Category: Uncategorized

French time!

Questions to answer on lined paper for Thursday:

1. Where is French spoken? (countries)
2. Why is French a language found in Brazil?
3. Do people in Quebec consider themselves French? Why/Why not?
4. Name a holiday specific to France and tell me about it.
5. Name some world organizations (at least five) that use French as an official language. (hint: United Nations)

Sites to use to practice greetings and pronunciation:

QUIZ ON THESE BASIC WORDS FROM JE FRENCH ON MONDAY.

Je French.com Basic French Lessons

Pronunciation Practice Europa French

BBC French Basic Pronunciation

For advanced users, on a computer, try Ma France from BBC.

For our discussions today, here are some websites to show how Solar Cookers are improving quality of life in developing countries.

SciNet Solar Cookers in Developing World

Solavore The World is Your Kitchen

Aid for Africa Solar Cookers International

Sun Oven Cooking with Solar

Solar Cookers International Solar Cooking Basics

Just Solar Home Blog Will Teaching Solar Alleviate Poverty

And also some websites to think about other inventions that improve quality of life:

Goodnet 15 Genius New Inventions That Will Improve Life

FastCoExist World Changing Ideas of 2015

Mashable 7 Incredibly Simple Inventions Changing World

Nesta Digital Innovation and Human Rights

Finally, some examples of people taking action for human rights (through INVENTION, INNOVATION, or a CAMPAIGN) that may help you with your project:

Voices of Youth HIV AIDS Project

Youth for Human Rights

Doctors Without Borders

Unicef Canada

World Vision

World Day Against Child Labour

Me to WE Campaign

Girls Not Brides – Against Child Marriage

CARE Stop Child Marriage

Unicef: Girls Education and Gender Equality

Unesco: Gender Equality in Education

Global Partnership for Education: Girls Education

 

Hello Everyone!

We will be working on our final project next week, due end of day October 24th. Here is the Human Rights Stop Motion project rubric and explanation, which we will go over Monday. Work is done in class only, except for research, which you can do at home.

We will be viewing our stop motion instructional videos in class on Monday. If you still need to record your audio, you can complete it Monday.

If you are stuck inside because of rain, consider looking at these videos for more ideas about Stop Motion, now that you have had a chance to use it yourself!

Stop Motion Movies to Watch

Stop Motion Do Amazing Things

Watch Waddle’s Make an Animation with Stop Motion

Watch Waddle’s Green Screen on Stop Motion Studio Pro

Watch Waddle’s Green Screen Part 2

Stop Motion Basics

Wow, I have lots of time on my hands LEGO STOP MOTION TUTORIAL

There are many more, but this will get you started.

How can you use this tool to educate others to create change? Here are some examples:

A Short UK Animation About Human Rights

A Tagalog Song About Human Rights in Stop Motion

Simple Stop Motion on Human Rights

Human Rights Stop Motion Everyone Has a Right

Stop Motion Using Chalk Human Rights

If you find another that we should see, comment below!

Hello Everyone!

Thank you for your great work today on Stop Motion videos and the Solar Cookers! Our classroom looks clean at the end of the day, so thank you for your work cleaning up after our fun, messy projects.

Tonight, in preparation for our final project for the unit, we are doing some research on a human rights issue of choice. You only have to look at one website or article tonight and take some notes. Here is a short description of what we are looking for:

• Choose one issue around human rights (everyone has done this already)
• Narrow it down by looking at a specific country where the human rights issue is happening (you can use Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International websites to get started like we did today)
• Look for ways someone is taking ACTION to solve the human rights problem. (Invention, Innovation, Campaign like we talked about in class)
• Take notes for research
• Create a stop motion video to share what you learned

What makes good research? We went over these things today in class and will keep learning about them all year to improve our research. 

• Write down your name and date on your notes
• When you search, focus on websites that end in .org (organization, usually non-profit), .edu (education site), .gov (government site), or a reputable source.
• Avoid wikipedia for research projects. It is better for quick answers.
• Avoid .com sites, as they are usually trying to sell you something.
• Use websites that from 2011 or later (no more than five years old)
• Avoid websites where you have to look up meanings of words every five seconds. If you don’t understand the article, get a different website!
• Search for issues with key words:  “child labour issues Zimbabwe kids” — the kids part will help tell Google to look for kid-friendly sources.
• If the website looks too mature for you, then it probably IS! Don’t use it.
• Record the website name where you found the information
• Try to find the date the article/website was published AND who wrote the article you are reading. Sometimes you can find this information under the menu title ABOUT US, or CONTACT INFO. Sometimes it is right under the article title. Other times it is at the bottom of the article, so scroll down.
• Use point form to take notes
• Write down key ideas so you will remember them for your project.
• If you are using an online tool to do notes, like EverNote or Google Docs, know that cutting and pasting is NOT taking notes. You can still cut and paste, but notes are in your own words.

Stuck? Ask Ms. D tomorrow when we continue our research! 

Have a good night!

 

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Please see our MACC Grade 4/5 Timetable 2016:

• The timetable is subject to change. Areas in grey are committed. Everything else is subject to change, which is the nature of MACC and school schedules.
• Music is on Monday 9:40-10:30, and on Thursday 10:45-11:35.
• Library is on Thursday 11:35-12:00. Book exchange is also available immediately after lunch Monday-Thursday; however, check with Ms. D first.
• GYM is Tuesday and Friday from 10:45-11:30. We also have an open gym time on Wednesday from 11:30 – 12:00, which we may use in the gym or outside.

This week we will begin projects. Some important information for everyone:

• Projects rubrics will be posted on the blog. Please go over criteria at home.
• When a mark is given, I send rubrics home. Parents, please sign and return.
• Sometimes, key project criteria are listed in the middle at the C+ or “Meeting Expectations” level, while the other areas are blank. We will brainstorm together in class what the other areas look like.
• Students evaluate themselves first, then I provide the final mark.
• Project work happens IN CLASS. At home, students can come up with ideas, do research, and gather materials; however, the main work needs to be at school.
• Parents, please talk to your children about projects, give advice, help them stay on track, and/or help find materials, but do not do any of the work for them.
• Students, part of the mark includes your work process at school. So, please work on projects at school so I can see this.

I look forward to our project work this week on solar cookers (and writing a science lab), researching human rights, and making a mini stop-motion video to teach someone something! More on this tomorrow. Have a great night!

Ms. D

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!

Agenda/Reminders:
Please look for an article or example of taking “ACTION” (newspaper, online, magazine, brochure, etc.) and bring it on Tuesday. You can also respond to this post if you found a link online and want to share it with everyone.

Look at ideas for solar cookers! We will be building a small one in class. Bring a roll of foil and styrofoam from home for cooker insulation if you have any.

Individual photo day is next Thursday, October 13th. No school on Monday, October 10th!

 

What we did today:

We began the day by giving time to read a few more articles from the blog on human rights. The class had some great questions that we discussed together. Then, we went to the unit board and put up some blue stickies to help students see how everything they have been studying fell under our unit focus statement Open-mindedness and innovative thinking create change in the world. By putting all of this up on the board, we realized just how much we have covered in only a month!

To round out the unit, we will now focus on ACTION! We talked about the United Nations’ Global Goals, and how every person can be part of helping with these goals. See this video provided by the UN’s World’s Largest Lesson Initiative. We read several stories of children from around the world who have created change. This weekend, look for an example of change and share it with us here on the blog or on Tuesday in class.

For GYM today, we focused on the unit and combined math, science, and physical activity! Students learned how to determine force, that force is measured in Newtons, the meaning of acceleration, and how to measure work/power. We went outside and raced up the stairs on the intermediate playground to figure out how many watts of power each of us can produce! On Tuesday, we will finish our math calculations. If you want to learn more, please see Math is Fun: Force and Math is Fun: Energy and Work. If you like the problems we did in class for extra challenge, more of them are located at the bottom of each web page. Some other challenge programs are located at the Physics Classroom: Power.

For Science today, we talked about Solar Energy and making a Solar Cooker! I have boxes everyone can use to make a mini cooker, and all we need is more aluminum foil and styrofoam, if you can look at home for any extra you have. We watched Bill Nye How Stuff Works: Solar Energy and discussed how sunlight rays reflect (angle in = angle out) on a flat surface and a parabola. We talked about how solar cookers rely on a focus point based on the angle the rays reflect. Check out Math is Fun: Reflection and Math is Fun: Refraction for more interesting physics and math on this if you want to take it further! Here is the video on making a solar cooker we watched in class, too.

We ended the day with Balloon Car Racing! Congratulations to those who had successful cars! Kudos to those whose cars were aesthetic, as well! Everyone had some time for free choice afterwards, and some students continued experimenting with Stop Motion. Overall, it was a good Friday!

Hope you have a restful weekend and a great turkey day!

Ms. D

Hello Everyone!

Today we began with the Question Formulation Technique. Some of you may remember this from last year, and it is a set of steps to help students develop great questions. We started by brainstorming around the topic of our unit, keeping these rules in mind:

• Write down anything that comes to mind
• Try to write things doing in a question format
• Don’t judge anyone’s questions — no great, fantastic, good question, or bad question, etc.
• Write down as many questions as you can

Then, we went through the questions and reviewed them to see if they were really in a question format. We fixed any that needed adjustment with a who, what, why, where, when, how, etc.

Our next discussion was over the meaning of open and closed questions. Open questions take further research, are deeper, require multiple resources, and do not have an easy yes/no answer. Closed questions are “googleable”, have a right answer, and are quick to answer with one resource. Everyone labeled their questions with an “O” or a “C” for open and closed. They then chose one question to change between open and closed, closed to open. We discussed what kind of investigations need open or closed questions, too. How will you know which kind of question to ask? When is each kind useful?

Finally, we each wrote a question to add to our wonderings board about the unit, using the “jar of inquiry” approach. We look forward to explaining this more as we develop our understanding of how to ask deeper questions!

TONIGHT: 

Please finish reading information from the Articles of Interest page, under the section on Human Rights, the articles available on the Site C Dam. Tomorrow we will have discussions to answer these questions:

• Where is the Site C Dam located exactly? (You need to be able to find it on a map)
• Why is Amnesty International upset about the Site C Dam? (Do you know what Amnesty International is?)
• Why are First Nations groups upset about the Site C Dam?  (Bonus: Which group of First Nations peoples are living in that area?)

TUNING IN articles are due tomorrow (Tuesday.)

YPC and Field Trip Payments are overdue; please get them in as soon as possible.

Field Trip Thursday Please see my previous post about the field trip.

Balloon Racers: I hope you made some progress on this today, and if you need a bit more time, I can give it to you tomorrow. You are allowed to work on it at home, too, but only if you want to.

Math: We are continuing with the next pages, but I did not assign them for homework.

WOW Letter D: Words for letter D are on the board. Due Friday due to field trip.

Hello Everyone!

We had a great, full first day! Thank you to all the students for their enthusiasm and creative thinking. Things we did today:

• We had our first Suncrest Assembly in the gym
• We had a group discussion on Rules VS Agreements, and we worked together toward making a list of agreements we can use to make our MACC class the best learning environment for everyone. These agreements will continue to be discussed and then finalized by the end of next week.
• We each made a leaf for the MACC 4/5 tree in our classroom, which is a tree representing all the many strengths and expert areas we each bring to Suncrest and our MACC community. We have an amazing group of people with diverse interests!
• We had our first music class with Ms. Hetrick as she plans the community ceremony to open the year tomorrow.
• We are having a door decorating contest in the school, and so we brainstormed ideas. We have decided to make a door full of mini doors, each that open to reveal something we did this summer. We’ll work more on those tomorrow!
• We met with Div. 9 Buddies (a grade 2/3 class) to build mini-flyers out of straws and posterboard. Special thanks to Emily and Patricia who helped cut strips of paper so we could make these. Both classes had an amazing time building and flying these creations! The science behind them was briefly discussed and will link with our unit work coming up!
• Finally, we made marble roller coasters out of foam tubes. The grade five group already did this last year, but no one was complaining as sounds of glee were coming from each of the groups creating marble tracks! We had a discussion about potential and kinetic energy, which again links with our unit work.

 

What a busy day! Please come tomorrow with some ideas of what might be inside your “door” that will be on our door — something that represents what you did during the summer. How could you present this in an interesting, 3D way?

Also, please make sure you received the yellow parent newsletter from Suncrest today with important dates for September.

See you tomorrow!

Welcome everyone to another year of grade 4/5 MACC!

Today we had a short day, and the rest of the week we will have class from 8:50 – 3:00 PM.

Students received today:

• Ms. DeTerra’s welcome guide to MACC
• A Parent questionnaire
• A Social Media Consent Form
• Social Media Guide for Students
• Personal Letter from Ms. D

Please return the personal letter, social media consent form, and the signed parent questionnaire by Monday, September 12th.

If you missed receiving these items, please go to the Notices and Forms Page.

Have a great night and look forward to working with you all more tomorrow!

Ms. D