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In addition to studying Biodiversity (Grade 6) and The Characteristics and Needs of Living Things (Grade 1), this fall the Science Buddies are also studying  Electricity (Grade 6) and Conservation of Energy (Grade 1).

Today, the Grade 1's and 6's got together to play a game in which the group identified activities that save and waste energy.  Part of the game involved having buddies cross under a limbo bar, which was raised if a buddy-pair chose a card listing an activity that saves energy and lowered if a buddy-pair chose a card listing an activity that wastes energy.

The students learned some important lessons about conservation of energy and had a lot of fun in the process!

Today’s learning activity was part of Lesson I in The David Suzuki Foundation’s publication, “Connecting with Nature:  An educational guide for grades four to six,” which is keyed to the Ontario Science Curriculum.  This document can be downloaded for free at:  http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/connecting-with-nature-education-guide/

Science Buddies will not be meeting again until November/December, at which time the Grade 6's will invite the Grade 1's to help them explore electric circuits using batteries and bulbs, and build birdhouses as an outreach project related to the Grade 1 Characteristics and Needs of Living Things unit.

Thank you for visiting the class, via our BLOG.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

Today, the Grade 6 students met with their Grade One Science Buddies for another outdoor session.  The objective of today's field work was to celebrate the biodiversity that exists within our schoolyard.  Students started by completing a nature scavenger hunt.  They looked for a wide variety of habitats, plants, insects, spiders, birds and mammals on the yard.

After the scavenger hunt was complete, the Grade 6 students each took a field guide and looked up information about a species he or she found on the yard.  The Grade 6's then read that information to their Grade 1 buddies.

The final part of our biodiversity celebration involved drawing the species that Grade 1 and 6 buddies had read about in the field guides.

Today’s outdoor session was adapted from Lesson G in The David Suzuki Foundation’s publication, “Connecting with Nature:  An educational guide for grades four to six,” which is keyed to the Ontario Science Curriculum.  This document can be downloaded for free at:  http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/connecting-with-nature-education-guide/

Thank you for visiting the class, via our BLOG.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

This week, the Grade 6 students met with their Grade 1 Science Buddies twice, to conduct field observations.

SESSION 2

On Tuesday, we we began an experiment to find out what types of waste items break down into soil fastest and slowest, in a garbage dump.  We donned germ-proof gloves and picked up trash from the lower field and "bush" area of the schoolyard.

Next we met as a group to inventory the trash we had collected.  We chose a variety of items and buried them in soil around the edge of a plastic container.  We labelled each buried item with a popsicle stick.

Then we disposed of the trash we collected in the schoolyard and took our "classroom landfill project" indoors.  Over the coming months, we will revisit our project from time-to-time to see what items are disintegrating and what items are not.

 

SESSION 3

On Wednesday, we met on the front lawn of the school to discuss the role of pollinators in our environment.  The Grade 6 students did a great job role-playing various types of pollinators and the Grade 1's had fun guessing who they were.

Afterwards, we went on a "pollinator safari" in the school's Pollination Garden.  We saw moths, bees, wasps, beetles and a grasshopper.

The bumble bees were actively moving from flower to flower, drinking nectar and spreading pollen!

This week’s outdoor sessions were Lessons E and F in The David Suzuki Foundation’s publication, “Connecting with Nature:  An educational guide for grades four to six,” which is keyed to the Ontario Science Curriculum.  This document can be downloaded for free at:  http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/connecting-with-nature-education-guide/

Thank you for visiting the class, via our BLOG.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

On Wednesday, the Grade 6's enjoyed their second day of Biodiversity field work (this time without their Grade 1 Science Buddies).  Their task was to find natural objects or creatures for a game.  The goal of the game was to try and identify how all of the rocks, sticks, leaves, pine needles, worms, spiders and insects they brought to the circle are related to each other, in nature.

The Grade 5 students are welcome to use our classroom nets and bug keepers during recess, and to examine our classroom visitors and field guides when they are finished their assignments.  These are some of the interesting "finds" Grade 5 students brought into class on Thursday. (NOTE:  At the end of the day, all of our wild "visitors" are safely returned to the areas where they were captured.)


Click to enlarge photos

This week’s outdoor session was Lesson B in The David Suzuki Foundation’s publication, “Connecting with Nature:  An educational guide for grades four to six,” which is keyed to the Ontario Science Curriculum.  This document can be downloaded for free at:  http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/connecting-with-nature-education-guide/

Thank you for visiting the class, via our BLOG.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

1

Text by Megan C. and photos by Jaime C.

This fall, the Grade 5 Science topic is Human Organ Systems and the Grade 5 Social Studies topic is Government.  Our teacher for Science and Social Studies is Mrs. Park.

On our first day with Mrs. Park, we played a fun language game.  Megan went up in front of the class and Jaime picked a topic.  The topic was cookies.  Megan had to talk about cookies without saying "um" or "hmm."  She went on for two minutes.

Right now, in Science, we have a sheet so we write down what time we went to bed and what we have for breakfast, lunch and supper.  In Social Studies we are learning about different kinds of governments.

Here are some pictures of us working on Science and Social Studies in Mrs. Park's room:

Click on the pictures above to enlarge them.

Thank you for visiting the class, via our BLOG.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

This year, the Grade 6 students at Rama Central P.S. are teaming up with the Grade 1 students in Mrs. Turnbull's class for some outdoor learning activities.  We met for the first time today, to study the Characteristics and Needs of Living Things (Grade 1) and Biodiversity (Grade 6) that exists in our schoolyard.  The Grade 6 class supplied several bins of equipment and field guides, to facilitate our outdoor survey.

Grade 6 students thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to be mentors and helpers to their Grade 1 partners.  Partnering with older students allowed Grade 1 students to explore the yard in a more extensive manner than they would have been able to do on their own.  During our field session, students made notes and collected specimens (which were later returned to the places where they were captured).

When we met back together as a large group, we brainstormed words that student pairs felt answered the question "What is Nature?"  We also formed a circle and passed around all the bug keepers, so everyone could see the amazing variety of worms, insects and spiders, etc., that were found on our yard.

We plan to get together with our Grade 1 Science Buddies a few more times during September and October.  We also hope to work together on an outreach project that will help support the native wildlife in our area.  Stay tuned for more info. in a few weeks...  🙂

Today's outdoor session was Lesson A in The David Suzuki Foundation's publication, "Connecting with Nature:  An educational guide for grades four to six," which is keyed to the Ontario Science Curriculum.  This document can be downloaded for free at:  http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/connecting-with-nature-education-guide/

Thank you for visiting the class, via our BLOG.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

In late-May, the Grade 6 students in our class started work on their final Science topic of the year:  "Biodiversity."  In case you are not familiar with this term, it is word first used by scientists in the 1980's.  They created the word by combining "biological" and "diversity." Biodiversity refers to the diversity of living things in an environment.  The more diverse an environment is, in terms of its living organisms, the more balanced, resilient to stressors and healthier it is.  The Ontario Ministry of Education added biodiversity to the Grade 6 curriculum in 1998.  In order to raise awareness of the need to protect environments and species, the United Nations declared 2010 "The Year of Biodiversity."

A large component of our biodiversity study is field work.  In our outdoor sessions, we are studying the biodiversity that exists in four different biomes within our schoolyard.  We are then researching how the organisms that live in our schoolyard and local area interact with and depend upon each other for survival.

The culminating task for this Grade 6 unit involves writing a research paper comparing two different organisms that live in the Washago area, in terms of appearance, food, housing, niches in their biome and seasonal coping strategies (i.e. what does it do in the winter?), etc.

This month, the Grade 5 students in our class are continuing their study of Human Organ Systems, with some field work observing the impacts of exertion on their heart rate, in various weather conditions.  The culminating task for their Science unit is a research paper discussing how our organ systems work together, how best to care for our bodies and what might happen if we fail to do so.

 

Our entire class is also involved in some math problem solving in the out-of-doors.

  • Students are estimating the percentages of sand and various types of flora in random sample areas on the schoolyard, and tracking changes over time. After surveying several areas, students calculate the mean percentage for each element they found in their samples.  They then graph the means.  Students conduct a new survey each week and add the data to their graphs. This week, every group's graph showed a decrease in live grass and an increase in dead grass over the previous week.  This illustrated, in a concrete manner, the impact that little rain for several weeks had on schoolyard vegetation.  It will be interesting to see what results next week's survey yields, after the rain on Friday and the weekend.
  • This coming week, we will go outdoors and I will ask students to think up a way to estimate, through calculations, the number of leaves on a small tree (Gr. 5) or needles on a pine tree (Gr. 6).  They will most likely solve this problem via multiplication.
  • Students will also be using a map or satellite image of the schoolyard to calculate how many bags of grass seed one would need to overseed the grassy areas of our schoolyard.  To determine this they will have to divide the schoolyard into regular polygons, calculate the area of each polygon, add the totals, and use the coverage information on a bag of grass seed to determine how many bags one would need to cover the yard.
  • I will then pose a division question:  if the students in our class were to do the overseeding, how many bags of seed, or what size of area, would each student have to cover in order to share the work evenly?

Hands-on problem solving, such as the above, really helps students to consolidate and apply the learning they acquired in math throughout the year.

 

All students in our class who conform to the rules about proper use of equipment and respect for living things are welcome to use our nets and bug keepers at recess.  Students are also invited to bring specimens from home or the yard into class for further study.  These "classroom guests" must be housed in secure, humane enclosures and (in most cases) be released where they were found the same day they were captured.

 

Here are some recent pictures related to our field work.  Click on any picture to see it full-sized and then click the back button on your browser to return to this page.

Thank you for visiting our class BLOG.   If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

This year, our class has used a variety of computer applications to enhance and share our learning.  These include:

  • Live Binders (to organize web page links for a variety of subject areas)
  • web pages (for various research projects)
  • word processor (to type final drafts of papers)
  • Power Point (to produce electronic presentations)
  • Survey Monkey online questionnaires (Gr. 5 and 6 Data Management)
  • a web quest (Gr. 6 Social Studies)
  • a wiki (to collaborate re: the direction for next year's Green Team program)
  • this BLOG (to share our learning with parents)

Our latest foray into learning through technology is via a "moodle."  Moodle is a platform that allows teachers to create online programs for their students.  I have used this program to create an online Science course about "Human Organ Systems," for the Grade 5 students in our class.  The course is broken into five parts.  The first four parts involve watching educational video clips and completing online quizzes about particular organ systems.  The fifth section outlines the requirements for a research paper.

Learning via our moodle allows students to watch the Science videos and complete the quizzes at their own pace.  It also allows students to repeat sections of each video, as necessary, in order to glean the necessary knowledge to complete the quiz.  Students may try each quiz twice. The software instantly marks the quiz and provides students with feedback as to how they did.

The use of moodle within our School Board is fairly new.  Ours is only the second elementary school class to make use of the Simcoe County District School Board moodle server.

Our moodle has been configured to allow "guest access."  If you would like to visit, click this link, and then log in as a guest.  Guests may view the course outline and videos, but cannot access the quizzes.

This is a screen shot of part of our moodle:

Thank you for visiting our class BLOG.   If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

Right now, the class is in the middle of an interesting inquiry project.

Students in Grade 5 are working in groups of five, researching what it would have been like to live in ancient China, Egypt or Greece.  Based on their research, each group is building a scale model of a fictional colony belonging to one of these civilizations and creating a Power Point presentation, BLOG or GLOG (graphic blog) to introduce their civilization and explain the various elements of their model.  This is a Social Studies project, designed to complement the work on ancient civilizations our Grade 5 students are doing with Mrs. Torrey.

Students in Grade 6 are doing the same project, but their work is based on their current science unit (space).  These students are working in groups of six, researching information about either Mars or the Moon and what humans would need to travel and live there.  They are using this information to construct scale models of colonies that might exist in these two places, circa. 2030 (the year NASA hopes to take astronauts to Mars).

All group members must be involved in planning, research, construction and presentation of their project.  In order to be cost-effective and environment-friendly, students are repurposing items from the school recycling bins to construct their models.  Once the models and electronic descriptions are completed, each group will have an opportunity to present their work to the class.

Here are some photos of groups in action! (click on small photos to enlarge them).

We will post another update later, with pictures of the finished products.

This project is loosely based on the Homesteading Mars Project-based Learning project:  http://www.wested.org/pblnet/exp_projects/homesteading.html

Thank you for visiting our class BLOG.   If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

5

Our Grade 6 study of Canada's Links to the World examined several different aspects of the topic.  The Learning Goals are shown below:

 

During this unit, Grade 6 students:

-- engaged in a "webquest" (guided search for information on the internet) about Canada's Trading Partners http://linktolearning.com/trade/partners.htm

-- read relevant sections of our Nelson Literacy text

-- watched and discussed a thought-provoking video entitled "The Story of Stuff" http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/

-- analyzed posters about the life cycles of three products
http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/life-cell.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/finalposter.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/life-soccer.pdf

-- researched and mapped the location of the raw materials needed to make these products (see map below)

-- brainstormed a list of global issues that might impact us in Canada, and researched what impacts these issues might have on our lives

Since it also tied in with the Grade 5 Science unit "Conservation of Energy and Resources," the Grade 5's also watched and discussed "The Story of Stuff" and examined the map that the Grade 6's created (shown below).

During this unit, we learned that trade between nations is much more complex than, for example, Canada buying oranges from Florida and Canada selling maple syrup to Japan. Many of the manufactured products in our homes, such as cell phones, CD/DVDs and soccer balls are made from raw materials that are harvested all over the world and shipped to factories, which are typically in China. Then the finished products are shipped halfway around the world to stores near where we live.

Through "The Story of Stuff" we also learned that many manufactured products that we purchase are thrown away within a year. So when we buy disposable products, or products with a short lifespan, we are in essence channelling energy and resources from all over the world into our local dump. This has HUGE implications, in terms of trade links, our economy, energy usage and the environment.

Here are some images of our large wall map, which illustrates the flow of materials required to bring a cell phone, CD/DVD or soccer ball into your home:

These are the products we examined.
Each was assigned its own colour of wool for our map.

Raw materials from all over the world are shipped
to factories, typically in China.

Our base map, showing the flow of materials required to make and ship to North America each of the products we examined.
At the bottom are the stages in a product's life cycle.

Thank you for visiting our class BLOG.   If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me:  mblack@mail1.scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.

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