February is just zipping by!

This month has been a whirlwind as students began the month wrapping up History with a Mindomo assignment comparing past and present conflicts, as well as a Science project on an ergonomic structure. Just yesterday, students went home with their report cards, showing the results of their hard work since September. Today they completed their first Math unit test on integers for term two. This month we also completed two Black History related activities related to Martin Luther King Jr and women of perseverance. Since today was Digital Learning Day (but we were already busy with a Geography globe activity and a Science lab on mixtures), we will be recognizing #DLD tomorrow with a reading activity at newsela.com, blogging at kidblog.org, beginning the creation of a virtual art gallery with Google Slides, and continuing our discussions about Internet Literacy.

Moving on to Geography

History was fun, especially holding artifacts from the time period of the War of 1812 in our hands, but it's now time to move on to Geography. Our class was selected by Canadian Geographic to learn about geography using a giant floor map. We shared our time on January 17 with other classes from the school and here's a pick of some interactive activities we did.

Form and Function with Structures

A month later...students were challenged with taking an every day object and making it more ergonomic...and these are their creations!



Just before the Christmas Break, students were divided into teams for various STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) challenges. Below are some of their structures they built.

  

Well...that just flew by!

Before the Christmas break, I challenged the class to answer a question, and this is one response...

One week left

With the unusual cold weather these past two days, students have been kept indoors during recess time. Saturday's expected snowfall will definitely confirm winter's arrival. In these last few days, many activities have been planned both school-wide and within the classroom - class party and dance on Friday! However, there is still a Science test on Tuesday and a Patterning unit test on Wednesday. For the last two days, we will focus on Science structural building challenges and completing chapter work for the graphic novel study.

Snow Day #2 ...and another pattern problem!

Last Tuesday's snow day was mild in comparison to this morning. As you can tell from above, this is what I woke up to and how the drive in to the school went.
Last night I saw a tweet where a Toronto teacher uploaded a video on youtube about a patterning challenge involving snow. The 7 of us who did make it into class today took up the challenge, and here is the result of our work.

HOUR OF CODE

What is the Hour of Code?

The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts. (https://hourofcode.com/ca)

Our Class will be participating in coding activities Thursday and Friday morning this week, exploring what is code and how to code.