January 8th, 2021
Happy New Year! Thank you so much for your support of your child this week during online learning. We made it through our first week together and although we are somewhat disappointed that we won't be going back on Monday, please know that I am doing everything that I can to keep the learning going. It's definitely a different experience for us all.
This week we started off learning about Social Issues and their impact on people and the world. We each have been researching an issue of interest and answering questions (the 5Ws and how) about our issue to understand it on a deeper level. From there, we started to plan out a graphic text that we will be writing - using Pixton - with the goal of creating awareness about the issue and helping others to understand the impact. On Monday, I will be sending out password information for students to access their Pixton accounts.
This learning in Literacy ties into our learning in Social Studies about government. This week we learned that there are 3 levels of government - Federal, Provincial, and Municipal. Students were tasked with learning about the responsibilities each of these groups has in terms of services to communities. We did some learning online as well as in Google Slides and will continue to learn about the role of government in society.
In Math, we took some time reflecting on the differences between needs and wants and learned about balancing and adjusting a budget through lessons with me and in IXL. We also learned a little about budgets with Enzo and life in the Gig Economy, driving Uber. At the end of the week, students were tasked with evaluating purchases using different payment types. They learned about processing fees and interest. On Monday, we will be continuing this work and we may have a task or quiz next week to check for understanding.
In Science, we started a new unit on Matter and Energy. Students were given an online notebook with links to articles and videos as well as websites. This week we learned that everything is made up of matter - molecules that combine to create everything in life. We also learned that there are 3 states of matter that we see here on earth - solids, liquids, and gases. We also learned that there is another state - plasma - that refers to stars and the sun. We started to learn about some of the properties - boiling points, melting points, the spacing of molecules. This is all learning that we will be continuing again next week.
In Physical Education, we had the chance to participate in challenges and also started creating short videos or workouts that we will be incorporating during our day to break up some of our time sitting down, and on the screen.
In Visual Arts today, we took some time to create vision boards. Students were asked to think about 4 areas - personal, academic, joy, and family - and to add images, creating a collage to speak to what they wish to cultivate in 2021. It was really great to see and hear all of the great things that bring students joy and what they look forward to this year. We didn't quite get the chance to finish sharing all of them and we will be continuing to share on Monday.
We ended today with suggestions on what we should stop, start, and continue as we will be having 2 more weeks online. I asked students to justify their ideas and hope to incorporate these in next week's learning. Next week we will have a shorter week as Friday is a P.A. Day.
Have a safe and restful weekend!