Category: General Update

April 12th Update — World Resources & Budgeting Like Adults!

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?

Resources, Fishing Frenzy, and More! Monday Update April 11

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!

 

The system of ECONOMICS — Update April 4th

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for your patience with our blog! It is now running smoothly and has greater capacity thanks to a change of server. You shouldn’t have problems accessing it now.

Reminders: 

  • MACC Returning Student Notice: Please return the MACC notice and let us know if you are planning to continue with the program ASAP.
  • Field Trip: Please return the Field Trip notice for the Genetics Lab Visit ASAP.
  • Lit Circle: Next meeting on Wednesday, April 6th.
  • Library Books: Library Day tomorrow
  • Resources: Make sure the resources sheets from your house are done so we can do the group activity tomorrow
  • Social Studies.Com Economics Terms: Only if you have time, please do the vocabulary copied down from the board at the website I provided.

 

Last Friday, we played the “Game of Economics” as a whole class, which was adapted from a game I found on the Economics Network. We split into six, small groups representing six countries, and we chose one person to be the commodity trader (Brian), as well as another person to be the banker (Max.) I must say that Brian and Max did a great job representing the officials in our world market! Each country was given a set of supplies, and the goal was to produce paper shapes (triangles, circles, rectangles) to trade in for money with the commodity trader, and to make the most money overall. During the course of the game, prices offered for shapes changed according to supply and demand, and countries had to make deals in order to complete their shapes.

The six countries quickly realized they were not equal in terms of starting supplies, as the two first-world countries were given excellent technology of tracing shapes, rulers, pencils, and scissors, but only one piece of paper for making shapes; second world countries received rulers and pencils, 10 pieces of paper for plenty of raw materials, but they were not given scissors, and shapes had to be produced with straight edges; and third world countries were only given pencils and four pieces of paper. Each country also received a set amount of money to start. Each group quickly realized that in order to be successful, trades had to be made! For 45 minutes, countries bartered back and forth. It was an exciting game, and afterwards we debriefed how everything that happened represented something in the real world market.

What is the study of economics? Students brainstormed all the parts of economics they know thus far, and then they were asked to read articles on economics found on Social Studies.com and define terms such as stock market, inflation, interdependence, budgets, and more.

We will continue to look at other systems of getting our needs and wants met as the week goes on. Max’s Dad is coming on Thursday to talk to us about his business and how it works! Students were also told about our final project for this unit, which will be to create a product of their own, to market it, and then sell it in a MACC MARKET for tickets. They will need to follow the design process as well as a budget, which will be documented in an excel document.

Today we practiced excel lessons via tutorials on K5 Computer Lab. Students are encouraged to continue these video tutorials using excel at their leisure. They can also use Google Sheets on our Google Drive accounts, should they prefer that application. Either way, they need to know to keep a budget, format a worksheet, use formulas, and make charts. This is part of our math content, as working with money, budgeting, and using a variety of operations with decimals are part of both grade four and five math curriculum.

So much more is happening this week — musical rehearsals, track sign ups, and the Caribou math contest on April 6th, Wednesday. On Wednesday, we also have a member of the District’s LGBTQ consultants coming to talk with us about gender, which is a school-wide workshop being done in celebration of “International Day of Pink” worldwide.

This week we also have the Abel and Gauss Math Contest practices starting up. If you have signed up for these, please come to practices for Abel on Tuesday mornings at 8:15 AM in Ms. Branco’s room. If you have signed up for Gauss, then please go to Ms. Juma’s room at 8:15 AM. The test will be on May 11th, and the practices run the next three Tuesdays. If you are unable to make the practices, please do some of the old practice tests here.

Our student led conference night is April 28th. Please reserve some time from 4-7 PM, as I am currently planning an open house/student conference for all students to participate in any time from 4-7 PM. Stay tuned for more details.

Have a great night!

Ms. D

What is a SYSTEM? March 30th Update

Good evening!

Reminders/Homework:

  • Unit Work to prepare for tomorrow’s activities:  15 minutes collecting lists of items in rooms of your house and recording what resources you think are in them
  • Narrative: 15-30 minutes; final draft due end of day Friday, more time to work on this tomorrow and Friday.
  • Notice: Genetics Lab April 22nd. Please pay by April 11th online or via cheque.

Today, before our Literature Circle meeting, we had a great discussion about the roles and responsibilities for group leaders and group members. This includes active listening, being prepared with your assignments before the meeting, making meaningful contributions to discussions, and being open-minded and respectful of others’ points of view. What does active listening look like? How does it help us have a better discussion?

We continued our work on needs and wants by completing a group activity sorting the 10 things we would take with us on a journey to another planet. The items we had to choose from were inspired by the United Nations Rights of a Child document. This was followed by discussion about how satisfying everyone’s needs and wants is a complicated task. Students observed that during this task, many of them had differing opinions about what is a necessary item for survival. We talked about how this is true of the world, as well.

Later, we talked about systems. What is a system? What systems do we know of in the world? What are the parts of a system? We discussed the universal systems model that includes the parts of Input, Output, Process, and Feedback, and then we applied the model to the school, as a system.

We are also going to talk about resources, and so students need to look for resources at home in the rooms of their house. Choose four rooms, record products, and then guess what kinds of resources were used to make those products. Tomorrow, we will analyze the data and see what conclusions we can make about resources used around us.

Finally, we had a game of football, courtesy of Peter and Michael, for PE class. Who is doing the next PE lesson for Monday’s gym class?

Have a great night!

Ms. D

What is a NEED or a WANT? Update for March 29th

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

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!

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!!

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