Yesterday we enjoyed a wonderful geology lesson presented by Science Venture! The students identified rocks based on their properties, and also played a game identifying and extracting “minerals” for play money. It was lots of fun and a great cross-curricular connection with our recent math learning!
Today, after exploring the topics of futuristic cars and leopards in our Language Arts reading comprehension activity, students were challenges to invent their own math games using play money.
As well, we learned about the history of Canada’s first Japanese Garden and Tea House in Esquimalt and how the Victoria Nikkei Cultural Society is advancing an initiative to restore this site, which had been destroyed during WWII. https://www.vncs.ca/tea-house-initiative/
We also spent some more time creating “Time Travellers’ Trading Cards”. Here is some more information and a sneak peek at the project. We have discussed the importance of ensuring historical accuracy and being culturally aware and making appropriate illustration choices.
Check out these fantastic portals to different places, times and dimensions…
Hearing students explain their creative choices and where they would like to travel had been wonderful.
As well, here is a peak at the math we have been exploring. This morning I told the students that they would “find a few hundred dollars on each desk”. I invited them to get to know the features of the currency, add it up, and create a multi-question “math story” about the money. The students were so excited to make deals and buy and sell things. It was fun to see their joy in the play of striking it rich. Hahah!
Our class enjoyed an extra special presentation and art lesson on the afternoon of Friday, May 13th. Carol McDougall, the award-winning author-illustrator of A Salmon’s Sky View, kindly joined our class to share a preview of her beautiful forthcoming book, Jellies in the Belly: A Sea Turtle’s Atlantic Adventure!
Carol read her wonderful story and shared her beautiful watercolour paintings with students, and then revealed her painting secrets! Students were then supported in creating their own underwater scenes featuring sea turtles and jellyfish.
This rich lesson was a meaningful way to celebrate and extend research we began on sea turtles—and it was truly inspiring to learn about Carol’s creative process. Thank you so much for generosity, Carol! Your teaching
It’s been a whirlwind of sunshine-infused learning and adventure lately! See below for a little glimpse into our fun. We have now wrapped up our Fractions and Decimals units, and are working through our units on Perimeter and Area as well as Money and Financial Literacy.
Cycling Skill Development with the “iride” programTribal Vision presenting cultural stories and dances. Creating time machines and portals to other dimensions…Ultimate Frisbee Lessons!Making marble runs…
Honouring Earth Day with a dance party at the beach…Introducing our class pet, Raven!Learning to speak French!
Happy long weekend, division 2! Here are some recent highlights from our classroom. We have put up a new bulletin board of “Collaborative Sci-Fi Story Writing”.
This display showcases the results of a creative writing exercise where students wrote a compelling first line of a story with a time traveling theme or science fiction elements. Then they passed the story on to another student to write the second line, and so on. After about 10 lines added by different people, the students received the stories they started so they could wrote a conclusion and title for them. Students had the board creative license to make changes as they saw fit. The results were amazing! See below.
We have been asking great questions and learning new vocabulary and related science concepts (tesseract, hypercube, spacetime, dimension, black hole, wormhole, spaghettification, grandfather paradox, cosmology, speed of light, etc.). We have also watched some videos by physicists, including Carl Sagan, Brian Greene, and Neil DeGrass Tyson.
An inquiry question we’ve explored in our fiction writing unit is “What makes an excellent opening line?” I presented students with over 30 opening lines of famous novels widely acknowledged for having strong first lines. I asked students to analyze and discuss the merits of these exemplars and then to us them as inspirational frameworks for creating their own compelling opening lines.
After this practice, I invited students to submit as many entries as they would like to our own “GREAT FIRST LINE CONTEST”. The entries were wonderfully diverse and intriguing, as you can see below…
Each student cast votes for their top 5 favourite lines and the “People’s Choice” winners were tallied and announced as below…
In Art and ADST class, students have been designing fun model time machines and working to improve their drawing skills by practicing creating unique natural textures using just pencil, eraser and a smudger (Q-Tip.)
In math, we are continuing to explore our unit on fractions, decimals, and money. We had a formative assessment on Monday—it was great to see such excellent growth in understanding in just 2 weeks! Thank you to students who continue to take home their math duotang regularly for review at home. I hope those flash cards I sent home with you have been not only helpful, but also maybe even a bit fun! We have been doing lots of whole class and small group review, and emphasizing strategies for solving word problems. Remember to slow down to really READ what each question is asking, UNDERLINE key words/numbers, make note of what UNIT is being used, and WRITE YOUR ANSWER AS A COMPLETE SENTENCE including any units of measurement or dollar signs needed, etc.
COMING SOON: We will be creating our own graphic novels!
We are back from Spring Break and having fun in our new cross-curricular unit on the theme of TIME TRAVEL! There are so many fun surprises in store. More will be revealed on the blog in the coming weeks.
Did you know that Stephen Hawking once hosted a party for Time Travellers? Here is a video we watched about that: https://youtu.be/elah3i_WiFI Our class will be hosting our own TIME TRAVELLERS TEA PARTY at the end of term. The fun costumes we make will be wondrous and the conversations we share about our travels in space-time will be riveting.
In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy these sensational self-portraits and “I Am” poems that employ powerful figurative language…
Happy weekend, division 2 families! I hope you are enjoying the sunshine! Here are a few highlights from last week…
On Friday, students were invited to explore a selection of quotations about learning. Each student chose one quote that spoke to him or her and then found a quiet space in the class to think about the meaning of the quote and identify personal connections to it.
Then, after instruction and modelling of some reading and oratory skills, students rehearsed their quotes aloud 10-15 times, working on their fluency, expression, and phrasing. They experimented with reading their quotes in monotone voices, without attending to punctuation. They also practiced being overly dramatic and speaking with exaggerated singsong voices. Then they practiced saying the quotes for one another in partners and small groups using conversational voices that felt energized yet natural. Eventually we created the above video to capture our learning and to share with families.
What else happened last week? We had fun getting deeper into our unit on fractions, decimals, and percent. We seem to frequently make lots of connections between fractions and food—the students most enjoy thinking of how fractions can be used to make equitable distributions of things like candy, cake, and pizza! Ha! Students also took home their “Fractions Fortune Teller” games to practice with families.
As well, since this past week was the week before I submitted report cards to the office for processing, there was a fair bit of catch up work for students: presenting book talks, doing math quiz rewrites, math meetings, fixing up portfolios, and working on puppets and puppet shows. The puppet shows have been hilarious—such a creative, fun part of the day!
We also enjoyed some exciting soccer, hockey, and gymnastics in the gym.
“Fun fact”: I have now submitted the report cards for our class for term 2 to the office. It took me about 26-hours to write them, spread out over the last two weeks of evenings and weekends—so my family will sure be happy to have me back and present in their lives! I write longer report cards because I believe it’s important to not only “report” on students, but to try to capture a snapshot of their wonderful qualities and contributions as a time capsule for them and to shed light on the details of the kind of learning division the students are experiencing. I hope these reports and blog help families to feel connected and to have richer after school conversations at home.
Thank you for you checking in on this blog and for watching the dialogue videos this term—I hope you have enjoyed hearing the sweetness of these creative, critical thinkers in our class as they work through big ideas in discussion. This is a time in the world when it helps to focus on the moments of learning, optimism, and joy—it’s a privilege to see your children create these kind of moments everyday.
Hello, division 2 families! I have to brag to you about how amazing your kids are—and what they did that made my day…
As you know, we have been learning about the fur trade in Social Studies; and in Art/ADST we have been making puppets. Well, students have been bringing in lots of interesting fabric pieces, socks, buttons, ribbon, etc., and sharing these with each other. These supplies have become highly sought after resources!
So a few students made a fun connection after being inspired by Canadian fur trading posts. They set up their own “PUPPET SUPPLY TRADING POST” to help systematize fair distribution of their supplies.
What a brilliant cross-curricular connection! We are seeing meaningful bartering happen in class, and some students are offering their puppet-making and sewing services to others and posting their little “store front signs”. It’s fun to see! Someone noted that it’s nice and different that no animals were harmed in our “puppet fur trade” — puppet pelts are definitely vegan!
When students link their historical learning to their own lives and have fun in the process, it’s a teacher’s dream come true! (When I teach the fur trade to new students next year, I will definitely time it to line up with puppet making again!)
Also, today we enjoyed so more book talks by the students. All the talks have been really well done and are motivating students to want to read more!
We also did a re-write of the Division quiz today, and had an optional math enrichment quiz on the topics of exponents and order of operations (BEDMAS). Lots of great thinking happened in our class today!
Welcome back! Today we launched the week with our new unit on fractions. We started from the basics, identifying that a fraction is a part of a whole.
The bottom number (denominator) tells us how many parts the whole is divided into and the top number (numerator) says how many parts we have.
Homework: Students will be bringing home a “Fractions Placemat”. Students should explain to family members what they learned about fractions today. (Teaching others is great reinforcement of learning.)
We also began our sewing lessons today! We established our safety systems and guidelines, and then students watched me demo some skills. Then they began practicing what they learned. Everyone is doing a great job!
In the afternoon in Language Arts, we began work on our “Book Talks”. I played the following video that I made for students as an example of a Book Talk that would meet all of the criteria. We reviewed and discussed the Book Talk template and the Assessment sheet in depth with examples, so students can feel clear on the expectations. Then students had a work period to begin planning their talk; I circulated the room to answer questions and support students one-to-one in planning. *If you have time this week, please invite your child to practice presenting his/her book talk to you.
Happy Family Day weekend! I hope you enjoy some special time together. Today students are bringing home a permission form for our puppet making and sewing unit. As well, they have completed a “figurative language” quiz and letter assignment to share with you.
Now, here is a recap our action-packed day, along with the details of the fun storytelling homework and an upcoming “Book Talk” assignment.
Today we had dramatic fun as I modelled some storytelling skills using puppets. I read Aesop’s fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare” aloud and then retold it in my own words in a theatrical way. I emphasized for students skills for vocal projection and dynamic expression, and showed how to create unique voices for characters. My goal was to infuse humour and playfulness when animating the puppets so as to underscore the message of the tale. Storytelling is most effective when it is engaging for the audience!
HOMEWORK: I have asked students to each retell the “Tortoise and the Hare” in their own fun way to someone in their family this weekend. They can change story elements or even alter characters (like maybe it’s about a slug and a cheetah); however, students should still follow the narrative arc: (1.) a slow character and a fast character compete in a race; (2.) the slow character beats the the fast one because the latter is prideful and thinks he’s so fast that he can afford to take nap during the race; and finally, (3.) the slow character wins because “slow and steady wins the race.”
Today students also practiced the R.A.C.E. strategy as a way to add structure and support to their reading responses—but more on that in next week’s posts as it deserves some time to explain.
A big focus of the day for students was preparing to present a “Book Talk”. I first presented on purpose a few TERRIBLE examples of Book Talks on the books “James and the Giant Peach” and “White Fang”. I invited students to identify my mistakes and areas for improvement. From their observations, we brainstormed some criteria for an EXCELLENT Book Talk and read a comic about the same topic.
In the afternoon, I gave students a Book Talk Assessment description and sample template they could use to organize their presentations. We will be working with the template again next Tuesday to make sure students are clear on what is expected. Then we had library time, and I urged students to choose a great novel that they are happy to recommend and that they have read within the last two months (or will have finished reading by next week).
The purpose of this assignment is to challenge students to (a.) strengthen their public speaking skills, (b.) practice writing an interesting and logically organized presentation, (c.) showcase their skills of summarizing and reflecting upon their reading, (d.) inspire others to want to read their books, and (e.) promote literacy to contribute to our culture of learning.
Students will sign up for presentation slots that start next Thursday, Feb. 24 and run through until March 6th. Alternatively, students may create a video of their Book Talk and email a link or file of it to me before March 6th.
Inquiry Ninja 