September 7 - 10, 2021
September 7 - 10, 2021
Embedded Files
What a great first week back! Here is some of what are learning together ...
What a great first week back! Here is some of what are learning together ...
Grape Crusher Challenge
Grape Crusher Challenge
Throughout the year we will be doing design & tech challenges that are not only fun and engaging hands-on activities, but where we learn specific skills.
The purpose of this challenge is to :
practise making quantitative and qualitative observations
collaborate effectively
communicate results clearly
Students were given 2 pieces of paper, a drinking straw and some masking tape and needed to design and build a device that would protect 10 or more grapes from being crushed! At first, many students said, "this is impossible!". But once they got started, they realized that, Impossible is Nothing (in the words of the great Muhammad Ali).
These images show the design/build process as well as the device measurement process.
We had a lot of fun dropping the lever of the grape crusher to see how well their devices worked!
Graphing Task
Graphing Task
Today we collected data from everyone in the class to see if there is a relationship between height, arm span and head circumference. We had a discussion about what type of graph would be best to determine if there was a relationship between the 3 types of measurements.
We also discussed the criteria for creating graphs -- we'll use these criteria all year.
Glyphs
Glyphs
A glyph is a symbol or figure whose parts represent information. For example, a "square" head represents a girl and a "round" head represents a boy. The number of hairs represents how many siblings we have. The shape of the mouth represents our favourite subject, etc. (You can see some of the criteria in the top photo).
These glyphs represent some of the students in our class. There are more to come!
What is Your Purpose?
What is Your Purpose?
I am always thinking about ways to encourage students to be more self-motivated. It strikes me as kind of ironic that most students come to school each day waiting for a teacher to tell them what to do ... yet most students HATE being told what to do!
Daniel Pink wrote a fabulous book called Drive in which he unpacked an idea he called "motivation 3.0". His research proved that intrinsic motivation (or what we call independent or self-directed learning in elementary school), is based on 3 things: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose. These will be "big ideas" for us this year. You can read an excellent summary of Daniel Pink's ideas here and an article I wrote about purpose here. You can also read an article I wrote about mastery here,
This year, we will start every day with a clear purpose for learning. Each student will be responsible for linking the learning purpose to their own purpose for being at school. And we reflected on our own unique purpose for being at school and wrote this in our Reflection Journals.
It is such a gift to be back learning in person at Dewitt Carter! I hope a renewed appreciation of how lucky we all are and a clear statement of purpose every day will help us focus on persevering through all the challenges we face this year.
DragonQuest
DragonQuest
This program is new to Dewitt Carter!
The purpose of DragonQuest is to help students become independent, responsible and accountable learners. These are skills and habits of mind that are critical to academic success.
When students meet the following criteria, they earn the privilege of 80 minutes of independent learning time:
they have attended at least 90% of all classes
they have maintained complete and organized notes
they have completed and handed in assigned work in all classes (including French)
assigned work meets or exceeds expectations
If students have any incomplete work, they will use DragonQuest time to work with me in class to get caught up.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom
Our Google Classroom is an amazing resource!
Every student has access to subject notes, assignments, review problems and a variety of digital resources that are organized in specific subject files.
This means that there are NO excuses for having incomplete notes or misplacing an assignment rubric! It's all there in the Google Classroom!
Google Tasks
Google Tasks
Students will be using Google Tasks every day to keep track of assignments and organize their work. This is a terrific digital organizer that is linked directly to each student's Google drive. Students with mobile devices may choose to load Tasks on their device, or they can use school Chrome books. There is also an option for students to share their Taskboard with parents.
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