Our exploration of Pakistan continued this week as we gathered facts about Pakistani culture from a website called Super Urdu Mom. Super Urdu Mom is a Canadian blogger from a Pakistani-Canadian family who shares her Urdu life adventures. We had fun learning about popular cartoons for kids, traditional clothing (such as the shalwar) and religion holidays (including Eid). We also got to Skype with a friend of Ms. Clackson’s who lives in Pakistan. Before Skyping we worked in groups to come up with questions to ask. We were curious to find out if boys and girls go to the same school, when Pakistan became a country and whether Pakistanis like pizza. We had fun asking our questions...and learning about a country that many of us didn’t know much about. Our next step: create a digital travel guide using Book Creator to help someone better understand the country. (Oh, and by the way, Pakistanis love pizza!!) September 30 is Orange Shirt Day. To honour children and families impacted by residential schools, we wore orange, discussed the significance of the orange shirt with Phyllis Webstad’s Orange Shirt Day Presentation, read When I Was Eight by Christy Jordan-Fenton & Margret Pokiak-Fenton and had meaningful discussions about the importance of reconciliation. We need to make sure that every child knows that they matter. We've had an enjoyable few weeks of learning and are looking forward to many more....as the calendar flips to October :)
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The 2018 Global Read Aloud begins in a few weeks and we’ll be joining hundreds of classes around the world to read Amal Unbound, a novel by Aisha Saeed. The story takes place in a Pakistani village, so we’ve been building our background knowledge about life in Pakistan before we get started on the story. After taking a look at several photos of Pakistan, many of us realized that we had incorrect assumptions about the country. There are several different geographic regions – two of those regions are mountainous and are often cold and snowy (and not dry and desert-like as expected). We also learned that Pakistan is the 6th largest country in the world by population and that there are several different languages spoken there (including Urdu, Punjabi, and several others). We’ll continue building our background knowledge next week as we learn more about the culture and traditions of Pakistan. One of this week’s activities included a story about Norbert the pig, whose dream is to swim the English Channel. Norbert dedicates his time to training, but then realizes that he has a problem: he doesn’t know where the English Channel is! He is ready to give up, but his friends help by pointing him in the direction of “Norbert’s Channel,” a stream on their farm. Was Norbert done dreaming? Nope! The story ends with a picture of Norbert at the peak of a mountain. It was a great picture book that led to a discussion about how, like Norbert, we can also set goals, what we can do when we encounter challenges and the importance of persevering. We also talked about goals needing to be realistic (how can we swim the English Channel if we don’t know where it is?), specific and measurable. It was a great story that led us to setting term one goals for ourselves. Like Norbert, all of us will face challenges so we need to remember to persevere and to rely on the support of those around us. (On a side note, the author of Norbert's Big Dream saw our tweet and responded! A Skype visit? Yes please!) We’ve also been building our Social Emotional skills, thinking critically and learning how to be reflective thinkers with activities focused on our identity. One of those activities involved us exploring the significance of our names. Another activity involved celebrating one of our physical characteristics and a part of our personality. We used our critical thinking by making connections to the stories, but also by reflecting on our learning afterwards with prompts such as “what did you learn?” or “how has your thinking changed?” It was a busy week with lots of great learning in divisions 6 & 7!
Have you ever wondered why chestnuts have a prickly outer shell? Or why leaves change colour in the fall? We do! After being introduced to “inquiry” this week and learning what makes a good question, we made observations about different tree foliage and then came up with some excellent questions of our own. What is inside a chestnut? Why do chestnuts grow on trees? Why do some pinecones fall in the spring, but some fall in the fall? Before beginning our research, we got a few tips on how to do an effective internet search. Many of us rely on typing our questions into a search engine, so we learned a bit about using key words (rather than typing our question) and quotation marks when researching. We were ready to find answers to our questions. It took some patience, especially when we didn’t quickly find what we were looking for. Some of us had better success by changing the order of our key words. But the question “why do chestnuts have a prickly outer shell (also known as burrs)?” was a tricky one, so we asked for help from some experts at Science World and are looking forward to hearing their response. Although the internet is a valuable tool, we may not always quickly find what we’re looking for in the beginning. That’s when patience and perseverance come in handy! We will be using inquiry throughout the year so we will have many opportunities to build our skills. Our criteria for good inquiry questions:
We’ve also been focusing on our Numeracy skills this week by working on place value with whole numbers and showing that numbers can be represented in different ways (including standard form, expanded form, using words and using Base 10 Blocks). Some of us find it quicker and easier to represent a number with digits, but it is important to develop the conceptual understanding of place value by using manipulatives, such as Base 10 Blocks, so that we understand why 80 is less than 320. We had fun reviewing and reinforcing new concepts with some Math games. Fun Fun! After hearing about the major storms that were approaching North Carolina and South Carolina, we wanted to do a little something to show our support. We decided to make cards for kids at an elementary school in North Carolina, hoping that our greetings would brighten their day. To help us get started, we brainstormed messages and pictures that would brighten our day if we were facing challenges. The cards turned out beautifully. They were popped in the mail on the weekend and will hopefully arrive soon. We've had an enjoyable first full week of learning and are looking forward to many more :)
Welcome Back to a New School Year!! We’ve only been back for a few days, but we can already tell that we’ve got a great group of motivated and curious kids. We’re looking forward to an exciting year of learning! This week we kicked off our new school year with some fun learning activities. One of them involved sharing details about our summer (data) in the form of a glyph (face). Each part of our glyph (face) represents different information. For example, our hair represents where we went this summer (our glyph shows hair is blue if we didn’t go anywhere, red if we stayed inside Canada and yellow if we went outside Canada) and our eyes represent a word to describe our summer (if our summer was fun our eyes are black, if it was uneventful our eyes are blue, if it was exciting our eyes are brown and if our summer was exhausting our eyes are green). Once our glyphs were completed and displayed, we walked around and made observations, looking for similarities and differences between the glyphs. We recorded those observations on cue cards and then shared with the class. It was great to see students so engaged in the activity and so willing to think critically. LEARNING INTENTION: I can represent data in a glyph CRITERIA:
Another one of this week’s activities involved reading the children’s book Only One You by Linda Kraus. Only One You is a story about a mother and father fish sharing their wisdom and important life lessons with their son as he heads off to explore the world. After reading the story and having a great discussion about the fish’s character as well as important parts of a story (including a beginning, middle and end), we created our own characters and then captured our stories on iPads! We had loads of fun in the process!! Here's one of our stories: It’s been a great week being back to school, settling into our routine and building a community of grade four learners. We are looking forward to an exciting year ahead :)
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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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