September 2019

September 6th, 2019

Welcome back to school! Who would believe that the first week of school is already finished? What a week it has been!

I love starting off the year listening to students. As such, on Tuesday we did a 7 Questions activity where students were given prompts and asked to share about their experiences with school, what they needed to succeed and what our classroom community should look like, feel like and sound like. I was blown away by some of the amazing responses that were given. I really am so grateful to have this opportunity to work with the students in room 205 on making this year fantastic!

In Language this week, we have been taking the time to reflect on ourselves, our identities and experiences as we work towards building our classroom community. We did so by creating name tags for our tables that included symbols that are representative of who we are. Further, we started writing I Am From Poems, a creative way to start deeper conversations about parts of our lives and families as we work to share who we are with others in the classroom. We've got ourselves set up on our Chromebooks and in Google Classroom so we'll be continuing to get our poems ready to share during Curriculum Night on September 19th.

In Math, this week's focus was on learning to justify our mathematical thinking as well as discussing strategies for solving Math problems. We spent the first day taking a look at 4 shapes, patterns or numbers and trying to determine which one doesn't belong. In this activity, we realized that sometimes people approach Math problems from different perspectives and that great discussions begin when we share our thinking with others and collaborate to problem solve effectively. We've started to create a Math wall of strategies and will continue to add to it as we develop and utilize new strategies. Kaprekar was an Indian Mathematician who discovered that you could take any 4-digit number and with a few simple mathematical concepts, you could eventually determine a constant, no matter what 4-digit number you started with. On Thursday, we put this theory to the test and the "Ah, ha"s in the room told us that Kaprekar was right! Interested in learning more? Ask one of our fellow mathematicians in the class and they would be more than happy to explain it to you!

Health and Physical Education is in full swing! For the month of September, we will be playing collaborative games and reflecting on what "good" health really means. Students so far have started to reflect on the elements necessary to ensure we have good health and are considering aspects of physical and mental wellbeing. We will be continuing to have conversations about the decisions we make in implementing or not implementing these elements into our daily lives. 

The Elements of Design is where we began for Art this week. We briefly discussed the elements - line, space, shape and form, colour, texture and value - and started digging into line. To accompany our I Am From Poems, we've been working to create one-line portraits. That's right, using one line, we have to create a portrait of ourselves! The challenge has been met and there are some amazing portraits that will be on display during Curriculum Night. 

In Social Studies, the grade 4s have started to investigate the provinces and territories of Canada. This week has mainly been an opportunity for students to explore and share:

• What they already know about Canada.

• What they are interested in finding out about Canada.

• What sports, celebrations and activities are specific to which regions of Canada

• What resources are available in different regions of Canada.

Our investigation continues next week as we take a deeper look at specific provinces and territories. 

Design Thinking is a tool that I believe helps students to solve meaningful problems for themselves and others. Afterall, Designers are truly the problem solvers of the world. This week, we started our first design sprint of the year! Students identified a variety of problems that exist in our school, community or the world in general and we sorted them into different categories: social, environmental, health and safety, government, food and water, and other. We're each picking a topic that is of passion, importance or worry to us and we will start tackling that problem, developing a solution over the next few months. Interested in finding out more about some of the challenges identified? Take a few minutes and chat with one of our Designers.

The first week was a busy one and we've certainly accomplished a lot. Stay tuned to find out what we will be up to next week!

After some time with the image independently, students collaborated in their groups to determine as many patterns they could find. We began using colour, identifying the different patterns we saw and then were given fresh sheets to cut out and describe the patterns. When parents come to visit next week, they'll be able to see our work as we put them up on the wall to share our mathematical thinking with others. 

This week we also started our first unit, Data Management. On Wednesday, students were asked to complete a diagnostic quiz based on what they already knew about data management. We finished off the week given a task of being able to determine how we might visualize data in a clear and effective way. We've compiled an anchor chart to help guide us throughout the unit as we work towards creating easy and actionable ways of sorting data.

In Physical Education, we continued with our cooperative games and it was amazing to see how students gave their all, trying obstacle courses and working together to accomplish a task. Thursday I was blown away as students were cheering on their classmates towards completing the course and not solely focused on being the group to win. I look forward to us building our amazing classroom community where we support one another.

We continued with lines this week for Visual Arts. Our 1-line portraits are complete and students chose whether or not they wished to add colour to their portraits. The only trick was that they had to include either warm (red, orange, yellow) or cool (blue, green, purple) colours to express their current mood - either happy (warm) or sad (cool). There are so many interesting portraits and we look forward to showcasing them on Thursday at Curriculum Night. We're also creating names to add to our door using a series of different lines, slowing working to create this space our very own. 

In Health, we're close to being ready to create our life-sized posters with healthy tips. Stay tuned!

The grade 4s have been hard at work exploring Canada's provinces and territories. Through research, they're learning more about our amazing country which will help us as we dig in deeper to how we balance our needs and wants with the resources available.

We started reading buddies this week with Ms. Torres' class and it was fantastic to see the students in our class taken on an important role of being great models for the younger students; reading with them and checking for understanding. We'll continue to be reading together, once a week for the year. Our library has taken on a significant change! This week we had our first learning session in the library and book exchange will begin in October. Next week, the grade 5s will begin Social Studies with me and we will be learning about Government. We'll also be getting back to our design sprint as students explore more about their chosen issue or passion. 

There's a lot going on over the next few weeks at Sloane. Keep up-to-date by checking out our What's On At Sloane page. 

September 20th, 2019

It was fantastic to have the opportunity to meet many families at Curriculum night on Thursday. Thank you for taking the time to pop in and learn a little more about how we can partner for your child's success. If you were unable to make the evening, my door is always open. Please feel free to reach out and connect on the important information shared.  

This week was all about pushing ahead with some of the ideas and concepts that we have been working on. In Language, we had the opportunity to continue with narratives, this time thinking about perspectives and perception. Through the reading of the books Weird and Dare, students were introduced to the same story but with different perspectives. In Weird, they heard Luisa's story of being bullied. Through Dare, they heard Jayla's story of being a bystander. They were tasked with trying to write Sam's story, which happens to be that of the bully. They are due today and we look forward to reading each of the stories to try and understand this story from Sam's perspective. Friday we started an activity from the New York Times - What's Going On in This Picture. It's a great way to read images as we continue to work on justifying our thinking. Every week an image is posted and students will have the opportunity to take a closer look and try to determine what clues they can use to identify what is going on. At the end of the week, the New York Times shares the caption and also shares the story for the image. 

MADD Canada (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) was scheduled to have a presentation with us this week and unfortunately the date has been changed. Having the program in has been a great addition to our Health program and students have had the opportunity to make connections to both Math and Language. Our first lesson this week asked us to consider different scenarios and what solutions we might be able to come up with when faced with them. From "A stranger asks you to get in a car to show him where a street is" to "The toilet is overflowing at your home", students were asked to consider what they would do and come up with 2 effective solutions. Scenarios were selected based on the rolling of a number cube and they were asked to make predictions of which number they would roll the most; create a chart to capture their data; and to graph it. For our second lesson, students were asked to make MADD memes based on new learning about distracted or impaired driving. Using our media literacy skills and Google Drawings, students created some incredible memes about the importance of making sure that you aren't distracted while driving and the short-term effects of alcohol. They created amazing memes to demonstrate their new learning and you may have seen them up on the walls during Curriculum Night. 

In Math, we continued with Data Management. We're practicing to clearly display data through bar graphs. This week, we started creating our own surveys for our Design sprint in order to get more data on the issue that we are wanting to learn more about. Using Google Forms, students determined 3 questions that they thought would get to the heart of their issue and potential impacts or reasons for the issue. Next week we will begin interviewing potential users and starting to create User Personas as we try to understand our issue on an even deeper level. 

We ended the week with a bit of a challenge. Tasked with creating the fastest and farthest flying airplane, we made paper airplanes, grabbed our pencils and measuring tapes and headed outdoors. While the majority of our planes flew to a distance between 0 and 400 cm, there were some that flew far beyond - up to 1050cm! Today we finished up graphing our data. Students have been asked to bring in a graph from home by Monday. We will be taking some time next week to work on interpretations of these graphs. 

In Physical Education, we continued with co-operative games and on Friday we spent some time playing a game called Jake the Hungry Snake. This activity related to our Health unit where students had to determine which foods were healthy and which were not. For this game, if caught, students had to perform a number of activities for eating these foods. It was a fun way for us to start considering what we eat and trying to make healthier choices. We finished our life-sized posters with healthy tips and they are up on our walls. Next week, students will be tasked with identifying which of the tips they adhere to and why and the consequences of those choices. 

In Social Studies, the grade 5s began an activity around Canadian government. They were asked to complete a KWL chart based on what they know about, want they want to learn, and what they learned about the Canadian government. In order to fill in the third column, students were given a number of links to sites about the upcoming elections and how governments are formed. This is just the beginning of our unit. As it progresses, students will have the opportunity to investigate further, participate in an inquiry and we'll be having our own Student Vote here at Sloane. 

The grade 4s continued their investigations of the provinces and territories of Canada. They were asked to pick one province or territory and to determine the opportunities and challenges within that territory. We started the week by talking about food insecurity in northern Canada and although it's been a big task, we're reading up and learning more about different parts of our country.

In Visual Arts, we finished our name art and they have been added to our door for decoration. Next week we will be tackling value as our next element of design.

Orange Shirt Day is coming up on September 30th. Next week we will be spending time learning about the significance of the day and reconciliation.

September 27th, 2019

Where has September gone? Today we took some time to reflect on this month's learning and it certainly was a lot! We're growing together as a classroom community and getting back to our school routines. 

In Language this week, we focused on learning more about Orange Shirt Day and its significance especially in terms of reconciliation between non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples. Through texts (I Am Not A Number, Shi-Shi-etko and Shin-chi's Canoe) we learned more about the Residential School experiences of Indigenous children and families and the generational impacts. Students wondered, asked questions and through imagery, understood how authors and illustrators used colour to evoke emotions. On Friday during our assembly, a video was shown about Orange Shirt Day which is on Monday when we will be continuing our learning by digging into the Land Acknowledgement.

In Math, we continued our learning on clearly and effectively displaying data through bar graphs and we learned about stem-and-leaf plots. Through surveys about squats and jumping jacks, we used our own data to create bar graphs and stem-and-leaf plots. We also took some time to think about the interpretations of graphs. More than reiterating what we clearly see in the data, we're learning that our interpretations should call people to action. Next week, we will continue to be working on interpretations.

In Physical Education, we are working on catching and throwing as we prepare for an upcoming unit on Lacrosse. Based on a request from a student, I'll be learning alongside everyone, facilitating as students take the lead on our warm-ups and some of the skills for our physical education activities. 

In Health we sorted through a variety of foods, trying to determine which were healthy and which were not based on some of the nutritional facts given. After sorting the food items, students were tasked with trying to determine what each group of food had in common. This activity was challenging and next week we will be working on reading nutrition labels as we think about the choices we make in snacks and foods. 

Our Design Thinking projects are coming along slowly but surely. Students are currently surveying others to find out more information about their issue; trying to capture more details on the thoughts, attitudes and actions of potential users. Next week we will be working on how we take the data collected and turn them into User Personas to help us as we consider potential solutions. 

This week we had a visit from a Liberal MP and students were able to ask questions about issues of importance for the upcoming election. Next week we'll be talking and preparing for our own Student Vote here at Sloane. Students will be learning about the different political parties in order to make their own choice on who to elect. In Social Studies, the grade 4s continued to work on identifying the challenges and opportunities in the provinces and territories of Canada. This work is to prepare us for next week's task of designing a board game, not a bored game!

In Visual Arts we are learning about Value. This week we started to create a scale using one colour and have been using Querkles as a way to help show how to use different values of a colour to bring a piece of art to life. Stay tuned for some amazing animal posters!

 The grade 4s also started to think about something that is of passion to them as we will be working on Passion Projects in the last period of the day. 

With Spirit Days and the Terry Fox run, this week has been quite busy. Please remember to check out our classroom calendar to keep up-to-date on What's On at Sloane! Monday is Photo Day!