Students in Div 9 have been learning to enhance their writing, making it more descriptive by adding adjectives. They did an excellent job using adjectives to describe their monster’s personality. They also did a pretty amazing job turning blown paint into some monsterous masterpieces.

How can you light up your home, school or community with kindness? Students in Div 9 are learning that every small interaction with someone is an opportunity to have a positive impact on others.

Today students in Div 9 learned how to make three-dimensional snowflakes in an activity that incorporated math, fine motor skills, and art. Students also utilized their thinking and personal core competencies as they problem solved and persevered through each step of the process to create these impressive snowflakes.

As part of our Daily Physical Activity (DPA) program students in Div 9 will be keeping track of the kilometers they run throughout the school year. For every 25 laps (10 km) they run on the outdoor track they will get a bead to place on their KM Club bracelet.

After reading the book Do Unto Otters written by Laurie Keller students participated in a guided drawing lesson.  Then they prepared a kindness mural to remind everyone how important it is to treat others the way you want to be treated.

Recently Div 8 and 9 students began their Planting a Promise project.  They learned about daffodils and what they need to grow. Then they planted daffodil bulbs knowing that they hold the promise of beautiful flowers in spring.

In the spring when the bulbs begin to sprout and bloom, we will observed and measure their growth. Then in June, as the daffodils enter their dormant stage we will explore how they are readied to start the daffodil life cycle all over again.

Throughout this unit students will explore the following concepts:

• Plants are diverse in the way they grow. They are different in their appearance, in their use and in their life cycle.
• Seasonal changes happen in plants as well as animals.
• Plants have basic needs (air, water, soil and light) that must be met in order for them to grow.
• Air, water and soil have different physical characteristics that can affect the growth of plants.
• Personal choices have environmental consequences that can affect living resources, like plants.

In honour of Remembrance Day, students were asked to consider what peace means to them and to other children from different parts of the world. They explored the concept of peace through different areas of the curriculum – visual arts, language arts, and social studies,  The main objective of the lesson was to help students understand that every child needs peace to live a full, healthy and happy life.

In Social Studies we have been discussing how individuals have rights and responsibilities as global citizens. Students examined the differences between rights and responsibilities and then worked in small groups to identify their responsibilities and how they are connected to the rights they have as individuals.

During our matter inquiry students learned a song about matter and learned how to categorize various types of matter as liquids, solids or gases. They also explored how like items (eg. a chair) may have different properties even though they are both solids.

Also, as we were exploring the concept of matter, one Div 9 student posed a very good question: If something is light will it always float and if something is heavy will it always sink? To answer this question we conducted an experiment. Students soon discovered that weight alone is not the only factor in determining whether or not it will float or sink. As they were testing out their predictions they quickly discovered that objects sinking or floating in a liquid depends mainly on two factors: density and buoyancy.

Strategies Div 9 students use to help them decode unfamiliar words.