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.

Impressionist Art

What Kind of Art is This?

It is impressionist art. 

How Do We Know?

We know it is impressionist because we used primary colours and short brush strokes.  Also it looks like we painted it as it was happening; and we know that impressionist painters usually painted real life things while it was happening.  

Before we painted we researched impressionist art, and asked and answered questions about the artwork we saw.

How We got the Idea

Miss Colby went to a Paint Nite event with Mr. Gulamhusein, Ms. Gupta and Ms. Hutchinson and learned to paint a very similar painting.  She made changes to the task to make it fit with what we were studying.  She changed the colours to primary (fall) colours.

Week End: Ticket out the door!

What we discovered this week:

• learned that a straight angle is 180 degrees
• we learned how to make a measuring tool that looks like a protractor, but made out of paper
• lunar eclipses happen more than solar eclipses
• Doug Ford is Rob Ford's brother
• We are starting the We Scare Hunger Campaign 
• More about Empathy: examples and characteristics and you can treat people with empathy
• We learned about reflex angles (they are greater than 180 degrees)
• an acute angle is smaller than 90 degrees and an obtuse angle is greater than 90 degrees
• Ebola is only spread only through bodily fluid and not spread by casual contact.
• We learned about Caitlin and her positive post-it campaign
• Import and Export (take and give)
• there are three types of triangles, but we can't remember their names...yet.  (The grade sixes know).

Next Week:

• There is a Health presentation on Tuesday October 21st on what we drink
• Field trip on Friday!  We get to meet with our mentors!