Thursday, November 24, 2011

We've been up to so much goodness this week!

The movies are well on their way to being planned. Groups are almost done their storyboards and scripts. All of their movies have their own distinct style and include a variety of shots to help make their films look more professional. Next up, we will be discussing sound and presenting our ideas to Matt (a director) and Shawn (a producer). I'd like to ask the students to dress in business attire on this day to make it feel more authentic.

To help us with our endeavours, we watched two more films this week. We started with Marcel the Shell which was a good example of character development, different shots, and it was just super cute. We also watched a film made by kids in Ireland which was a good example of what we might be able to accomplish. It also was a great example with sounds and music in mind.

Baby Rye came for another visit. This time, we talked about what changes Baby Rye has gone through and what kinds of feelings he might have. We discussed how is "schema" is not as big as ours and how he probably doesn't feel things like embarrassment, shame, or accomplishment. His feelings are probably more like hunger, frustration, and contentment. It was interesting to see so many of the boys really show an interest and level of tenderness for Rye. So sweet. Most of the kids got a chance to hold Baby Rye which was super exciting. While he was here, we took his measurements which helped us with our math!

In math, we continued our study of averages and Hagrid. We calculated our class mean height and width, the median height and width, and the mode for height and width. We used this data to find out how big Hagrid is. Then, we made a life size cut out of him. He's ginormous! We also used Will and Tiiu's height and shoulder width, as well as Baby Rye's measurements to play around with our data. We discovered that "outliers" changed our mean more than our median.

We have danced a lot this week. In gym, we danced during our fitness stations and especially loved experimenting with the hoops. This gave Will an idea and he let us try different things with the hula hoops for the whole gym period the next day. We've never sweated so much! Today, we danced to "Double Dream Hands". If you've never tried it, you really should. It's impossible to stay mad while doing it.

On Friday, we had a great time skating. We shared the ice with Owen's grade 1 class. A parent from that class commented on how great our kids were at helping out the younger students. YAY 310!

We practiced Double Dream Hands again. The students are getting a lot better at it. When we got back from gym, something amazing happened! We were filling out our agendas when Ray's class barged in and surrounded us. They explained that they were inspired by our Random Acts of Kindness from last year and decided to R.A.D. us (Random Act of Dance)! They busted out into dance and we joined right in. So fun! I love Churchill!

Students should be looking for props for their movies this weekend. They were also given packages for our Museum Overnight. Please remember to also hand in contributions for our "Santa Fundraiser". Have a great weekend!