to pay this and go? They have significantly raised the rates for the school dragon boating program this year, as it used to be $10 per student for all three sessions. All equipment is provided, but we have to get to Burnaby Lake.
  3. If we were to do Dragon Boating in May and June as above, I need parent drivers who are also willing to participate in dragon boating with us. Please respond and let me know if you are a parent who has time during the school day to join us. No experience is needed, but you would get wet and you would be rowing and/or helping with steering at the back of the dragon boat. No cost for you other than participating and driving.

Please let me know what you think!

Thank you,

Ms. D

For Parents — Google Hangouts

Dear Parents:

I hope this finds you well!

just wanted to take a quick moment to advise all of you that many students from our class are using Google Hangouts (a chat room through Google if you have gmail.) This is not something recommended or encouraged by me through our District tools, and it is unmonitored conversation occurring between students. Students are using their private gmail accounts for this and they are doing it after hours, while not at school.

I would recommend that you please check in with your child to ensure they are using this appropriately. While most conversation is no doubt friendly and positive, I think it would be a good idea to check in with them. Please also refer to my previous post on the blog about technology and safe social media practice.

I will also be addressing in class again the appropriate things that can be discussed online. While it is great to talk with people and have a chat online, it is not appropriate, for example, to talk about other people from class who are not part of the chat at the time.

Thank you for your help and support as we teach them to use their tech tools in appropriate and safe ways.

Kind Regards,

Ms. D

February 29th Update

Hi everyone! It’s Vlad here.

Writing Workshop: Today we talked about words that we could use instead of “said”, that could be more specific, as we practiced using quotations. We also did some work on the narrative about the immigrant we chose. We need to use dialogue with quotations in our writing. We also went over the elements of a good story and the story arch.

LA Reading: After recess, we read a lot of chapters in the Lemoncello book. We are almost done! We talked about our last reading power of TRANSFORM. Tomorrow we will finish and then start our lit circle books in small groups.

ART and PE:  After lunch, we drew some buildings from a certain perspective for art, and for PE, we did some physical exercise outside and played some trust games with partners.

ASSEMBLY:  We ended the day by going to a celebration of learning and see some presentations done by Division 1.

For homework:
1.Respond to the question coming up at the end of my blog entry
2.Do some work on the narrative, thinking about the story arch

Reminders:
1.Bring your library books tomorrow for library day!
2.Hot lunch forms due tomorrow

We also received a yellow newsletter today about what’s happening in March

The question: What are the 6 simple machines (the gear is not one of them)?

Have a good night everyone!

Reifel Bird Sanctuary and End of Term Two!

Hello Everyone!

Thank you to everyone for a great field trip today!

It was nice weather, the air was fresh, there were birds everywhere, and we had a great guide, Dan the resident biologist at the sanctuary. Many thanks to Candace, Fernando, Pin and Gary, our parents who accompanied us today. Thank you to all the students for great behaviour, as well. I really enjoyed being outside with you all today, and I was glad for the opportunity to share a special place with you, as it is one of my favourite places for relaxing outdoors in the Lower Mainland.

TURNING IN WORK:

I have finished marking all the work for term 2 report cards. Many of you were responsible about keeping up with your assignments, but some of you are still working on turning things in and putting a name on papers without help from me. Next term, Ms. D will not go through assignment by assignment with you, so you will need to be more independent in order to receive marks and to check in with me yourself if you are wondering whether or not all work has been turned in.

REIFEL BIRD HOMEWORK:

There isn’t any homework for the weekend; however, you need to respond to this blog post using your Burnaby ID and answer these questions:

  1. What did you enjoy most from the field trip today? (full sentences, please)
  2. Name at least three birds you saw today (impress me if you saw and remember more than that!)
  3. Name three interesting facts about the bird sanctuary.
  4. Name something you learned related to animal migration.

Have a great, relaxing weekend!!!

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