Mr. Grinnell's Class Blog

 Well, it has been a great two weeks, and as I anticipated, this will be a fun year with lots of great learning. I wanted to update you on a few items that will be put into place now that we are in the swing of things. Binders I don't hand out duotangs in Grade 6. I have nothing against them, although opening the tabs to put something in is kind of annoying, placing a sheet in the middle of the duotang is quite cumbersome, having to have a bunch of them to keep track of can be tricky and ordering the right number in a variety of colours can be tricky, too. Ok maybe I do have something against them! Instead, I suggest all students use a binder system. This way, notes from a variety of subjects can be kept in the same place with the aid of dividers. It is also good practice as your child heads towards their Intermediate years, or even High School. New Blog Pages I will begin to add subject-specific pages to the blog to let you know the curriculum we are covering. While this is time c...

I have been asked to get permission forms signed for our walk to Altona forest. So we will probably have to wait until next week. Sorry for the confusion!

Instead of making class rules, we brainstormed possible Classroom Rights in the style of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. We had lots of good suggestions and will be tweaking them to get them just right; pun intended! In Math , we continued looking at Multiples and Factors . We began with some Bell Work that went something like this: Two different numbers share the multiple 60 and have 4 as a factor. What could the numbers be? After a lesson on multiples and factors we did questions 1,2,3, 5 and 6 of this worksheet: In Science , we reviewed our "Handy Memory Trick" to recall the Five Kingdoms of Living Things. Maybe ask for demo when you have a minute! We then had a friendly competition to see which group could come up with the longest list of species (from any kingdom.) Here they are working hard on their lists: We also had to get rid of the leaves we collected and sorted last week. Instead of throwing them into the garbage, we talked about the recycling of nu...

 That Wasn't So Bad Now Was It? At least I hope not... I was very happy with our first week back. We have quickly established a positive working environment, and the students maybe even had some fun; I know I did!  In Science , we continued our look into Biodiversity by attempting to classify the leaves we collected. We will get into more formal classification, and soon the students will be expected to know the Five Traditional Kingdoms- Monera, Protists, Fungi, Plants and Animals. We also began discussing the Linnean Classification System which gets more and more specific as we go through Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. The students were asked to put the leaves into groups using whatever criteria they wanted. We had some great observations: Today, we began listening to a podcast about the biodiversity of a simple traffic circle or roundabout. The students heard that a handful of garden dirt contains approximately 200 Billion, yes billion organisms f...

 In Math , we played Yahtzee. Yep, the 70's called and they want their leisure activity back. Why Yahtzee or what is Yahtzee you might ask? Yahtzee is a dice game that requires addition, multiplication, probability, logic, problem solving and strategy. All in that in one game? Yep. The kids were given scoresheets and seemed to have a lot of fun without knowing all the awesome Math connections I just mentioned! If you can get together five dice, it's a fun non-screen game for the whole family that really consolidates a lot of Math. Later in the year, we will be making our own Spreadsheets to keep score, including using formulae to make the additions needed to calculate total score.  Hoping for a 4 next role for the Large Straight! If that 3 becomes a 6 we have a Full House! In Language , we continued working on a journaling activity that is a take on Two Truths and a Lie. Our version involves writing two things that the students did in the summer and one thing they wish they co...

Let's Go!!!! With a new year comes new opportunities. I anticipate this will be a great year in Room 202. I believe everyone is unique and gifted in their own way. I expect hard work, but will promise fun times in return!  I will teach most of the subjects, but the students will have Ms. Tipson for Health and Ms. Coulter for Drama and Dance. As they have in the past, the students will have Mme. Andrus for French. We are going to build a strong supportive learning community, where we can all flourish. I can't wait to get the learning started! Please visit this form to provide me with important information:   Link to Google Forms