Ms Courtney's Class

We are at the end of another week. We are half way through this unit and the students are making excellent connections in their learning. Math We started our module on Multiplication and Division this week. The students have been making arrays to represent different multiplication problems. UoI Egg on an Incline On Thursday students got to work creating an incline plane to help get an egg from the top of the chair to the bottom without breaking. The students were given 6 pieces of A3 paper, 10 pieces of paper towel and a roll of sticky tape. With this equipment they made their incline plane. After completing the experiment we wrote a procedure piece of writing to explain what we did. Labeling and Contraption Maker On Tuesday we worked with Ms Rachel in the library on labeling images. We looked in magazines an images for examples and posted these on a Padlet. After we completed another contraption maker challenge from Mr Matt in the l...

We are getting very close to the end of semester. If you are leaving for holidays before the 16th December please let me know. Your child's report was made available on Managebac this morning, if you are having trouble viewing this please let me know. 3 Way Conferences Next week is a busy week. On Tuesday the students will have their 3 way conference. They have been working hard this past week to select work they are proud of and writing learning goals for next semester. At your child's conference we will meet with your child to discuss the goals, look at work samples and discuss ways we can support your child in achieving their goals. After the conference please take some time to visit Art, music, PE and your child's foreign language teacher. If you are unsure of your conference time please let me know. Anna's Birthday We celebrated Anna's birthday last week. Art We have been working with Art during this unit to create some public art to display aroun...

This week students have been starting to ask questions about urban environments. At the start of each unit we spend time encouraging the students to start thinking about the unit, the big ideas and develop questions they would like to answer. As we have only just started the unit often these questions are in the form of wonderings. We went for a walk around the school on Thursday and the students completed an "I see, I think, I wonder" activity. They were encouraged to think about the school, its settings, what they could see and hear around them and write down any wonderings they had. On Friday we developed these wonderings further and started asking questions we would like to find the answers to over the unit. We started by discussing the wonderings and developing deeper questions. We revisited the central idea and watched two videos to see what students in other schools have done to modify their environment. After this we came up with student quest...

At the beginning of this unit students asked questions they wanted to answer. We recorded the questions here as well as in the classroom. These questions helped us to guide the inquiry. We spent time today finding the answers to the questions the students had. We grouped the students into areas of interested and they worked together to record the answers to the questions. They used the knowledge gained from guest speakers, viewings, readings and class discussions throughout the unit to answer the questions. Look at the collaboration and thinking happening! Why and how to people create art?  "To improve their intelligence" "Get ideas from other pieces of art" "Maybe they want people to like their art and how they created it" "People create art in different ways" "I think some artist have emotion and they want to create art because maybe they have a favourite place and want to create it" "People have to pra...

What are your current wonderings about this unit of inquiry? Central Idea:  Personal perspective influences how we create art. Please add your wonderings to this Padlet. http://padlet.com/wall/do6tnttqhxuo