The New Arrangement

The class has changed shape.  Miss Colby swapped out the grade 6 tables to desks.

• the grade 6's like the idea of having their own have own space
• the grade 6's prefer to clean their own space not others
• grade 4's and 5's are still in groups but in new location
• the hope was that separated the grade 6's would be more quiet, but even with desks grade 6 are noisy
• the grade 6's acknowledge the above as true

The new term is beginning in a couple of weeks.  We are going to start new Social Studies Units, Science units, and we will begin our Dance unit.  In the new term we will also be switching our inquiry question.

For now the grade 4's are excited about their plant habitat.  They have learned a lot about plant habitats through our mistakes and observation.  The grade 5's are learning about how the lungs work by making a model of a lung and are interested to see what they look like when they are done. 

Other news

• the Kearney trip is quickly approaching!  February 27th to March 7th.  Make sure you have returned your completed forms.
• Science Centre trip February 3rd
• Pizza day February 6th
• Beach Day February 6th
• The Urban Voices poetry contest is coming up soon! Submissions are due by: February 13th
• Report cards go home on February 10th
• Parent teacher interviews are on February 12th and 13th
• Forest Valley trip March 25th

Happy New Year!

What's Happening This Year

Welcome to the new year blog post! This year we are going to a lot of places and doing a lot of new (and old) things:

• Science Centre trip on February 3rd
• First term report cards come out in February
• Kearney trip for the grade 5 and 6's February 27- March 2nd
• Forest Valley trip in March
• Science Fair in May
• Organizing a Pan-Am games day in June

In Other News

Reading logs are due on January 16th!  Make sure you have updated your entries.

Miss Colby says: there is a TDSB poetry contest called Urban Voices.  Poems for the contest are due the first week of February.  I would like to submit some poems written by students in our class.  I would also like to publish some poems on our blog site.  Students, please let me know if I can post some of your poems here.

In Music we are learning about using our body as instruments to make music (body percussion).  We are starting by learning Boom, Snap, Clap, and we are going eventually learn to perform the Extreme Patty Cake song.  There are links below.

The Last Week of 2014

This is our last blog post for 2014.  We will continue the blog in January 2015. It is a very busy week, because of: the Winter concert, secret Santa, bake sale, singalongs, and all the practice practice practice for the winter concert.   And, we have a lot of work making and collecting what we need for props.

The last day of school is Friday December 19th 2014, the same day as our secret Santa.

We wish Ms. Hughes, our favourite French teacher, a happy birthday on January 2nd.  Unfortunately we will not be in class to wish her on the actually date.

We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  School will be open again on Monday January 5th 2015.

Busy Day

Today is a bit of a crazy day in the middle of an exciting week.  We have been writing a skit based on the poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and making props.  We have also been learning to code using code.org. On Monday we listened to a game developer named Jenn.  She told us about designing and producing games and how long it takes to make a game.  She also answered some of our questions like: do you like Minecraft? and why wouldn't people want girls to code?  She told us how she became a developer and encouraged us to learn to code.

Today is an awesome day for the grade 5's because they are going to see a program at Stephen Leacock on bullying.  Some students are jealous because the grade 5's will be getting to eat pizza for lunch for free. Meanwhile, the grade 6's from Mrs. Panopoulos' class are spending the day with us.  We are going to have to learn to share our space because there are more students in our room than usual.

Tonight is exciting because it is Kearney information night!  One step closer to going to Kearney!  There will be translators at the meeting being held in the library.  We hope as many parents as possible can attend so that everyone will come to Kearney!  It starts at 6:00pm.

In Other News:

• The Winter concert is just over a week away!  (December 18th)
• Bake sale at the concert (Miss Colby is planning on making Minecraft cookies for the sale)
• Next week is the last week of school
• Slide Show December 19th
• Secret Santa December 19th: students are only allowed to spend a maximum of $10.00

Hour of Code

Next week our school is participating in the hour of code.  At this point we are planning to use code.org for our learning.  We have a lot of questions about what we will be able to do, and some of us are already making plans for what we want to accomplish.

We are also looking forward to hearing from software engineers about their work through Canada Learns Coding.

Below is a video about what coding is and why it is important to learn:

The day Forest Valley Came to Us

On Monday November 24th we were suppose to go on a trip to Forest Valley.  Unfortunately, because of the strong winds, Forest Valley lost Hydro and they had to cancel our trip.  Some people were frustrated.  Others were disappointed, but most of us were excited again when we found out that they were going to come to our school for the day. Even better, we found out we were getting another day to visit them, to make up for the day we missed. 

Richard, from Forest Valley, told Ms. Colby that this was the first time, in the 18 years he has worked at Forest Valley, that they have taken the program to a school.

We were painting the landscape outside behind the school (like impressionists).  Until it started raining, ruining our work.

Painting our colour wheels.

In class (out of the rain) practicing the skills Richard and Melissa, from Forest Valley, taught us.

In Other News:

• The grade 5's are going to a bullying presentation at Stephen Leacock on December 10th
• PARENTS: On Wednesday December 10th there will be an important Kearney informational meeting for all parents of grade 6 and 5 students at 6:00 pm at the school.
• The junior department of the entire school has been invited to a holiday concert at Stephen Leacock on December 11th 
• Winter Concert Thursday December 18th 6:30pm

New Inquiry: Whose voice is heard? What does is it mean to be fair?

In our school we are looking at a new inquiry question, which is: Whose voice is heard, and what does it mean to be fair?  Our last question was: Do societies need empathy?

Some of our thinking so far:

• teachers and parents are heard
• children's voices are heard when talking in a group of other children
• I think it has to do with power
• depends on where you are
• fairness is when everyone is treated equally
• equity
• fairness is that no one is treated better than others
• it's not fair that some voices are not heard that need to be heard

In Other News:

• We have a field trip to Forest Valley on Monday November 24th 2014.
• There is a drama presentation coming to our school on Friday November 28th 2014.
• Our music project is due Tuesday November 25th 2014.
• Our writer's portfolio is due Thursday December 18th 2014.
• Our Winter concert is on Thursday December 18th 2014.