Learning Highlights for Week of October 23-27

Dear parents:
Here are our learning connections for last week.  Another incredibly full week of thinking!

On Monday we continued with our pumpkin sketching and editing our  pumpkin poems.  Here are some questions you can ask your child: 
What did we learn about sketching with graphite pencils? Here's an interesting connection to science -- did you know that graphite is a form of carbon?  In fact it is the most stable form of carbon under normal conditions.  Can you think of connections between waste in our world and carbon?  Hint:  think about organic waste.

Here is another conversation starter:  When and why are realistic drawings important?

Giving mindful feedback. 

Learning techniques from peers 

On Tuesday we returned to the test stage of the Design Thinking Cycle.  In this test we had a videographer, an interviewer and a tester.  Students switched roles so everyone got to try each.  We are looking at specific criteria for testing and so students had to decided how they were going to test for stress, durability and strength.  Here are some photos:

Wondering Wednesday and Thinking Thursday
We decided to use a venn diagram to compare and contrast the pumpkin decomposition out of jar to jar 4 which contains pumpkin by itself.  We were wondering why air exposed pumpkin  is decomposing faster?  Another question students raised is:  Do pumpkin seeds decompose?  Inference - no because this is how new pumpkins grow.  Ask your child who invented the Venn diagram and how long ago this was.  This question gave us another opportunity to used our skip counting and number line strategy to figure our the answer. 

We continued using rounding as a math strategy and we did our math problem of the week, which was comparing data on two animal shelters.  This was a great problem because it allowed students to apply the concepts of fractions, percentages multiplication, division, addition and subtraction.  It really helped us use our visualization skills to compare a bar graph and a pie graph.

Our novel Fatty Legs  sparked the reading powers and the  thinking hats as we got to take the perspective of  various characters.  We are really enjoying the great metaphors and similes that Margaret Pokiak-Fenton uses the help us visualize the experiences and conditions of this time in history.  We can really empathize with the characters.
Since it was popcorn day today we made a connection to Free the Children and how this popcorn helps us be ambassadors to help with conservation all over the world.  Our conversation gave us another connection to fair trade products and the importance of supporting small farmers who are able to send their children to school because they are getting paid fair wages and prices for their products.  Here is the fair trade symbol for you watch out for when you are shopping.

Fabulous Friday was the day for our Earth Rangers Assembly.  https://www.earthrangers.com/

We were so inspired to become earth rangers.  A huge thank you to Logan's dad for arranging this for the school.   I know that all the students at Ken Taylor enjoyed this amazing opportunity to learn how they can help save endangered species and make a difference in the world through their actions.  Our thinking was transformed as we were introduced to several new animals and then got to participate in a workshop after the assembly that gave us text to text connections back to our classroom conservations about human impact on the environment.  We tapped into our background knowledge about global warming and got up close to a Peregrine Falcon!  Wow! What a morning.  Here are some photos for you to enjoy:  

Where do your clothes come from?  What is the carbon footprint? 

replicating global warming in bottles.  

Curious Exploration and Transformation on Thursday and Friday

Dear Parents:

Magnification to zoom in.  

Here is a web of our learning for last week:

Smell from the soil jar is unpleasant.  It reminds us of rotting garbage.

The field scientists in room 105 continue their curious observation and recording of the pumpkin sections as the decomposition process continues.  On Thursday it was day 7 of  decomposition and students noticed several changes.  The decomposers are doing their job and the rate is different in each jar.  Have a look at these engaged learners as they zoom in to describe, and ask further questions about the process.  I was very pleased to see how everybody took on the feedback to make deeper observations and create very accurate and detailed sketches of the changes.  Students were using  their senses to collect data as they looked closely, smelled new odours, heard a popping sound (or not) as we opened the jars and felt the spongy decomposing pieces.  

Mindful observation

We think there is a worm in the soil.  

Here are some words we used to describe our observations.  Notice how these words help you to visualize (see) the process.  

Look at the difference in the sketching and the observations between day 1 and day 7.  Formative feedback moves our learning forward.  

Here's a question that you can discuss at home:  What made some of the jars pop, while other jars didn't?  What is your inference?  

On Friday we put on our artist hats to use the charcoal sketching pencils, gum erasers and blending stumps to sketch pumpkins.  Have a look at our black and white pumpkin patch.  I'll bet you are as impressed as I am with the creations.  

Our classroom brightspace (D2L) shell is active for students to use

Dear parents: 

I have activated our brightspace shell called Homeroom 105 for students to use to expand their background knowledge in various classroom conversations and curriculum areas.

Here are instructions on how to log on from home:  

Step 1:  To access this space from home you just have to google D2L and the CBE sign on page will be your first option.  When you click on this link you will arrive at the main log in page

Here is a link https://d2l.cbe.ab.ca/d2l/loginh/

Step 2:  Students will type in their student number under the CBE username  and then their password under the password. 

Step 3:  When you arrive, our shell is called Homeroom 105. Click on this icon and you will reach the homepage of our shell. 

Step 4:  Once you are  on the homepage there are many links to connected videos in each curriculum area for students to explore and to discuss with you at home.