Today we had a field trip to Tynehead Regional Park. Through Parks Metro Vancouver, we participated in an orienteering and mapping skills workshop. It was great to be outside the whole morning, even if it did rain a little! First, we learned about the elements of a map and how to use a compass. Then, we imagined there was a zombie apocalypse, hid an antidote, and had to leave directions on how to find it. This is the part of the trip that most of us liked best because we got to hang out on the trails and in the forest.
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Here are some of the beautiful tree silhouettes we made in Art class today. Amazing how we can all see the same subject so differently!
We've been up to a lot this week! First of all, we've been learning how to multiply decimal numbers using base 10 blocks. In order to do this, we have to understand area really well, because the area of a rectangle is like the product of a multiplication. Here are a few of us catching on to how we can find 2 decimal numbers that give a specific product. We've also spent some time revising the rough drafts of our comics in Health & Career to reflect the feedback we got from Mme. B. This is helping us learn how to assess our work critically against criteria to ensure it is our best. After class discussions, skits with feedback, and a couple of rough drafts, our final copies of the comic should definitely show our best work! Finally, we had a very exciting event today in class. We Skyped another class for the first time! Connecting with another grade 7 class in Surrey for the Global Read Aloud (we're all reading "One for the Murphys") was a great experience that taught us a lot about how different people can interpret texts differently. We're looking forward to connecting with Mr. Dorland's class again in a couple of weeks once we're further into the novel. Overall, it's bee a busy but eventful week. We're looking forward to the learning that is still to come!
This week, we have been practicing skills that archeologists use at a dig site. For example, we learned the difference between an observation and an inference by looking at photos of artefacts. As a group, we discussed what we noticed about them (observation) and then as many of the following questions as we could (inference):
Thanks to Madison for sharing her work below... Today, we practiced using these same inferring skills to decipher who might have owned a pile of recycling. We will continue to practice making inferences, not just in Social Studies, but in everything we are learning about. We're looking forward to our field trip to the museum where we can learn more about archeological digs and how archeologists make inferences about the past. This will help us learn about important differences between historical time periods and how ancient civilizations have contributed to our modern day lives.
For the past couple of weeks, we've been learning about how particles act in different states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Factors that we looked at included quantity of particles, space between particles, and movement. We looked at a couple of models in class; one used marbles in a container to model each state, and another involved us acting as particles on the Four Square court. This is when we realized that more movement also meant an increase in temperature! From here, we designed our own models of kinetic theory in table groups. Some of us were really creative! Learning Intention: I can create a model that clearly shows the important elements of kinetic theory in solids, liquids, and gases. Criteria:
Model of a Liquid (Paige, Aubree, Marcello, Harsh) We shared our models with the class and we peer assessed them to determine whether they met the criteria of a good model and how. This was an important learning experience as well! This week, we took our understanding deeper to use our background knowledge about kinetic theory to make inferences about the reaction of food colouring in water. Below are the videos we took to help us remember what we observed. We are starting to develop a deep understanding of this theory and be able to think about it in a critical way. Soon we will be moving on to physical and chemical changes in matter...
This week, we have been learning how to represent decimal numbers with base 10 blocks. This is important so we can learn to show our thinking in different ways. We worked concretely with the blocks, pictorially by drawing pictures, and symbolically by transferring our knowledge to numbers and symbols. Here are some photos of our work. Then, we started to learn how to add decimal numbers. It took some good thinking to figure out how to show this in a picture without using math symbols (some of us just wanted to put a + sign) but we worked hard and now have a fairly good understanding. We learned through open ended questions such as: How many pairs of decimal numbers give a sum of 4.32? Some of this work can be found below. Finally, we moved onto adding and subtracting symbolically. This felt pretty easy for most of us after all of the thinking we had to do to learn in different ways! Mme. B had us look for online grocery flyers and we had to create a grocery list for the week with only $75.50 to spend. If you're looking for an easy to use flyer site, many of us found that we liked www.flyerland.ca!
This project taught us a lot about decimal numbers, making realistic and healthy food choices, and how to spend money carefully. Most of us rated it a 4-5 out of 5. We had to go back later and make a meal plan to prove that our budget was realistic, which really helped a few of us notice some small issues with our initial purchases :) Thanks to Somu for sharing a portion of his budget below. Until next time... |
AuthorWe are a class of Grade 6/7 students in Surrey, BC, Canada. This blog is one way we will share our learning with the world! Archives
October 2016
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