Narrative-Writing - "Little Chick's Big Adventure"

Over the past couple of weeks, we have learned about the elements of a narrative, practised using conventions for dialogue, learned to recognize and correct run-on sentences and written two short narratives based on images.

Now we are writing a narrative based on 11 images of Little Chick. All the images are posted in the Google classroom.

When they are written and edited, we hope to publish our narratives as picture books and share them with primary and junior students at Dewitt.

Area of Circles Investigation

Today we discovered how we could use what we already understand about the formula for area of a parallelogram and the relationship between circumference and diameter to determine the formula for area of a circle! There were some really amazing questions and insights that people shared after the investigation.

You can click here to see a video that shows what we did in class. And you can click here to hear the Circle Song (beware ... it's a real ear worm!)

World War I from a Canadian Perspective

We have started reading about World War I with a particular focus on the role of Canadians. Today we learned about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the events that led Germany, Russia, Great Britain and Canada to join the conflict.

We discussed the significance of the battle at Vimy Ridge. To thank Canadians, France gave Canada land on Vimy Ridge where a spectacular monument was erected to commemorate the battle and soldiers who died.

Radius, Diameter & Circumference Investigation

Today we investigated the relationship between diameter and circumference of circles. We started by predicting how many times the diameter would "fit" around the circumference (see images). Then, we used a variety of circular objects to measure the diameter and circumference. About 15 minutes into the investigation, Ava and May announced that they thought there was a pattern! As it turns out, what we discovered during the investigation is the value of pi, 3.14. If you take the circumference and divide it by the diameter, you get 3.14!

Over the next few days, we will practise solving problems related to diameter, radius and circumference (problems are attached in our Google classroom).

Calculating Area of Complex Shapes

We reviewed the difference between linear and area measurements and developed the formula to calculate area of all the shapes you see in the image to the right. And trapezoids too! Later in the week, we will be investigating the properties of circles.

How would you calculate the area of this complex shape?

Writing Great Dialogue

Writing great dialogue depends a lot on creating great characters. Once you have a good idea of your character, you need to make sure that he or she has a distinctive speaking style. We also realized that quirky characters like Dory from "Finding Nemo", Donkey from the "Shrek" movies or "Olaf" from Frozen are all very engaging characters because their writers gave them unique voices.

Our task is to create 2 characters and write and perform a 5-minute dialogue between them.