Ok so who doesn’t love sugar?!?! It tastes so good – why wouldn’t you want to enjoy it!?! Well this week we questioned out thinking and found out that some of our favourite drink choices have a HUGE amount of sugar. An iced capp has 33 grams. A small (355 mL) 7-11 slurpee has 42 grams. Even a juice box (250 mL) has 30 grams. Who knew?!? Shocking, especially considering that kids should consume no more than six teaspoons of sugar a day (equivalent to 25 grams). After today’s discovery, next time we’re thirsty we might want to grab a glass of water instead. We are great Math thinkers!! This week we began working with long division using a strategy called The Box Method. This method involves determining how many groups can be made from the divisor as a whole, rather than working with individual digits. It builds a more conceptual understanding of division and uses lots of mental math. We loved the challenge and the thinking involved. It made sense! We worked through several examples together as a class and then branched off into smaller groups. Some of us even challenged ourselves with larger numbers! Our motivation and curiosity have had a positive ripple effect on each other. 😀 After writing a variety of different short stories, we moved onto the next step in the writing process: peer assessment. We were already a bit familiar with providing feedback to our classmates (methods such as two stars and a wish), but peer assessment is different in that it involves using the assignment criteria. To get us started, our teachers modelled what peer assessment looks like. They used an original writing sample of a story draft and demonstrated how to provide feedback. One of the criteria was My story has a clear problem, so our teachers modelled what to look for – “is the problem clear?” and “is it original?” and showed us how to provide feedback using those prompts. Watching peer assessment in action gave us a clear understanding of what is expected. When it was time for us to get started, we shared our story drafts first and then independently began the assessment. We recorded our feedback and made sure that it was clear and specific. Next week we will share our feedback with peers and then use it to make revisions to our story. It was a short week, but a busy one! Amazing how much we covered in only three days!
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Many of us had been hoping for snow for weeks so we were really excited to hear that snow was in the forecast and even more excited when it finally began to fall! And fall it did. Parts of the Lower Mainland had accumulations of over 30 cm of the white stuff. It was beautiful! Our district Facilities crew and our custodians worked long hours to clear the snow, so we couldn’t resist sending them a thank you for the work they did: This week included Valentine’s Day – a perfect opportunity to talk about love. We read Matt de la Pena’s beautiful book Love, a book about finding love and beauty all around you no matter who you are, what you look like or where you live. We then took some time to reflect on small and big moments of love that we experience every day. Our responses were heart-warming :) We’re such a thoughtful group of kids. Since September we've enjoyed many different kinds of picture books that have all had several things in common, including a beginning/middle/end, a problem, a solution, some characters and a setting. They have also had a theme. We’ve spent some time browsing through several different picture books looking for these characteristics and then, in preparation for writing stories, we brainstormed a few of our own. We had some great ideas for our stories, but we found it tricky thinking of logical solutions to wrap up our stories. To help us, we had a direct lesson on a different story-writing framework – “somebody, wanted, but, so,” that we practised as a class and in pairs. We found the framework a helpful segue to writing drafts. Our next step will involve getting feedback from our peers on one of our drafts and then setting goals for improvement. We put the finishing touches on our chalk pastel art and we did an awesome job using tints and shades to create value on our gumball machines. Isn’t it amazing how a bit of value creates depth? It was a great week of learning in divisions 6 & 7 :)
Seymour Mountain here we come!! We had been looking forward to this field trip for weeks, so we arrived at school super excited and ready to go!! We quickly boarded the bus and were off! It was a slow climb up the mountain, but we had fun looking for snow along the way. Once there, we set off snowshoeing and learned about the local trees and a bit about the history. We had fun playing games in the trails while on much-needed breaks. We also got to go tobogganing. We had a blast riding (racing!) down the hill and finding ways to go faster! It was a tough climb back up the hill each time, but once we reached the top, we couldn’t resist another sled down the mountain!!! It was a super fun and memorable day. A big thank you to our PAC and to our many parent volunteers for their support. We have been using lots of critical thinking while exploring open-ended questions in Math. Initially we found these open-ended questions challenging and we weren’t sure how to get started. But after trying a few of them we became more confident and willing to challenge ourselves. Our first open-ended question involved determining an equation that would have a product of 48. We could immediately tell that there wasn’t just one answer, so we worked collaboratively to find many different solutions. __ x __ = 48 “I know that 1x 48 works because all numbers can be multiplied by 1” “2 X 24 I know that 2 is in the equation because 24 it is an even number” “10 is not in the equation because the product doesn’t end in a 0” We also tried open-ended questions that asked, “which one doesn’t belong?” In this problem-solving activity we needed to compare a set of equations looking for similarities and differences to determine which equation is not like the others. We also needed to explain our reasoning. We quickly realized that there are no wrong answers as long as we are able to justify our thinking. After solving a few of these equations, we then created our own questions for our peers to solve. It was then time to share our learning: Learning Intention: I can use critical thinking when problem-solving Criteria:
This week was a memorable one for sure!! It’s hard to believe that the calendar has already flipped to February. Time flies when you’re having so much fun!
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AuthorWe are a curious group of kids who are excited to share our learning with you! Archives
March 2020
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