Catch Up

Wondering what we've been up to lately?

In math, we made this delicious sounding fictitious menu to go with The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. We've been using it to practice our mental math. How does your brain add up a few of these amounts? Is it different from how my brain does it?

This week, we also tried our second SOLE question. 

Grade 4: Why do we not always help Mother Earth?

Grade 5: What is government? Why do we need one?

In the arts, Makarena has been teaching us about the elements of dance. We are gearing up to give useful feedback as we judge dances from So You Think You Can Dance.

Today, we learned about Michelangelo. We also talked about warm and cool colour scheme and long and short brush strokes. We put all of these together to try and create the same drawing twice with two different colour schemes. Just for fun, we did this lying down, just like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.

In Language this week, we took a break from POW and we did some small reading groups to see how we Text Bust (break a text apart to understand it better). We will have more practice with this soon.

In social studies, we were looking at our wants versus our needs. Tomorrow, Paul Dewar is coming to answer some of our questions. We are really excited to meet him.

Cardboard Carnival!

I could not have been more impressed with the creativity, adaptability, and perseverance of these Awesome Geniuses. Their Cardboard Carnival was a HUGE success! We had quite a few classes come through and play our games. We got some excellent feedback, even from those big grade 6s!

Congratulations everyone!

Cardboard Arcade

Yesterday was a magical day for the Awesome Geniuses. After a meeting with our Tree Families, the students watched this video about Caine and his arcade. We saw how creative and passionate Caine was about his cardboard arcade.
The rest of the day was spent on the stage getting creative, designing, and building.
What did we make? We made a photobooth, a dancing game, a sensory guessing game, a drawing machine, a pinball machine, a boat racing game, a ticket booth equipped with Fun Passes, a claw game, and a few target games. The process from designs to final machines was incredible. Students were able to reflect that they needed to persevere and be adaptable when plans didn't turn out. Some reflected that they got sidetracked and others noticed that they either excelled as leaders or as supporters. It was an awesome day. Tomorrow we will be inviting some classes to come and play at our arcade. We can't wait!

What did we do? We designed and built cardboard arcade attractions.
Why did we do it? We practiced our design skills and addressed Learning Skills needs such as perseverance, passion, collaboration, and creativity. We also did some self-reflection. It helped us to feel like a team too.

These Short Chapters are Driving Us Nuts!!

So, it's been a while since we've written a post. This post will be a mix of things we are noticing and wondering.

We noticed that Edward was feeling really hopeless until he got taken off of the post by Bryce.

We have a lot of feelings about Bryce and Sarah Ruth's dad. Many of us think that he is really mean. Some of us are wondering why he is so mean. He might have been so sad about Sarah Ruth being sick that he wasn't brave enough to take proper care of Sarah and not brave enough to love her. Some of us are wondering about their mother. Maybe she died too and that is why the dad is so broken hearted.

We figured something else out. Someone in our class is reading a different book that takes place in Memphis. In her book, there is a street called Egypt Street. Now that Bryce and Jangles are headed to Memphis, we are wondering if Edward and Abilene will be reunited.

We cannot understand why Pellegrina just left Edward there. We know she knew who he was because she nodded at him.

Why does the next chapter have a picture of Edward in his fancy suit?!?
Why is Edward walking?!?
Why did it all just go black?!?