Class Christmas Concert

Here are a few pictures from our class Christmas Concert. Like all presentations, this was entirely student-led. All I did was sit back and enjoy the show :-)

Great job everyone!

Some of my boys singing "Let it go"

Sugar Plum Fairy

Our class successfully pulled off their first class production - The Sugar Plum Fairy. Good job to everyone involved and special thanks to Niruja for taking the lead in coordinating the play, to Humza for making the props and to Navtaj for coordinating our class Christmas concert. You are ALL incredibly talented students! I am so thankful for all of you!

The class play was great! Good acting everyone!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Happy Holidays from my class to you!

My students and I had fun in the last few weeks of school decorating our classroom and our two Christmas trees! One parent brought in a HUGE real Christmas tree much to the students' delight and another parent sent in an artificial tree on loan to the class. Thanks to you both!

In the New Year we will be working on our "Thankful Tree" so stay tuned for the pictures that will be posted. 

Our huge Christmas tree!

Link to Prime Radicals

Link to check out other Prime Radicals episodes

www.tvokids.com/shows/primeradicals

Real life connections in Math

Today's Math class on Area was INTERESTING and a nice way to connect the lesson to a real life scenario. After taking up the homework, the students watched an episode of TVO'S Prime Radicals (Bunnies OK Corral). The episode looked at how to calculate perimeter and area in order to construct a corral for bunnies that escaped. Here's a summary of the episode:

Uncle Norm's neighbor Mrs. Pearplum's prized bunnies have escaped! The Rads need to find a way to help her build a better bunny corral... but what shape should it be so they have the most space using just the amount of fencing she already has? The Rads visit a local hobby farm to learn how perimeter and area work together to create the best bunny corral. Perimeter and area are important real-world concepts in their own right, and their relationship certainly is no less important. This relationship can be intuitively challenging. For example, it is not uncommon for students and even adults to believe-at least at first thought-that a fixed perimeter, such as a given amount of concrete curbing, yields the same area no matter how you shape it into a closed figure. In this episode, the focus is on the relationship between perimeter (a one-dimensional measure of length) and area (a two-dimensional measure of space). The purpose of the episode is to illustrate that 2D shapes having the same area can have different perimeters by using the real world context of construction.

Students enjoyed the part about how to make Pentomino puzzles.

Science lesson on Structures

Monday's lesson on Structures was a HUGE hit with the students! They already love the hands-on, practical nature of the Unit. After discussing the different types of structures (man made structures - bridges, buildings, cupboards etc / natural structures - reefs, mountains etc. / animal structures - beavers dam, rabbit's burrow etc. / insect structures - spider webs, anthills, beehives etc.) we talked about the different forces that act on these structures (gravity, mass, vehicles, people etc)

Next, it was time to get the students in groups to work collaboratively to build a structure, 21 cm from the top of the desk, using only the following materials : 6 sheets of paper, 4 pencils, scotch tape. The students were told that the structures would then be given a strength test using books. The load of the books would act as a force on the paper structure therefore attention had to be made to the shape. Students were free to come up with whatever design they could create but they were also given the option to fold the paper into rectangular prisms, triangular prisms or cylindrical prisms.

Here are some pictures of the challenge!

Look at the structure in this picture but also take a look at the books at the forefront. My students independently went to the library to borrow books on structures (already!)