March 23

Don't forget tomorrow is "Wacky Wednesday"! We have the opportunity to hear the story "Wacky Wednesday". Please bring back your visual journals.

 March 15 - 19

We would like to welcome Mr. Beckers to our class and he will be with us until the end of April. Our week was very full as we learned about the artist Maud Lewis, a Canadian folk artist who was from Nova Scotia. We also started creating our final project about the Acadians in small groups. As the week progressed we have discussed how to work in groups, what that might look like, how we may have to compromise and most importantly how to share ideas and the work. We also had to learn how to use the  iMovie program. So, we went outside to take photos of things in nature we found interesting and then worked in our small groups to explore how to create and sequence a story. 

For the reminder of the week we started to create images that we will use in our iMovie next week. 

We also began to look at "Number Talks" during math class. During our talk we were presented with the questions 7-4 = ___ and 4 - 7 = ____. We had to answer the questions and demonstrate our thinking using both visuals and words. 

Over the last few weeks we have been looking at quick questions (These are questions that can be answered quickly. An example would be how old are you?) and deep thinking questions (These require us to think about our answers and are not always obvious. For example, why, I wonder, what if, how would you solve...).

This week we have also spent time beginning to explore a 'Growth Mindset' and what it looks like. A growth mindset is when we know with practice we will get better. It is also believing in yourself. The students also looked at a what a fixed mindset was and what that might look like.

Students brought home their visual journal to share over the weekend. Please return it on Monday.

Upcoming Dates:

March 24 - Wacky Wednesday/ Popcorn Day

March 25 - Parent Teacher Interviews 4:00 - 7:30 pm

March 25 - Last Day of classes 

March 26 - Parent Teacher Interviews 8:00 - 12:00 pm

March 29 - Spring Break Begins

April 6 - Classes resume

 

 March 8 - 12

Nova Scotia

We have selected the places we wanted to see around Nova Scotia and area, but our first stop was to travel back in time to learn about the Acadians. It started with the story Fiddles and Spoons: Journey of an Acadian Mouse by Lila Hope -Simpson.

The story is told from the point of view of the mouse who lives under the floorboards of an Acadian family in Grand Pre.  We followed this story up with Le petit Acadien: An Acadian Resource by Edith Comeau Tufts and that was when our journey really started back in time. In the story Fiddles and Spoons, the mouse mentions not understanding what the soldiers were saying... we brainstormed why this might be and our answers ranged from because she is a mouse, maybe because the soldiers were so much taller to a different language. We discovered that the Acadians spoke French and were from France originally. With this information in hand we looked at Le petit Acadien: An Acadian Resource with interest and a challenge in front of us. It was written in French. Our discussion focused on how we could understand the information if we did not know a language. We decided that we would look at the pictures to explore and discover information about the Acadians. From our exploration we created categories to collect information about, but we wanted to be accurate and that was where Google Translate came in. It was exciting to see students select a category like food, clothing, celebrations, roles/responsibilities, learned from the Mi'kmaq, resources and other. They typed in the words and quickly shared the translation with their partners and others in the class. Over the next few days we listened to the author, Edith Comeau Tufts share her stories about the Acadians and why she wrote the book. After collecting information about the Acadians our next adventure will be to share our understanding through stop motion animation. Each group chose an area that interested them and over the next couple of weeks we will be learning how to create a storyboard and then sharing it through stop motion. 

Upcoming Dates:

March 19 - Un-Birthday Day