Over the past few weeks we’ve been working on sharing our DNA (dreams, needs and abilities). It’s been a great way to get to know each other and to make new connections. Some of us noticed common characteristics – that we need time with our friends or a good sleep at night – or that we have similar dreams. It makes us want to find out more about each other – a great start to building new relationships in our classroom. Inspired by @MrsMacsKinders To get us started thinking about and understanding the BC curriculum’s Core Competencies, we did a simple brainstorming activity on what they mean to us. Our task was to work collaboratively to share and record our understanding of the core competencies. We could use pictures or words to answer three questions: what are the core competencies? How do we use them? And why are they important? We were a bit unsure to begin with, but once a few ideas were shared, we grew more comfortable with the activity. After spending time discussing and remembering activities from last year, we used markers to record our ideas on chart paper. We then shared our ideas with our classmates. September 30 is Orange Shirt Day so we spent time this week discussing its significance and the impact of residential schools on Indigenous communities. In preparation for reading When I Was Eight by Christy Jordan-Fenton & Margret Pokiak-Fenton we did a word sort vocabulary activity to help increase our understanding of the story. Although many of us had heard the story before, it still resonated with us. The story led to a discussion about the motto “Every Child Matters” and an orange shirt picture activity. 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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We celebrated International Dot Day this week, a celebration of creativity based on Peter H. Reynolds’ book The Dot. The story has a great message about all of us being able to “make a mark” on the world, whether that be creating art or coming up with new and innovative ideas. To celebrate Dot Day, we made our own masterpieces that included dots. It was a lot of creative fun!! After being introduced to “inquiry” this week and learning what makes a good question, we made observations while exploring the local ecosystem that surrounds our school. Our criteria for good inquiry questions:
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. This discussion 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. Ever heard of “Make Ten”? It’s a great Mental Math strategy that helps us add and subtract more quickly. It helps us understand place value and the relationships between numbers. To practise, we worked with dice and/or a deck of cards and used mental math to find the sum. This week also included the Terry Fox Run. We spent time in class sharing what we already knew about Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope and making connections to his story. We were lucky that the weather worked in our favour when it was time to run. It was a great week of learning in division 14 :)
Welcome Back to a New School Year!! We’ve not been back for long, but we can already tell that we’ve got a great group of motivated and curious kids. Since moving into our permanent class, we’ve been busy getting to know each other and building our classroom community. We worked together to brainstorm different values that are important to us in the classroom and we narrowed down our list to four values that will guide us throughout the year – respect for each other, treating others the way we want to be treated, sharing & caring for others and good manners. Several of us made posters for our wall so that we have visual reminders. We will refer to those values throughout the year and will be reminded of their importance :) One this week’s activities 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 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:
This week also included several different STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) activities that involved lots of problem-solving, teamwork and perseverance. One of the activities involved making a tower to hold a stuffed animal and another involved building a LEGO sailboat for Max in Where the Wild Things Are. We loved the challenges and are looking forward to more! It was a great week of learning in division 14!
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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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