Thursday, March 3, 2016

Mrs. Zwack was very happy to be back at school today!  She had taken a few days to spend with her daughter in Vancouver to celebrate her 24th birthday!  On Wednesday, both Mrs. Bowles and I were at a workshop.  So, it is wonderful to be back with the students in the classroom!

This morning, we started with music and practiced our pre-corders.  A reminder from Mrs. Jones that all students should have their pre-corder in their backpacks each day for music class!  It is difficult to learn to play an instrument when it is at home!!

Next, Miss Hadala taught a wonderful lesson on the difference between facts and opinions.  She had students doing some careful thinking and discussing to determine which statements were which in a fun game situation.  Thank you to our friend Kartik for keeping careful track of the tally scores for us!

After read aloud and a sunny outdoor movement break, we polished up our presentations about schools around the world for tomorrow's assembly.  The students have worked very well together to create skits to demonstrate their learning and we look forward to sharing these with you tomorrow morning.

This afternoon flew by.  We started off working on our math projects for the Student Led Learning Walks.  Each group is working very hard on their learning through literature.  All of the books that they are working with are great to help us learn about multiplication and division.  Some of us worked on division story boards.  Many of the students are really challenging their thinking with large numbers, more complex problems, and deep thinking.

In our science inquiry, we first looked at the landing of Cmdr. Scott Kelly in Kazakhstan after being at the International Space Station for over 340 days.  We then moved off into our two groups. The engineers took all of the supplies that they have gathered and laid out them as they would when building  their Mars complex.



The engineers have been changing and adapting their prototypes for their structures based on the new knowledge that they have gained.  In fact their first drawing look nothing like what they are planning now.  This is very exciting and this is how engineers work in the real world today.  The scientists continue their work as botanists.  Today we are learning to better understand how transpiration works.  We did an experiment reviewing the scientific method.

In gym, we continued our work on dribbling and shooting. We played bulldozers and builders on ball control during dribbling.  The last part of our class time, the students worked on adapting their shooting skills to be accurate.

We finished off our afternoon with looking at what we know, what we have learned, some of our wonders and where we are going with our science inquiry.  Students wrote about their experiences.


1.)  Room 79/80 assembly at 11:15 tomorrow.  Parents please join us.
2.) There will not be a community nature walk tomorrow.





After your lesson on fact and opinion today,  please tell me one fact about Mars and one opinion.