Week of Conferences & A Look Forward to Junior High - January 29th, 2021

 Week of Conferences & A Look Forward to Junior High 

January 29th, 2021

Happy Friday, Families!

Our week started online and finished at school. It's also a short week because we have parent/teacher conferences Thursday evening and Friday morning. If you were unable to book a time and would like to chat about how your child is doing, please email me and we can book a time to meet. 

Here's a breakdown of what we did this week:

ELA - We looked at a rubric and discussed how to write a strong summary with lots of supporting details and factual information. We then used an article about the phases of the moon to practice writing a detailed summary of the article. Our class is split into smaller groups and we read together once a week to work on decoding and comprehension strategies - next week we will be adding in weekly guided writing as well. 

Math - Students continued with multiplication review and were introduced to multiplication questions with decimals. We are continuing to review place values, especially place values that come after the decimal, and how understanding place value is key to solving complex math equations. We also started applying our understanding of multiplication to become entrepreneurs and started our own businesses! The kids will be responsible for coming up with a monthly budget for their business, brainstorming products or services to sell, and how to calculate their monthly profits. Their business ideas were so incredibly creative! We have everything from a steak and pizza restaurant to a skin-care product line for people with sensitive skin. Ask your child to tell you about the business they started!

Science - The class continued their projects on different space technologies that have been used to explore our solar system. A few students were able to present their project on Thursday afternoon and the rest will present on Monday.

Social Studies - To finish our unit on Canadian Government, we talked about the role that the Supreme Court of Canada plays in upholding justice and protecting the rights and freedoms promised to Canadians. We talked about the location of the Supreme Court and what sorts of cases have been appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Once we were back in the classroom, we held a mock trial where students were able to play the role of a judge, jury member, lawyer, victim or the accused to act out a pretend criminal trial case. 

Art - Students started an astronaut art project that shows what an astronaut in space might see through his visor. They are designing a wheel that will spin behind the visor to show time passing as the astronaut travels through space. Some students are going to show the changing moon phases and others are showing the astronaut travelling past the planets. We used charcoal to create a black background (my sincere apologies about the state of your child's clothes when they got home yesterday!) and will use paint to finish the project.

Gym/Music - In gym, we wrapped up our short and long-distance running unit by deciding the ultimate tag game as a class. In music, they are getting more practice with playing the handbells. 

On a more general note...

This second and last half of the grade 6 year is always a time to look forward to Junior High. Students have a lot of questions, and nerves, about changing schools, schedules, lockers, option classes, and all the other changes that come with moving on from elementary school. Myself and Miss Code will be working with our classes to help prepare them for the big change ahead and will be pushing the kids to show more organization, independence and responsibility in their learning so that the transition next year goes as smoothly as possible. We will also be assigning small amounts of homework to give them practice with communicating that they have homework with their families, setting aside time to complete their homework, and handing in work on time. 

Hello from Isolation!

 Hello from Isolation!

January 22nd, 2021

We made it one whole week at school before returning to online school! Here's some general reminders for parents/guardians and a summary of our week online:

Reminders - 

1. Our return to in-person learning at school is Wednesday, January 27th (next week). For Monday and Tuesday, we will continue to learn from home. I will send out a schedule for those 2 days this weekend. 
2. Please send in your Alex Bus dental forms on Wednesday next week. My understanding is that they are expecting our forms to be late and the appointments will be booked for our class on Feb 1st. If I hear otherwise, I will let you know via school messenger. 
3. School Conferences are Thursday evening and Friday morning next week. Please book your conference time online. All appointments are 15 minutes long and done virtually. If your child has an IPP, I suggest booking 2 time slots back to back if any are available so that we can also discuss their IPP. 

What we did this week - 

Guided Reading: Guided reading this week was not the same as it usually is, since our books were at school. Instead each group used a site called Readworks and read about a different topic. Then answered questions about what they just read. Purple group did it on Hiroshima’s paper cranes, and if you make a thousand you get a wish. Yellow group read about trees. The rest of the groups, Orange, Blue, and Green read an article on Space Junk, and how it’s a problem. We made many connections to our science topics about famous space missions and technologies.

Writing: This week for writing, we did something called life-writing. Life writing is a personal response that can range from auto-biographies to personal essays. We had two topics to choose from everyday, and then wrote about them. On Monday and Tuesday, we did a response to a question, on Wednesday we wrote either a love letter or a break up letter to a subject in school. Finally, on Thursday, we wrote a personal essay on either what does it mean to be a good human or your definition of love.

Math: We did math reviews to see what we knew about the 4 math operations. We did addition with decimals, subtraction with decimals, 2 by 2 digit multiplication, and long division.

Social Studies: We played a jeopardy game to review the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the three levels of Canadian Government. We also tuned in to watch a small portion of Joe Biden's Inauguration on Jan 20th and listened to part of his speech. We have been following the end of the election process in the US to keep up with current events.

Science: This week in science we're working on a project about a space mission or piece of technology. We got to choose from topics like the Mars Rover, Challenger Mission, the Apollo Mission, and the Cassini probe and worked with a small group to find valid resources of information. Each member focused on a different question and collected notes and artifacts. For example, if you were on the SpaceX group, maybe your question would be “What's the goal of spaceX?” and then on your slide you would explain everything about what SpaceX is trying to accomplish.

Gym:  For this week’s gym we did a 30 minute video of a cardio Kickboxing workout, standing cardio and a gentle yoga flow. On Monday we did gym with Ms. Mok and danced to lots of videos like old town road, the flow, and party rock. 

Music: Mrs. Moltzhan has been putting music videos on the screen and we are learning to clap to the beat to learn new rhythms. We also listened to sea shanties and learned that the original theme song of the SpongeBob SquarePants is a popular example.

First Week of In-Person Learning for 2021

 First Week of In-Person Learning for 2021

January 15th, 2021

Hello and welcome back to in-person learning!

First, I want to share how incredibly proud I am of this group of kids. They went out of their way every day to help me with any questions I had, shared what they needed from me to be most successful, and worked extremely hard on their assignments. We will be focusing a lot this second half of the year on life skills that will prepare them for junior high and building independence - based on what I saw this week, they're off to a great start!

Please note: While students are not writing PATs this year, we will still be looking at practice exams and older PAT material to work on skills like test-taking (especially multiple choice), note-taking, and working through multi-step word problems for math. All the practice, none of the pressure!

Here's what we worked on this week:

Gym & Music: The kids continued our short and long distance running unit by brainstorming all the different tag games they know. We will be using a "march madness"-style bracket to play 2 different types a day to find out what is the ultimate tag game. In music, we listened to the Mandelorian to review tempo. We also received our handbells and gloves to start preparing for the Spring Concert. 

Math: This week and next will be a review of units taught during the first half of the year and number sense concepts. 

• We practiced reading and writing ordered coordinate pairs to make a picture on a grid
• We talked about how math problems are a lot like puzzles and take patience and a positive attitude towards learning from mistakes. We each attempted to solve these puzzles in our own way and shared our strategies and corrections with others. We also talked about how efficient and accurate our chosen strategies were.
• We did our fast facts for the month and attempted a math PAT Part A practice exam to review larger addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions with and without decimals
• We used a pretend treasure map to navigate a ship around a grid using translations, rotations and reflections.         

ELA: Our guided reading groups have selected their new novels to read. We spent this week practicing summarizing, note-taking using headlines, paraphrasing information into our own words, and writing newspaper articles. 

Science: We reviewed the phases of the moon and the kids were able to view the phases changing during an experiment with a dark room, a flashlight (the sun) and a white volleyball (the moon). We also played a game of Jeopardy to review other Sky Science topics. 

Social: Continuing from online school, we spent more time learning about La Grande Prix de Montreal (The Great Peace of Montreal). Students used an article and a highlighter to find key information, grouped their facts together under headings that made sense, took notes using their headlines by putting their highlighted facts into their own words, and finally wrote their own newspaper article. We also held a mock election to review the election process, party platforms and the importance of being an informed voter by having students brainstorm important issues they would solve if they were elected and voting for a member of our class whose platform best matched our own values. 

Congratulations to S.M-P, our 6B Leader and winner of our election!

Classroom Blog: Online School & A Change in Teachers

 

Classroom Blog: Online School & A Change in Teachers

January 8th, 2021

Happy Friday!

Our first week back after winter break was spent learning from home. Online school has its challenges and technology doesn't always cooperate but the grade 6's did a great job keeping track of their schedule and attending our class meets to share their ideas and ask thoughtful questions. It was good practice incase we have to work online again in the future. Many students are looking forward to being back to in-person learning on Monday morning!

This week also saw a change in teachers. We said goodbye to Miss Lewis and welcomed Mrs. Will back from maternity leave. We will miss Miss Lewis and hope to see her at CNG soon!

Here's what we worked on this week during online school:

Science: This week in science we learned about moon phases. The moon is always there, but sometimes we can only see some of it on account of the light. We learned about the two terms, waning and waxing. If it is waning then the moon is getting smaller and smaller. If it is waxing it is getting bigger and bigger. We also learned about the term “new moon” which is when you can see no moon at all. Then we learned the order of the moon phases.

Gym: In gym we measured the amount of exercises we could do in a minute. We did pushups, sit ups, jumping jacks, crunches and loads of other exercises. For gym with Ms. Mok we did GoNoodle, an app for the school to calm down or pump up their hearts.

Math: For the most part, doing math online was difficult, but we managed. For every math assignment we got review videos to watch, and then did the assignment. The assignments we were working on reviews of, fractions, percents, decimals, transformations, and patterns.

Art: Art this week we did a special project called “I Can’t Imagine Life Without” where we wrote those words in the middle of our page and then made different sections all around, with things we couldn’t imagine life without. Of course we had to exaggerate a bit because the only things you really couldn’t imagine life without is food, water, shelter, and clothes. We wrote things that we loved doing in life, and people who we loved doing them with. You could live without these things but life just wouldn’t be as fun without them.

ELA: In LA we wrote a newspaper article and we used the 5w’s which is who, what, when, where, why. We also made ourselves a new smart goal for school and home.

Social: We learned about La Grande Paix de Montreal (The Grand Peace Treaty of Montreal) that was signed in 1701. French settlers and the many Indigenous groups that live around the great lakes of Canada were constantly fighting with each other, interrupting the fur trade and negotiations about who was going to live and use each section of land. Indigenous leaders and representatives travelled far distances to meet in Montreal, discuss compromises, and sign a peace treaty that had benefits for all who signed it.