December Update

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 Getting Caught Up...

Well, that was interesting! After the week without internet I am still getting caught up on emails and wanted to update everyone as to the goings on in our classroom.

We managed quite well in the class without the world wide web (did you know it takes less time to say that than WWW?). We have transitioned from Science to Social Studies and are discussing communities past and present. We made community flags by cutting and pasting, yes literally cutting and pasting, construction paper. We also studied the area of parallelograms and did cutting and pasting there, too. It was great for the students to see that if you cut a right triangle off of a parallelogram, and put it on the other side you have a rectangle whose area is easy to calculate with length times width. So a parallelogram has the formula base times height.

This week we are looking at algebra and I used my favourite balance model to demonstrate isolating an unknown in an equation.


Duffin's

We had a blast exploring one of the DDSB's outdoor ed centres at Duffin's Creek. We started in the classroom learning about the various animals on display, both live and taxidermied. The instructors then took us outside for a lesson on orienteering. The students raced around to find various checkpoints using a centrally located map. Those who got the hang of it were given hand-held maps that allowed them to find checkpoints further afield.

We were treated to a small campfire to help us warm up while we ate lunch. Before heading out on our afternoon hike, the kids had a bit of free time to run around, play soccer or volleyball, or just chill.

The afternoon was spent on a beautiful hike with numerous biodiversity lessons from our instructors. After a long day of exploring, we had a quiet bus ride home to school. 
























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