Volunteer

Since my email is misbehaving, I am trying to reach out to you here:

I am really in need of some volunteers. I am hopeful that someone might be able to come and help us with some props. I will have students there to help you. Please let me know if you can help.

If you would like to drop in on Thursday to see the Haunted House, please feel free to come in anytime. I am sure we could use some extra hands first thing in the morning as well. We will be conducting tours throughout most of the day otherwise.

The Snowsuit drive has begun. If you have gently used snowsuits to donate, please send them to the office for now as our donation bin is not yet in the lobby.

Please also remember that there is a Halloween Math Freaks event on Wednesday evening to help promote math and community. This event was well attended last year and was a fun way to engage in some math together.

Tiiu Tsao
Churchill Alternative School
Grade 5/6
www.room310churchill.blogspot.com

One Million Hours

Hello!

The Junior teachers have been getting together to talk about math. We have decided on a common template that we'd like to use to help you all solve math problems. We are going to us NWTT or Notice Wonder Think Therefore.

To demonstrate, we made up this question:

Then we modeled how to solve the question.

In class, we tried a question. We tried "Is it possible to live to be one million hours old?"

Most of us solved it in one of three ways. Some of us used multiplication to find out how many hours are in a year. Then we kept adding this amount until we got to 1 000 000. 

Some of us used multiplication once we found out how many hours are in a year to see how many hours old an older person would be. Some of us used our grandparent's age, some of us used a fact from the Guiness Book of Records, some of us used Tiiu's age and then promptly got sent to the office. 

Another group used division. These people divided 1 000 000 by 24 to see how many days is equal to 1 000 000 hours. Then they divided that number by 365 to see how many years is equal to 1 000 000 hours.

We talked to each other and decided that the division method was probably the most efficient. We thought it was efficient because it took the fewest amount of steps to land on a more exact answer. This doesn't mean it was the best method. If division is hard for you, this method would not work for you.

IXL

I am hoping that many of you are enjoying the Home Missions. I have not heard very much feedback so, if you are doing the Missions, perhaps you could comment here and let me know how they are going?

I wanted to remind everyone that you can do IXL at home. I think it will be very helpful for all of you to continue practicing your operations and facts at home. If you are forgetting your username and password, you can send me an email and I will send it directly to you.

Are you checking in on our Global Read Aloud Zone on Edmodo? Many of Mrs. Rodriguez's class are now on and wanting to talk about Melody and the book with you.

Please remember to bring in indoor shoes and your photo orders.

Updates

We have decided to invite Shauna's class to help us put together this year's Haunted House. Now we just have to plan a theme and get started.

In ECLIPSE, we've added a third activity. This one is called Reading to Someone. Here we are sitting EEKK (elbow elbow knee knee) and checking with each other for understanding.

We have also already connected with one class for our Comparing and Contrasting Communities project with Instagram. Our first month's theme was "School Meals". We met with a class from Iowa using Skype. We found out they all eat in the cafeteria. They have one student who has a peanut allergy in their whole school! They have cards they scan to pay for their school meals. They also have a law that limits the kind of food they can serve but it also effects the kind of snacks they share on their birthdays. We picked next month's theme together which is going to be "Physical Activity in School". 

 Here we are doing a Mystery Skype. This class is from Hull and we are going to do some activities with them throughout the year and then try and meet with each other live and in person!

 We are doing our second entry in our Reflective Math Journals. This one is on Place Value.

 We have started our Global Read Aloud. You can read more about it here. Most of us are really enjoying this book about a girl named Melody who has a lot of obstacles and gifts in her life. We are looking forward to connecting with some global classroom partners to discuss the book.

Indoor recess antics.

This Thursday we are going to the Parliament Hills to participate in the Rolling Rampage. 

Look at the amazing gift that Katie shared with Tiiu! She cried. For reals.

Run Fox Run

All students from grades 1-6 ran their little hearts out at the Terry Fox Run at Dovercourt today. It was a lovely sunny day and perfect to be outside together. The grade 6 students will miss going to Dovercourt to do the Terry Fox Run next year.

We have been doing ECLIPSE almost every day. Today was a great day in ECLIPSE. One friend was having trouble because she didn't feel like reading. Some of us helped her with great advice. Here it is:

What To Do If You Don't Feel Like Reading:

1. Find the most interesting book that you have in your Book Box
2. If you don't feel like reading a lot of words, pick a book where you can read the pictures
3. If you don't feel like reading, pick a book that you have already read and re-read it
4. Try to have a book in your Book Box that you will always feel like reading

The advice was great and it really helped the student out. She ended up reading a picture book that we had already read in class and also looked at a book about animals that had a lot of pictures with good captions.

In ECLIPSE, we also reviewed Text Busting. In Text Busting you figure out the following about the text you are reading:

1. Genre
2. Purpose
3. Target Audience
4. Message/Big Idea/Moral/Main Idea
5. Evidence: 3 pieces of evidence to support the main idea
6. Summary: Somebody Wanted But So Then

Hop on Edmodo tonight and keep us in the loop about that thing that we talked about. You know what I mean.

Show Me

Sohail's Show Me

Sohails other Show Me

Evan's Show Me

Show Me is a recordable White Board app. We use it to reflect on our learning and to teach others.

Updates

Hello dear blog readers. We are sorry to have neglected you. Our poor network has been feeling icky. We think it is feeling better now and we endeavour to post more regularly. Please accept our apologies.

We have discussed Mystery Skypes which sound like a lot of fun. We're glad our WiFi is up and running and look forward to our first Mystery Skype! We will be sure to live tweet the event when it happens. We'll keep you posted.

These are pictures from Math Buddies. We measured our heights using centimeters and a non-standard unit of measure that our buddies picked (Quinn and Alicia). We do Math Buddies with five different classes (Sohail)! 

We did something called Math Blitz with all of the Junior classes where we got together in five different groups and had to solve a math problem (William). We were put in a big group but could work independently or with a few others from our larger group (Ben). Some of us chose to work with our friends and we were not getting as much done. Next time, we will try to work with people that we don't know as well. It was nice to hear about the different ideas on how to solve the problem (Julianna). Some of us got to work with a lot of people that we don't usually get to work with (Sharky). In one group, they worked in pairs and then got together to share what each pair did (Fin). We will be getting together to talk about our successes and areas to improve on and then we will get to try one of the other questions. We'll be doing this tomorrow.

This is fun team challenge that we did in gym.

We are participating in something called the Global Read Aloud. In this fun initiative, students all over the world read the same book and share their thoughts. It is a chance to connect with new global friends and see similarities in how we think. Here is an excerpt from their website:

Why participate?
This is meant to make the world a little smaller, to open our eyes to the rest of the world and look at all of our shared experiences.  How phenomenal for a child to know that the same book they are reading is being read in classrooms across the globe.

The book we will be reading together is called, "Out Of My Mind" and we will begin to read it with everyone else on September 30th. 

One of the ways we will share our thinking about the book is using Edmodo. This is a social networking site designed specifically for students and teachers. Students create their own accounts and use it to access our classroom social networking site. Please check it out here and let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

We have also started our Instagram project. For now, we will only be taking pictures of objects. If any students are included in a picture, it will not include their face. I hope this is ok with everyone.

Terry Fox is this week. Please continue to send in your donations!

We have also started our Morning Run. Students are encouraged to persevere! It is hard to jog that far for some of us. Let's see how much easier it gets with practice.

Cross Country starts this week. Practices are Mondays and Thursdays during second recess in the gym. All students who come to practice and try will be able to go to the meet. So, come on out!