Hello GAA Students and Parents,

I hope your 2020-2021 school year has started well. The feedback that we have received has been overwhelmingly positive. Our goal was to take the lessons from the end of last school year as well as the feedback students and parents gave us and apply it to our approach this year. We aimed at more consistency across grade levels and across disciplines. We hope that you have noticed our efforts and are happy with the results.

We encourage you to communicate with us frequently. From our side, we will provide you with surveys periodically throughout the year. We will keep the surveys short and focused because we know that you receive many surveys in the course of a school year. I encourage you to take the time to fill them out. Your feedback directly impacts our practices. While we cannot give every student and every family exactly what they want, we will work to address themes that show themselves in the survey feedback. Our most recent survey was sent to families on Wednesday, 9 September. Please look in your email.

Since we are at the beginning of the year, I want to emphasize the importance of relationships in a school. Please watch below video:

We are here for all students to learn. We want to partner with you in order to have the best possible outcomes. We hope that you are staying safe during this time, but also, we hope you are taking care of all your needs as well. Currently, our world is more challenging than usual. However, we know that community can help us face any challenge. Let us invest and strengthen our community in order to thrive and be successful during this time. Let’s have a great year!

1. Sincerely,

Kain Klinkhammer

Secondary Principal

Hello GAA!!!

This is Mr. Plasil from the Math Department.

Here is a question for you. Add the numbers 2 and 3. Take the number you get and walk that many circles around the table in front of you, or around the chair you are sitting on, or around the car you just got out of. Now close your eyes and describe what you see.

My guess is that you saw some weird circles or stars, because you are not used to moving that much during the pandemic. After doing the above exercise most people report that they saw nothing at all, everything was dark after they closed their eyes.

The good news is that we are no longer going to keep children in the dark in math classes. We are changing our way of teaching mathematics at GAA.

Each unit of study will be introduced through an anchor problem, one showing how the math taught in the unit is actually used when applied to a real world scenario. Students will know right from the start of the unit what they will be able to do with this information when they successfully finish the unit.

A second anchor problem will be used as a part of the unit’s evaluation. To aid modeling, teachers and students will be learning to maximize the potential of the available technology, such as graphing calculators and online graphing software. These will no longer be used to do simple arithmetic only. Students will use technology to create mathematical models that describe the real world and to analyze and interpret these models. Speaking of interpretation...

...the second main focus of the year is on the Communicating Reasoning (CR) reportable standard. Students will be asked to explain in words the meaning behind the strange symbols used in math. Every equation is a story, an “egyptian hieroglyph” waiting to be translated. Here is an example. “Explain, in words, the meaning of each symbol in the following equation, then create a full sentence to pass on the meaning to your neighbor: y = f(x).”

“But wait Mr. Plasil, are you saying that my children will be asked to write sentences and paragraphs in their math classes?” Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. In doing so, not only will students find out for themselves whether they really know the math they are learning, they will also increase their English vocabulary and writing skills.

We also aim to enrich the ways students are evaluated, with more project based assessments and portfolio based assessments.

We are committed to follow the best educational practices and new pedagogical research that tells us that schools need to change the way our amazing, exciting, wonderful subject is best taught.

You can reach me at f.plasil_gaa@gemsedu.com.

Frantisek Plasil, Math HoD

Welcome to GAA Secondary Library website! Your access to the library collection, research databases, learning resources and more!

SECONDARY LIBRARY WEBSITE

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE GAA EVENTS CALENDAR

(please note, updated regularly)