Advent, STEM Buddies, Nativity, Essays & More…

Hello, 5B families!

In Religion class we are learning about Advent and preparing our minds and hearts for the season. Prayer has been a key focus, and we have explored the history of Saint Nicholas.

A key question for research and reflection has been, “What is the meaning of Christmas?”

We have started a new cross-curricular challenge in Religion, ADST, and Art where each student creates his/her own unique 3D nativity scene from scratch use crafting materials, recycled bits, or found objects. We discussed the important features of a nativity scene and looked at many examples online for inspiration.

Students may use any safe materials they like in this open-ended project that is due by Dec. 21, and I have modelled in class how to use simple classroom supplies like crumpled paper, tape, a paperclip, and some foil to make a set of characters. (For more ideas, scroll down to the very bottom to see some photos from around the web of handmade nativity scenes.)

In Math this week, we continued reviewing multiplication up to one-digit by four-digits numbers. We have focused on the traditional method so far, but also brought in the box method for those who were interested.

We are emphasizing the meaning of multiplication using base ten blocks, arrays, and mental math strategies, and we are considering real world scenarios (e.g, “If I have 18 students and each student needs 6 cotton balls to make a snowman craft; how many cotton balls do I need all together?) Next week we will go deeper with two-digit by two- and three-digit multiplication. Here are two tutorials videos that can help:

We had fun this afternoon with our little buddies from the grade 2 classroom today. Students acted as leaders, teaching the little buddies the paper engineering skills they developed during our ADST “index card challenge” earlier in the term. The theme this time was to construct an “ice palace” and to choose one or more goals: make it tall, strong, and/or beautiful. Students could only use the index cards—no glue or tape; so the structures you see below are balancing beautifully on account of our students’ great problem solving! Well done, teams!