Category: Current News

Hello Everyone!

For those of you who are checking the blog, I thought I would put out a quick message to say hello and welcome back to all students! I hope you all had a relaxing summer and are ready to begin the new year.

Our first day is Tuesday, September 6th, and we have a short time together. We will start at 8:50 AM and then dismiss at 10:00 AM. Right at 10:00 AM I am going to teacher meetings, so if you need to meet with me, please email me or see me during my office hours, which begin on September 13th and will be every Tuesday from 3-4:30 PM.

The rest of the first week is the regular schedule, 8:50 AM – 3:00 PM.

The first day, no supplies are needed, although you can bring them in if you wish.

On Wednesday, please be on time, as we will have a school assembly right at 9 AM!

On Tuesday, I will be handing out more information and notices for all students and posting details of these on the blog under Notices and Forms.

See you all soon!

Ms. D

Good evening everyone!

Today we did some great work on our unit and projects. We did comparisons of different myths and stories about the moon, calling attention to the figurative language and literary elements used to describe the moon. Why are all cultures drawn to the moon in some way? What are the common ways we use to describe the moon? What are similes, metaphors, and personification – the tools we use to describe the moon? We created a T-chart of facts versus myths regarding the moon, as well. Finally, we watched National Geographic’s Moon Mysteries Revealed. See the link to the movie if you would like to watch the rest, as it is a long movie. We will be learning more moon, sun, and Earth information to participate in a class jeopardy game next week.

We also went over some important dates as we head into the end of school!

May 30    –Primary Research on Independent Project Identified and Started
-Talk together about how to present what you have learned
-MACC Mall Reflection, Rubric, Budget Should be submitted on paper or Google
-Explaining the Lava Lamp Bottle Experiment + Mini-myth should be done

May 31    Literature Circle Group Skits Presented (only for groups who had skits)

June 1     Dragon Boating Session #2, Leave at 9:45 AM

June 2     French Dialogue Presented (memorized, with expression, practiced)

June 3     No school, Pro-D Day at Suncrest

June 6     Research Completed on Independent Project (Notes and Bibliography due
no later than June 10)

June 7     Volunteer Tea in Afternoon (for everyone in our class who has volunteered to
drive, speak, accompany us on trips, dragon boat, etc.!)

June 8     Dragon Boating Session #3, Leave at 9:45 AM

June 9     Special Workshop with UBC’s Geering Up on Phenomenal Forces!
Quiz on Unit and Math Concepts

June 11/12   Maker Faire on Weekend 

June 16   Independent Project Due (Evaluate then whether we want to share them!)

June 17   Sports Day

June 20   Rocky Point Park in Port Moody — MACC 4/5 Summer Celebration!

June 21   MACC Orientation Night for new MACC students/parents only

June 27   Recognition Award Assembly at School

June 29   Report Cards Home; Last Day of School

Wow, only 22 days left of school!

Have a good weekend!

Ms. D

Very quick update for tonight!

Reminders:

• Class Photo and Panorama Shot tomorrow — dress nicely
• Bring a pink t-shirt or accessory for International Day of Pink tomorrow
• Bring math model supplies for tomorrow in a bag with name
• Finish resources reading if not done (most of you have finished)
• Next Lit Circle meeting is on Thursday (time in class tomorrow to work)
• Math Budget created on excel — did you send it via google drive to Ms. D?

Check out the LINKS on the previous post related to our great discussions today about economics, world trade, and more. Peter suggested two articles you might like to read related to our discussions, as well, so I added them to the links page.

Today we started making a resource map of the world, identifying country names, level of wealth, and top exports using web resources such as the District’s subscription to World Book Online.

As part of Math, today we continued our work on budgets. Everyone moved in with a friend into an apartment (we pretended we were 25 years old) and was given a salary. Using that salary, students had to make a monthly budget and document it on excel. First, we had to brainstorm all the costs associated with being an independent person such as rent, electricity, gas, food, transportation, entertainment, taxes, savings, etc. You may want to continue this discussion at home. How does your family make a budget? Do you have a document for your budget? How do you make decisions about how money will be spent? How much is put aside for savings?

Everyone had some great questions today such as what it is like to receive a salary, how do you determine taxes, how much does it cost to rent a place in Vancouver/Burnaby, and what would a monthly food budget be like? Some great thinking was being done and I had a hard time getting students to stop working on their budgets! Some students even did some research by looking up information from real estate websites, BC transit, BC Hydro, and more, which was extending the lesson beyond my expectations. Good job, everybody!

More tomorrow! Have a good night. Oh, and did you know there is a shortage of coloured pencils worldwide? If you don’t know why, as our students. Wow, everyone came up with some great ideas about why they thought there might be a shortage. Congrats to Michael who came up with the answer at the end. Do you know why? And how is this related to economics and systems?

Hello everyone!

Hopefully you had a great weekend and enjoyed the sun! Some key items from today:

• Our next Lit Circle meeting is tomorrow
• Please finish your resource reading for tomorrow
• Supplies for your scale model should come in on Wednesday
• Library tomorrow, so bring your books!
• Class meeting today was about end of year activities, and we are looking at an electronics day, water park visit, and a water fight…..more discussion about these plans next week.
• Abel Test practice in Ms Branco’s room and Gauss Test in Ms. Juma’s at 8:15 tomorrow. At this time, all students are signed up for the tests they will take on May 11 and there can’t be more changes due to ordering of books.

We continued our talk about needs and wants today by looking at psychology research done by Maslow, who developed a “hierarchy of needs.” Beyond our survival needs, the physiological needs, what else gives us the motivation to do things? What makes us light up inside? What makes us want to get up each day? Is it belonging? Is it power? Is it about self esteem and achievement? We had a discussion and reflected on our personal motivations. How do we get our needs met beyond the basic survival ones? Do we choose negative or positive ways to get these needs met? Please talk about this more at home.

Fishing Frenzy!! We played a group game designed to simulate the problems with over fishing as we seek food resources from the world’s oceans. Students were asked in class to reflect on the experience. Our fishing resource experts reported on the fishing methods currently used and the pros and cons of each.

Fair Resources: To represent how the world has inequity in its resources, we did another quick simulation to show, if the world were only 24 people, how many would be the wealthy, the middle class, the poor, and the poorest. Ms. D read some statistics for each group so we could understand the distribution of wealth and resources out there.

Art for the Musical! For art, we made large 3D flowers out of paper that will serve as part of the set for the school musical in May. We have a lot of flowers to make, so it will be one of our ongoing projects.

This week, more on world resources, systems of government, budgets and saving money, and an intro to rocks and minerals!

 

Hello Everyone!

Please see this attached parent notice regarding our field trip to the BC Cancer Agency Genetics Lab on April 22nd: Genetics Lab Parent Notice MACC. Paper version to come tomorrow.

Congratulations to Tove, Adrian, and Ella, as all three students had their poetry or prose chosen to be included in the District’s Words Anthology! Great work!

Today we started talking about our new unit focus statement: 

Humans create a variety of systems and tools

to get their needs and wants met.

Our first activity to get us thinking about the unit was called Lost at Sea! We all pretended to be on a yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that goes down. We have to survive using the few items that remain undamaged from the wreck. We prioritized the 15 items from 1-5, with 1 being the item that would be most important and 15 being the item we could probably do without. Afterwards, we also ranked the list with a partner for comparison. Finally, we checked our answers by what the Coast Guard had to say about the list, to see if we would have survived or not.  Tonight, students have been asked to get parents to rank the items, too! See if you would survive!  The red link above has the survival chart so you can see your results.

We also did some brainstorming about needs and wants. How do you know the difference between needs and wants? Each student was given 10 cards to record the items they think would make them the most happy. In small groups, we organized the cards into needs and wants, and we also discussed which items would cost money versus those that would be free. After much debate, we made a larger chart of needs and wants for the whole class with the cards. Some great questions arose, such as: Is education a need or a want? Do you absolutely need money to survive? Is music free? Do you need freedom to live (versus just being happy)?

We also watched a PBS cartoon called Happiness Stuff to introduce discussion about whether having “stuff” makes you happy or not.

Also today, we had a chance to visit the library, continue work on the final drafts of our immigration narrative, prepare for our next literature circle meeting tomorrow, and begin work on a drawing-collage art project involving nature, line, and composition.

Please remember to bring in LIBRARY BOOKS as there were many overdue books today. Our library day is Tuesday every week.

Please look for the following items that will help us in class:

• Earbuds: For future research and use of tutorials with sound during class, it is a good idea to have a pair of these, or headphones, that can be stored in your backpack during the day.
• Transparent Tape: For a future art project, I need as many rolls of transparent packing tape as possible. If you are willing to donate some, please send it to school!
• PENCILS: Unfortunately, we are almost out of pencils from our supplies collected at the beginning of the year. I am putting out an all-call to students and parents to bring in more if possible.
• Model Building Supplies: Think about what you will need to make a scale model of your building. Please look for cardboard and other recycling items that would be helpful. Bring in on Thursday if you have items.

For tonight, limit the time spent on individual homework:

• Do 15 minutes max of editing or writing of final draft narrative (more class time will be given Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Final Draft due EOD Friday.
• Do 15-30 minutes max of preparing for Literature Circle meeting tomorrow

Have a great night!

Ms. D

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