Mrs. Black's Class Blog – Page 16 – where learning, creativity and outreach go hand-in-hand!

Homework! :-)

Margaret BlackSeptember 19, 2012September 20, 2012Leave a comment

This year, in accordance with Simcoe County District School Board policy, students in our class will be assigned homework that falls under four categories:

Completion: any work assigned during the school day not completed in class;
Practice: any work that reinforces skills and concepts taught in class;
Preparation: any work that prepares students for upcoming lessons or classes;
Extension: any work that explores and refines learning in new contexts or integrates and expands on classroom learning.

Under the category of "practice," students are expected to read at home for at least 20 minutes per day. Students are asked to complete a log sheet for four nights of reading each week, and have a parent initial the sheet to verify that at least 20 minutes of reading took place.

Also under the category of "practice," students are expected to complete 3-4 sheets of math review homework every other week. This work is part of our class' small group "Guided Math" program. The resource for Guided Math is Dr. Marion Small's Leaps and Bounds: Toward Math Understanding for Grades 5/6. At the beginning of each topic in our regular Grade 5 and 6 math program, students will be asked to complete a diagnostic test assessing how well they remember the math concepts they learned in prior grades. Guided Math groups, geared at reviewing earlier math concepts, will be created based on the results of each diagnostic test. Guided Math groups meet with the teacher once a week, during an extra math period. Students who don't understand how to complete the math homework may bring it back to class and receive additional tutoring during nutrition breaks or recess. Review, through small group Guided Math and Guided Math homework, will make it easier for each student to build upon his/her knowledge during our regular Grade 5 and 6 math program.

In addition to the above, at times students will be expected to study at home prior to taking tests. Unfinished work and occasional home projects may also be assigned as homework throughout the school year.

This is a homework resource for parents, provided by the Simcoe County District School Board:
Bringing School Home: How can I help my children with their homework?

Click on the link below if your child needs to print an extra copy of the Weekly Reading Log sheet:
SummaryReadingLogHomework

For information about the other elements of our math program, see the math program overview published to this BLOG last school year.

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.

More Schoolyard Biodiversity!

Margaret BlackSeptember 15, 2012October 22, 2012Leave a comment

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.

Grade 5 Science and Social Studies! 1

Margaret BlackSeptember 12, 20121 Comment

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.

Grade 1 and 6 Science Buddies!

Margaret BlackSeptember 11, 2012September 29, 2012Leave a comment

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.

Back to School 2012!

Margaret BlackSeptember 8, 2012September 8, 2012Leave a comment

Week One is now behind us and we are off to a great start! We spent much of our first four days reviewing Literacy and Math concepts, getting acquainted and team-building. We also reviewed school rules, and established classroom rules and routines that will foster comfort and productivity.

COMMUNITY AGREEMENT

The class has created a "Community Agreement" (list of good behaviour principles) using the character traits listed on a Restorative Practices poster that the Simcoe County District School Board provided. Students then drew from their Community Agreement to create a short list of "The Big Five" rules for classroom behaviour. When solving conflicts or dealing with habitual or major misbehaviours, we will use the poster to identify:

what happened and why
how the behaviours of particular students affected others
what can be done to make amends
what can be learned from the incident(s)
which areas of character education may need further reinforcement

If you click on the Community Agreement poster, you can see an enlarged version of it.

Other tools that we use in our classroom to encourage good behaviour are explained in last year's "Open House" BLOG post:
https://blackdeer.edublogs.org/2011/09/23/

COOPERATIVE LEARNING

The following is an example of one of this week's fun (and frustrating) cooperative learning activities.

Students were placed in random groups of four and given 15 minutes to build the tallest freestanding tower possible, using only uncooked spaghetti noodles and miniature marshmallows.

They soon discovered that the task was not as easy as it sounded, with spaghetti noodles snapping easily and pliable marshmallows not holding the structures in a very secure manner.

In the end, a few groups were able to build a structure that could support itself, but the greater lessons learned from this exercise were about the challenges of working collaboratively toward a common goal. During our debrief, one student said, "I think I should have listened more to the members of my group. I thought I had a great idea, and wouldn't listen to them until my idea didn't work." Another said, "I knew that triangles were the strongest shape, but no one in my group would let me speak." One group found that whenever they reached near consensus about a design idea, a lone dissenter would usually opt out and refuse to help. These are great observations about potential pitfalls that students need to avoid when working in teams to fulfill academic goals.

Here are a few pictures of the spaghetti tower-building activity:

This is the tallest freestanding tower that was created. It measured 42 cm in height. Congratulations to David, Eric, Jillian and Pyper!

You can find the instructions for the spaghetti tower activity here: http://www.schcounselor.com/2009/10/spaghetti-marshmallows-and-cooperation.html

If you haven't already done so, please subscribe to our BLOG updates by e-mail and check out our class' "Live Binders" page. There are a links to both up there...

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.

Summer Learning Fun!

Margaret BlackJune 28, 2012Leave a comment

I want to thank all of my students for a terrific school year!

Now that Summer vacation is upon us, students will need some activities to keep their minds and bodies occupied. Here are some fun Summer learning ideas:

Kids Turn Central
http://www.kidsturncentral.com/summer/summer.htm

Summer Learning Fun Links
http://www.teachingwithtlc.com/2012/06/summer-learning-fun.html

Sylvan Summer Fun and Learning Guide
http://tutoring.sylvanlearning.com/pdfs/Summer_Fun_and_Learning_Guide_for_Parents_Canada.pdf

Wonderopolis
(click the button after "subscribe via" and the site will send you a fun, daily learning activity, via e-mail)
http://wonderopolis.org/

Bedtime Math
(sign up and the site will send you an engaging math activity daily, via e-mail)
http://bedtimemathproblem.org/

Summer Science Ideas
http://pinterest.com/suntat2/summer-science-ideas/

2012 Summer Olympics Learning Activities
(the games will be held from July 27-August 12, 2012)
http://projectbritain.com/olympics/teachingresources.html

Ancient Egypt for Kids
http://www.creativekidsathome.com/creativekids/2006/07/ancient_egypt_for_kids.html

Space for Kids
http://www.creativekidsathome.com/creativekids/2006/08/space.html

Nature Week for Kids
http://www.creativekidsathome.com/creativekids/2006/07/nature_week.html

Beach Days for Kids
http://www.creativekidsathome.com/creativekids/2006/06/beach_activities.html

And, of course, you can also revisit the links in our class' Live Binders page
http://www.livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=224571

Thanks again, and have a safe, fun and productive holiday!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Black

Youth Leadership Camp (YLCC) Field Trip!

Margaret BlackJune 14, 2012Leave a comment

Today, the Grade 5 and 6 students at our school went on a field trip to YLCC, just outside Orillia. The trip included Physical Education and team-building activities. Here are some pictures of our day:

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.

Music and Phys. Ed. Go Outdoors!

Margaret BlackJune 7, 2012June 14, 2012Leave a comment

Music and Physical Education classes have "moved outdoors" of late, along with Science and Math (see previous BLOG post).

In Music, students are working with homemade "unpitched rhythm instruments" to create percussion accompaniments to Aboriginal legends and student-authored stories. In gym, we've been honing our baseball skills. Below are some pictures of these outdoor learning experiences. (Click on any photo to see it enlarged. Click on 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.

Science and Math Go Outdoors!

Margaret BlackJune 2, 2012Leave a comment

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.