daw.com - October 27

I cannot say a big enough thank-you to all of you for spending time with me at Parent Teacher Conferences.  I believe very heartily in the home school connection and cherish every time I get to meet with parents as they are few and far between.  I also hope you gleaned some things from them about your child in my classroom this year and that not too much was a shock to you.

As part of our Math class, we visited the cooking lab this week and cooked up YUMMY CINNAMON MUFFINS.  I was amazed at how well everyone worked and how well everything turned out.  I can also tell you, everyone does know how to clean up in a kitchen after the cooking is over.  We complete the snack with a strawberry-banana smoothie.  The pictures today come from our time in the lab.  We will do this once more as part of our fractions unit and again at the end of the year for a very special year end party.

We are coming to the final stages of some of the projects in the class over the next couple of weeks.  Today we completed the voice over of a Biomimicry video that I made and I am looking forward to students presenting these next week. One of the other teachers on the team identified this as a coloring book in which the students complete each page.  This time it was a video with no sound and they had to produce the narration.  These will eventually show up on Seesaw and you will be able to see them there.

One big take-away from the conferences was some discussions about math.  ISB does not run a leveled math program as a school.  This is left up to the teacher to do in the way of personalized learning.  As I talked with a lot of you, there were comments about how they are performing and how their math is progressing.  For the most part I am very pleased.  There were two areas that were covered frequently with quite a few parents. This year is the final time for students to really perfect their multiplication tables and understand how to use

them for division, ie. 4 * 5 = 20 so therefore 20 / 5 = 4.  There is a wide distribution of this in the class and the best way to really become good at this is to do it orally every night.  The second component was the ability to understand a problem.  This takes on many facets as we look at multi-instruction problems.

• As an example - Cora and Gemma were making bead necklaces.  Gemma made 39 more than Cora.  If Cora made 106 how many did Gemma make? 
• If each necklace had 104 beads in it, how many beads were used by each girl? 
• Cora was able to sell her necklaces for $14 and Gemma for $10 more than Cora.  Who made the most money and how much more than the other?

As you can see there is a lot of math here.  Nothing hard, but a lot of math.  This would be a typical grade 5 multi-step problem.

Our writing is taking on the form of report writing.  We are into writing a report on Innovations Through Nature that will have 5 sections in it.  The due date for this is November 10th and I am confident everyone will make it.  Their research is completed and they are ready for the first draft of the sections of the report.  They will then revise and edit them before completing a final draft.

Our final project in the unit is to complete a design for something that is inspired by nature.  We have looked at over 35 examples and hopefully these will set the stage for some really original ideas from the students.  At the end of this, students will present their ideas.  I am hoping to have the present to you at home as well as students here at school.  More on this later.

Next Friday is International Day and I encourage students to dress in something that is representative of their native land.  I have something that I will wear from Canada (it is not a Mountie Uniform) and I am hoping all the rest of my students will do the same.  I want to thank all of you for being so punctual in returning the supervision letters for the after school events.  It always promises to be an exciting and fun time for the students.

We should complete our second Book Club this week and it has been interesting to see how students both react and learn with a historical fiction book.  While I do believe that everyone has tried their hardest, there are definitely those really enjoying the book and others putting up with it since it is an assignment for the reading class.  Either way, I do believe everyone continues to learn about reading.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.  I will gladly set up a time to meet with you.

daw.com - October 20

 

You should have received your students report card on Student as a Learner last week.  If you did not please contact the office to have this corrected.  The student as a learner looks primarily at how your student recognizes their own learning. This is a broad scope of concepts and ideas that should make them think deeper about themselves and reflect on what needs strengthening.  We do a reflection piece on student as a learner every 2-3 weeks throughout the year that is also goal setting.  This way students can both reflect on themselves as they grow and set a goal to be reached in a short period of time.

I forgot to show you something that the class was involved in about two weeks ago.  The high school Human Health and Fitness IB class needed to collect age date about health and fitness so I volunteered the class.  Mr. Smyth, the high teacher of the class, had stations set up that were manned by the students in the class.  I think the class enjoyed the time with the HS students as they had quite a list of questions for the students.  I like to be involved in these activities as it shows the students that there is more going on at ISB than just our class.

Remember that next Monday and Tuesday are parent teacher conferences so there is no school on these days.  I hope all of you have set up your conference and look forward to seeing you to discuss your student.  They are a continued manner the school uses to keep the home - school connection open.  I also like them as it allows me to take the temperature of the class and where we are headed.

We are well along with our writing unit on feature articles.  We have spent some time this week researching biomimicry, nature, innovation and innovation in biomimicry.  We have also looked at 4 videos and gathered more information and evidence of innovation through nature.  Next week we will move on to the outline phase of the writing as we get ready to actually take all this information and write about it.  The final outcome is a feature article about innovation through nature.  We will be posting these on an online website I have set up for this assignment.  Students will also Seesaw this and reflect on the process and the product.

Next week we will take our math class into the kitchen.  Cooking is an excellent use of fractions in the real world.  We will be making muffins and smoothies.  I know everyone is looking forward to this as it is a really neat activity.  I have one other time we will go to the kitchen to also look at fractions but in an extended manner.  Of course, it goes without saying, that the students get to eat their projects.

Although I have no Jedi Jugglers in my room this year, I do want to let you all know that next Friday, October 27th is the annual Jedi Jugglers show.  I am sure it promises to be quite a spectacle.  The students always enjoy this show every year.

I want to remind everyone that your student should be reading at home all seven nights a week.  All research shows that this is a very positive way to improve reading skills.  We do not have a lot of time to free read in class but there are lessons almost every day and discussions and assignments based on the readings we do in all out subjects in class.  Help your child continue to improve by reading every night.  They should be recording this in their planner so they can put it in their reading log at school.

Our math has taken us to multiplication of 2x3, 2x4, 3x3 and 3x4 digits.  These are large numbers and for some students it is taxing their basic facts.  By this time I hope students understand the necessity of basic facts up to 9 x 9 = 81 and the division reverse.  It will help them as we continue to explore multiplication of whole numbers and move into decimals up to thousandths. If they are a bit rusty, saying the times table out loud is a fantastic way to quickly bring it to mind. we spent time this week proving our standard algorithm with tape and ribbon diagrams as well as area models.  As your students about these as they should be able to tell you and also decompose the numbers for them.

That is it for this week.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me and I will gladly set up a time to meet.
Harold Daw

daw.com - October 13

Friday the 13th - is this an omen or what.  If it is, then I am positive it is a positive one. We have had an amazing week of learning that continues to show just how much we can move in one week.
This week started with a new math unit (multiplication and division of decimals), a new unit of inquiry (Innovations Through Nature - Biomimicry) and a new writing unit (Non-Fiction Articles).  We have laid the foundations for all three and are on the move to more and impressive learning in all three areas.  While not a new unit, our book clubs takes on a new book and genre as well (Pedro's Journal - Historical Fiction).

The new reading book is about a cabin boy to Christopher Columbus.  It takes place during the initial voyage of Captain Columbus to the new world.  Pedro is the boy who is assigned to Christopher Columbus to take on the duties of journaling, time keeper and chart keeper.  As an educated boy, and this was a rare skill back in these days, the book is written through his lends of history.  We do spend a lot of time with the historical aspect of the story so the students will have some background to what they are reading.

Our Innovations Through Nature is a unit we we look at how nature has inspired us to invent new and more sustainable products and structures.  We spent this week looking at what is nature and how nature has already helped us.  we are keeping an Inquiry Journal for our work for this unit.  As we move along we will spend a lot of time look at the innovations that have come about as a result of studying nature.

Our Non-Fiction article work is going to use the inquiry unit as its basis for topics.  We will look at how to research for this kind of article and if the internet works for us, all this will be published on a website of the students design.  We will also look at how to properly research both in documents and books as well as the internet.

It is important that everyone keep reading at home each night.  No time on his, just a time set aside to read is all that is needed.  Please continue to help your student make this a reality.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.  I will gladly set a time aside to meet with you.