Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Black History Month in Gr. 5/6

We've started reading through stories as part of Black history month.
Here's today's response about our book:
Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged
(Listen here for an audio clip about her  experience & words from her sister, Wanda Robson.)


Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Social Studies :: Country Report

Hi, stormy-stayed folks!
Hope everyone is enjoying and making the most of their storm days!

Your social studies projects were supposed to be due this Friday, February 15th. (Drake's birthday, remember?) 

Although we've been working in class on this since the beginning of January, I am going to give you until Monday, February 18th to have it done, since we've had these two storm days and you all may not have taken your materials home to work on them.

I'm also going to post the pdf as an example of the final poster. Please use this only as a guide if you're working from home, researching your country. I have all of the final copy posters printed at school on the large 11X17 paper.

Remember the research questions in the little booklet were to serve as a guide to:
a) help teach you proper researching skills
b) help you in practising reading for information
c) help you learn information about your country

So, the poster is posted below as a guideline.
The final / good draft of your poster is now due Monday, February 18. You must also submit your question booklet at this time, if not before.

Hope this helps.

Country Report Poster (*large copy to be given in school)

Friday, February 8, 2013

Forces All Around Us

We read an article about the forces that are all around us. Each student group was responsible for explaining an everyday force as indicated in the article. Here are some snippets from their presentations:

The importance of wheels.
This group started their presentation by trying to roll the large green box.
"It would be much easier to roll this box if it was circular in shape."
The they explained why the bin table at the front of the room had wheels, showing how much easier it was to move. The wheels help reduce the amount of friction between the item being moved and the surface it's being moved on.



 "When you take a step, your foot is pushing down on the floor."

If the ground is cement, and you just step on it, it's not going to make a movement.

















We had to voice record Logan's explanation:




Size matters. Gravity.


This group worked hard to explain and show what gravity does. They demonstrated dropping articles of different sizes and weights to show how gravity works on the various items. The interesting part was when they added a makeshift parachute to an item. How do parachutes work against gravity?

Friction

The girls presenting the section on friction thought this video and song best outlined the concepts from the article.




Push or Pull

A push and a pull is something everyone is familiar with.  Have you ever considered it like this?

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Who has the biggest fist in our class?

Disclaimer: It's not as bad as it sounds. This was a non-violent experiment ;) 


We've been looking at volume and capacity in math class. 

Currently we've explored the volume of a cube:
We've been working a lot with unit cubes in the classroom to explore various measurements of volume:






But, perhaps the most fun exploration was using water in containers to see who has the largest fist in the class! (and learning about capacity and displacement)

We try not to be too boring in here...