Minor Details - September 20

September 20 - 24, 2021

DragonQuest One

Today was our first DragonQuest day!

Students who were up to date on all work were able to choose an independent project. Other students were able to get extra help to complete their work in class.

Is Clean Water a Human Right?

As part of our science unit on water systems, students are preparing for a class discussion today on whether we should pay for water or whether clean water is a human right. They have read several articles to help them understand the issues (click here and here to see a couple of the articles we read).

In addition to understanding water issues on Earth, the other purposes of this assignment are to:

learn how to use research to create fact-based arguments
practise oral presentation skills
practise attentive listening skills

It will be really interesting to hear students' perspectives on this issue.

Understanding Pattern Rules

Over the past few days, we have been investigating linear growing patterns and determining the pattern rule that represents the pattern.

One of the success strategies that we use in class is something we call an "entry card". An entry card gives students the opportunity to answer questions based on content from the previous day to make sure they "get it". We discuss solutions immediately so students have a clear idea of what they "get" and what they still need to learn.

Here is the entry card from today. Please take time to discuss this problem and what they understand. It's so important that if there are things students don't understand, that they take initiative to ask questions, seek extra help and do more practice right away.

Excellent Procedural Instructions

We've all experienced terrible instructions!

My son makes amazing Pad Thai and I asked for his recipe. In fairness, the image of his recipe here was for his use only. But we used it to help us unpack the criteria that make excellent instructions.

Matthew and Trinity were good sports today as we practised giving instructions to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Matthew couldn't see what I was doing and forgot to tell me to take the bread and cheese out of the packages! Here is a pic of what happened after his instructions! After listening to Matthew's instructions, Trinity and the class created much better instructions.

Students have 2 tasks. Today they are using the criteria we developed to write their own instructions for grilled cheese sandwiches. You can see Soren's instructions in the picture. Tomorrow they will be writing instructions for an original game they create.

We also gave my son feedback on how to improve his recipe based on our criteria!

Autumnal Equinox

Today's blog post is written by William Laur

The Autumnal Equinox is marked on September 22 2021. This year it will take place at 3:21 p.m. ETD. After this time the sun will start to rise later and set earlier for those in the Northern Hemisphere. Although the people in the Southern Hemisphere actually refer to the Spring Equinox. This is a sign that the days will start to get longer instead of them getting shorter.

The Equinox date can vary throughout the 21-24 of September. In the West they use a different calendar called the “Gregorian calendar”. It defines a year as 365 days, or the amount of time it will take to rotate the Earth around the sun. In reality the Earth takes 365.25 days to fully rotate around the sun. This would mean that the September Equinox will actually be six hours later compared to the previous year. After including leap years into the picture in a way it resets the date of the event.

The Autumnal Equinox can actually have a chance of introducing the Aurora Borealis also known as the “Northern Lights”. Auroras are caused by the collision of the solar winds with Earth's magnetic field. Solar Winds are different particles of plasma escaping the sun into space. These particles eventually release photons of different wavelengths which will let you clearly see the different colors of the Aurora in the sky.

The Celebration the Autumnal Equinox is important to my people. Members and volunteers of “The Druid Order of London” host a ceremony on Primrose Hill to celebrate the Autumnal Equinox. The Druid Order of London, which was found in Oxford in 1245. It has been hosting the Autumn Equinox ceremony on Primrose Hill since 1717.

Before reading this article I had zero knowledge about the Autumnal Equinox, after reading and writing these paragraphs I really understand it more and I hope you do as well!

University of Waterloo Problem of the Week

Every week the University of Waterloo POTW team creates a challenging math problem that is directly aligned with the grade 7/8 math curriculum.

We are developing our math problem-solving skills, our social-emotional learning skills and paraphrasing skills by working with a partner to clearly understand the problem before solving it. As Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions".

Here was the problem we solved. We learned that having actual dice in front of us really helped us visualize the problem. Jersey and Josh discovered that the centre die in the image can be rotated around as long as the side"s adjacent to the dice on the left and right add up to 9. This was an important observation because it proved that the centre die could have different dots on the top!

Can you find the number of dots on face C?

Federal Election Presentations

After doing extensive research on each of the 6 political party's platforms on several issues from child care, COVID recovery, housing, guns, foreign affairs etc, we each wrote a paragraph explaining which party we are most closely aligned with. We used the criteria for paragraph-writing to support our thoughts with specific evidence.

Each student had an opportunity to do a short oral presentation explaining which party they would choose if they were able to vote. Many students gave very convincing presentations!

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