We celebrated International Dot Day this week, a celebration of creativity based on Peter H. Reynolds’ book The Dot. In the story, the main character Vashti doesn’t think she’s very good at art. Her teacher encourages her to trust herself and to “make her mark” with a simple dot on a piece of paper. The next week when Vashti sees her art framed on display at her teacher’s desk, her creative spark is ignited. Vashti feels inspired to explore and create more masterpieces and by the end of the story we see Vashti sharing her art with others. 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. Speaking of picture books, we had some great discussions after reading We Live Here: From the Mountains to the Sea, a non-fiction Indigenous picture book. Although it is a book intended for a younger audience, reading it and learning about First Nations’ relationship to land was an excellent way to build our background knowledge. We then began an exploration of BC’s natural resources, including agriculture, fishery, forestry and mining, and their importance to BC’s economy. But what happens when the pursuit of those valuable resources conflicts with the values of Indigenous peoples? We were left with lots of “wonderings” and are looking forward to exploring further and finding answers to our questions. Part of our Math learning involves weekly stations. These stations involve different hands-on activities, such as games and problem-solving tasks, that reinforce new concepts and are fun at the same time! This week we began working with patterns so our stations included using blocks to make different patterns, rolling dice to determine pattern rules and looking for patterns and pattern rules in Pascal’s Triangle. The open-endedness of the station activities allows for all learners to be successful. We got started with the Daily 5 this week by introducing the first Daily 5 choice “Read to Self.” Although reading to ourselves sounds easy, we live in a world with so many distractions that sometimes it’s hard for us to stay focused! We had a discussion about our need to build stamina while reading independently and we took the time to model inappropriate and appropriate behaviour while Reading to Self. We also came up with criteria to guide us and then we were set to get started. We timed how long we could all stay focused as a group and we made it 57 seconds! But our second attempt lasted for over 2 minutes! Hopefully next week we can make it even longer. A great opportunity for a class goal :)
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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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