Grade 7s have been learning about natural selection – also known as survival of the fittest. We’ve discovered that in order to survive and produce more offspring, organisms need to adapt. Adaptation is a change in the organism’s body or behaviour such as developing a thicker coat to protect themselves from the cold or learning to defend themselves against predators. We all chose a specific species and we gathered information about how that species has evolved over time. We discovered that pandas have developed stronger stomachs to digest a diet of primarily bamboo and polar bears now have shorter legs to better retain heat in cold weather. One of our tasks was also to create a realistic adaptation that our species could go through in order to better survive challenges that they face. Photo credit: By National Human Genome Research Institute's Talking Glossary, via Wikimedia Commons While grade 7s were busy researching natural selection, grade 6s have been busy learning about the internal body systems that are needed for survival. We’ve focused on the nervous system – and have learned that it’s a very complex body system! Humans, mammals, birds and all other vertebrates have a brain and a spinal cord. Human brains have much larger frontal lobes than those of animals so are capable of higher-level functions, such as abstract thinking, logic, planning and self-control. We’re more than half way through our class novel, Pax, and have had some good discussions about the characters and themes. One of the main themes is the damaging impact of war. From Pax’s perspective we’re seeing the damage that war has on the environment whereas Peter himself is realizing the impact of war on people – both physically and emotionally. Vola, one of the characters, shares her personal experience as a medic in the war. She explains that ”you’re there to kill people. Kill or be killed – that’s the contract in war” (p.148). Peter sees how Vola was deeply impacted by her experience. The damaging impact of war allowed for good class discussion. To extend our thinking we reflected on a quote from Vola and shared our thinking on a virtual wall called Padlet: https://padlet.com/howden_b/3wd087g5liv3 This week we got to share our learning with our parents during student-led conferences. It was a perfect opportunity to reflect on our goals and the successes/challenges we’ve had with meeting those goals. We also shared our progress in the Core Competencies, including Thinking, Communication, Personal & Social Responsibilities.
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In PE we’ve been working on building our skills in volleyball by learning more about the fundamental techniques of serving, bumping and volleying. After reviewing how to serve a ball and taking some time to practice, we captured videos of us serving. Those videos gave us quick visual feedback that guided us as we set goals to improve. "I think that to improve my serve I should hit with my wrist and I should try to stand in the direction that I want my serve to go". "I realized that I am letting go of the ball too early, and throwing it into the air before a hit it, which makes me lose a lot of control. I should also take a step when I serve, because the power comes from my legs". "To improve my serve, I have to position my body properly and position my arms as properly as well." "I think I need to work on the proper form when I serve. First of all, my feet were crooked after I finished my serve. I need to work on that. I also need to work on not swinging my arm. I also didn't bend my knees and so I didn't get much power in my serves. I did well on my follow through with my feet because I took a step". We’ve been learning lots about mental well-being by watching several Bell Let’s Talk videos that promote awareness and understanding of mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. The videos describe helpful strategies to maintain our own mental well-being and provides suggestions on how to support others. We will continue to explore mental health in the coming weeks as we learn more about ourselves and what helps us personally manage stress.
Our lollipop sale was a huge success! We raised over $200 for United Nations Refugee Agency Canada!! It was a short but busy week in division 2!
We got started by giving our base-ten blocks values because we use them to represent decimals now, rather than whole numbers. Our flats (previously hundreds) now represent a whole number, a rod represents one tenth and a unit represents one hundredth. We then worked on creating area models (rectangles) to represent our equations. For an equation such as 1.3 x 1.2, we need to represent the factor 1.3 with one flat and three rods. That becomes our “length” in our rectangle. We then build on 1.3 by focusing on the width. We add two rods. We then need to use units to fill in the rectangle. In order to find the product, we need to regroup our base-10 blocks. We end up with one flat, five rods and six units, so our product is 1.56. We take it one step further with equations such as 0.3 x 0.4. Both numbers are less than one, so we need to use units to represent our equation. We end up with 12 units – which we regroup for one rod and 2 units. That gives us 12 hundredths – which is less than both factors in our equation. That’s not what we would have expected because we are used to multiplication equations resulting in larger numbers! That is not the case when multiplying numbers that are less than one. And that’s hard to wrap our brains around!
We also used critical thinking when reflecting on the goals that we set back in September. We provided an update on our progress in a video recording. Here was our criteria:
This week we did an engineering design challenge that required us to build a tower to hold a suspended cup. Design challenges involved brainstorming ideas, designing a prototype, revising the prototype, sharing what we created and reflecting on the process. To get us started, we were given learning intentions and criteria and a list of supplies that we could use to build. Learning Intention: We will use our critical and creative thinking skills to build a structure that holds suspended weight Criteria:
And then it was time to be creative! We worked collaboratively to brainstorm and discuss many different ideas before settling on something specific. Once we had drafted a plan, we started building. Although many of us had a clear vision of what we wanted to build, we had to go back and revise our plan because we had overlooked something: our structure needed to hold suspended weight. That was challenging! We had to be open-minded to come up with solutions. We needed to make sure our tower was balanced and had support, and we needed to figure out a way to suspend weight. When we had finished building it was lots of fun sharing what we had created! But next came the real challenge! We had to see how well our structures could manage additional weight before toppling, so we added Halloween candy to our suspended cups. Some of our structures were so strong that they didn’t topple! It was a great opportunity to challenge our thinking. We also had a presentation from Shift Education about healthy relationships. We all identified and shared what we look for in a friend, such as loyalty, honesty and kindness, and we shared stories about how our friends support us. We continued our conversation about relationships and emotions when we participated in classroom role-playing activities that included different emotions. Although our reactions in our role-playing weren’t totally realistic, with practice they should become more natural. It’s important for us to know what we look for in a friend, and we need to develop strategies to maintain those healthy relationships. We’ll be doing lots of that in the weeks and months 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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