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!)

New Science Unit

 New Science Unit - Forces acting on Structures and Mechanisms

In this unit students will develop an understanding of forces by designing and building mechanical devices and structures. They will identify the forces acting on and within structures and mechanisms and give simple descriptions of the forces. Students will also examine the effects of forces from natural phenomena on society and the environment.

Sounds interesting, right? I'm ready to begin! We're off to another Science adventure!

Drama Presentations

Last week's drama presentations culminated a wonderful cross-curricular activity that spanned a few weeks. In Literacy class the students looked at identifying Facts and Opinions. They examined print and video advertisements to also identify several advertising techniques (i.e. exaggerated claims, giveaway promotions, catchy jingles etc.). This tied in nicely with Health class and the whole unit on Healthy Eating and reading food labels. We questioned as a class the use of certain gimmicks to lure targeted consumers to buy certain products (mainly food) and whether these so-called 'nutritious' products were actually living up to the claims that were made in the ads. For Drama, the students had to work in groups to create a product, a name for the product and a slogan and then use some of the advertising techniques that were discussed in class to try and promote the product to would be consumers. The result, of course, was AMAZING! Take a look!