Where Challenge Reminders, Rubric and Process

Where Project Steps:

Reminders:

-make notes without plagiarizing. Read, look away, remember, write

-keep a list of your sources, be very specific - if it is a website, write down the URL (the entire web address)

-Make folders

-Choose topic

-Shallow research

-Deep research – chart (component/raw materials/where raw materials come from/how component is made)

-Decide how to present your information

            -poster

            -play

            -stop motion animation

            -model

            -diorama

            -song

            -music video

            -blog post

            -book

            -“cooking show”

            -video

            -check out the list in your Reflective Math Notebook for ideas

            -or another creative idea!

-Prepare presentation

-Present

Stop Motion - Movies with a Message

We are getting ready for the 2nd annual Churchill Alternative School Stop Motion Film Festival.

This year our Film Festival has a theme, "Movies with a Message". Your message should be the title of your movie. Some of the Primaries ahve already filmed their movies and their messages are: "You Can Make 12 In Many Different Ways", "Safe Choices Are Good Choices" and "All Feelings are OK". As a class, we'll decide whether all our messages will be on the same theme or subject area, or if each group will make an individual choice. I was thinking that some of our class mottoes like: "We all learn on different ways on different days", "Tell it to the potato", "If you want to be trusted, be honest", etc. would make good messages for your movies. But, that's just a thought I had.

For this project, you will be in groups of four or five students. We will have a total of five groups in our class.

The steps involved in this project include:
-brainstorm
-storyboard
-write script
-collect and prepare props
-rehearse
-film (with cameras and tripods set up)

For some inspiration, check out last year's films and the films I've collected and posted below.

Meet Our Digital Student Teacher - Anna Hipperson!

Today I got an email from our Digital Student Teacher, Anna Hipperson! In class, we visited her blog and watched a video of her introducing herself to her classmates at the University of Regina.

We learned that she will be a high school teacher of special education and Health. We can't wait to start working with her and brainstormed some GREAT ideas!

-Do you want us to call you Anna or Ms. Hipperson?

-Skype: once to meet and introduce yourself, then a lesson in Health (Fin)

-on Skype – teach us about basketball or something in Gym (Fiona)

-we could have a comment chat on one of our blogs (Fiona)

-Maybe you could teach us something you know about special education and health (Kaleigh)

-we could send you videos of our class working (Molly)

-since you have a minor in special education, if someone needs help, someone could Skype individually on the ipad in the hall to get help (Fiona)

-teach us a new Gym game or teach us a lesson when we’re doing grade 5 Science (Human body) (Molly)

-could you help us with the questions we have, we could have you on Skype to ask question! (Hunty)

-maybe you could come and meet us one day (Kaleigh)

-when is your birthday? We want to celebrate it on Skype (Kaleigh)

-we could bring the ipad down to the gym and you could teach us a gym game or stuff about basketball (Hunter)

We hope she is as excited to work with us as we are to work with her!

Tomorrow, we will try to film an introductory video of our class to send to her, or at least to post on the blog!

Answers from Guatemala

Yesterday in class, we visited Lisa and Laurie's blog and read about their first few days in Antigua, Guatemala. We even left a comment on one of their posts, asking them several questions. Today, we checked their blog and realized they took time to answer our questions! We read them out loud in class today!

My mom and aunt's blog

My mom (Laurie), who you know, and my Aunt (Lisa), who you met when her power was out from the New Jersey hurricane are now in Antigua, Guatemala working with Medicos en Action. Starting tomorrow, they will be working in the hearing clinic, fitting people with hearing aids. Many of those people have never heard before! We can follow their adventures on their blog!

Where Challenge Research Tips

Science Research

Guiding questions

-Where in the world does your “stuff” come from?

    -INGREDIENTS: raw materials that were used to create your

 item

                 -keep going backwards!!!!

                                    -dig further

      -where did those raw materials come from, what part of the world, what resources?

      -RECIPE: who put them together and where did that happen?

Goals to be done the first step of research
-write a list of jot notes about what your item is used for
-make a list of all the materials that are used to make your item

-find out where each of those materials comes from (raw materials, locations)
-what natural resources are used to make your item
-find out when your item was invented
-find out how your item is manufactured (factory, by hand...)
-how does your item, it's raw materials and manufacturing tie into your Science Big Ideas?

Search terms that were helpful

-“how ______ is manufactured”

-“how it’s made ______”

-“_____ factory”

-once you know about what raw materials were used, do more research on them specifically (soybean oil, metal, etc…)

-be more specific in your search ("how world cup soccer balls are made" rather than "how soccer balls are made")

Helpful websites

-wikipedia
-How Stuff Works (there is a search window on the site)

-ones linked on the blog in earlier posts

How do we take notes and make sure we don’t plagiarize?

-open multiple windows – one document for notes on your sources and one for your notes

-don’t forget to keep a list of your sources!

-make jot notes on sticky notes (very short, a few words, not sentences)

-put things in your own words

-how to put things in your own words , read a short chunk at a time - read, understand, look away, write

-right now, nothing should be written in sentences, everything should be in short notes

Where Does That Day-Glo Colour Come From?

As you know, I LOVE this type of video! If there is one factory I'd like to work in, it would be this one, I'd come home so colourful everyday!

Spot the Difference

Can you spot the major difference from Obama's first inauguration in 2009 to his second inauguration yesterday?

I Taught My Mom How To Blog

Why is it so much harder to teach a mom to blog than it is to teach a room full of students to blog?

P & A Airlines

Check out Fiona and Gabby's awesome Area and Perimeter Reflective Math presentation!

MLK Jr. on Brain Pop

We got into a great class discussion today while watching Brain Pop's MLK Jr. video. Many students wanted to try the quizzes, here's the link!

"Low Tide" a review by Madi

"Low Tide" was a book that Shauna's cousins made (Alicia and Jack). They wrote this book when they were in Florida when all of a sudden Alicia looked out of the window and saw it was low tide and yelled, "Low tide!" When Shauna told us the story, I'm that it was funnier in person.

The snail on the front was drawn by Alicia and all the pictures were taken by Shauna or Ashton or Alicia. The book was very cool and funny and cute. It would have been even better if there was a picture of an octopus, I'm sure Shauna would have liked that too. Some of the pictures were taken by Shauna's new camera. When we were reading the book, some of the pictures were falling out.

Me and Purploopa (a tiny toy octopus) are just sitting here right now while Mel is just waiting and Shauna is typing and asking, "What else? What else?" It's sort of getting annoying.

The book was from those hardcover books that Shauna got in Florida that Shauna got for her class before but they don't deliver to Canada anymore, so she got them delivered to her condo.

Most of the writing was by Alicia and Jack and then some was by Shauna. I wonder if they did all that good spelling by themselves or if they had to ask Shauna or Magic Mike or Matt or Courtney or Ashton.

They were on St. Pete Beach and in one of the pictures, there was a Fairy Forest.

-by Madi

The book's cover!

The cousins, writing the book.

Once again, the cousins writing the book.

Elluminate!

I've been spending some time tonight meeting with teachers and student teachers from ALL OVER in this amazing virtual classroom called "Elluminate"! Soon, one of the student teachers will pick us and work with us! It's going to be hard for them to pick, though, there are a lot of fantastic teachers!

Some of the teachers said I could share their blogs with you:

Mr. Williams' 7th grade class 
Mr. Chamberlain (he has a ukulele club!)
Mrs. Cassidy's Grade 1s
First Grade Explorations

Check out their blogs. Do you have any ideas of how to connect with any of those classes?

Martin Luther King Jr. Necklaces!

We celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day today in a unique way in Room 209. We started with a reading of "Martin's Big Words", a pointed reading of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech (which gave most of us "goosies"!), listened to the actual audio of the speech and then gathered all our knowledge into the amazing necklaces you'll see below.

Each student created at least three pendants on his or her necklace, one representing the life of MLK Jr., one representing his words and one representing his impact on the world or on US!

Ideas for my Hardcover Book Sample Mind Map

Food Adventures: Hunter's Grape with a Face

Is this creepy or awesome? I wonder if Hunter ever ended up eating his grape with a face!?

Your Weekend Homework: Area and Perimeter of the Gym

 Remember when we were in the Gym on Friday? Every student measured the length and width of the Gym with a non-standard unit of measurement - his or her feet!

Don't forget that your homework for the weekend is to determine the perimeter and area of the Gym based on your measurements. Also, answer the question: why are some of the measurements so different?

Figure this out using the strategies we've been practicing in class. You may leave your responses in the comment area below or bring them in on Monday!

Good luck!

Creating a Mini Art Gallery

In class, we are creating Mini Art Galleries with six famous works of art. Each student will be a the curator of an art exhibit! So far, each student has selected a Picasso painting and a Japanese wood print. We are carefully observing our artworks and preparing commentary and critiques to eventually "tour" people through our galleries.

In class, we have talked about how to prepare our commentaries.

Here are the criteria we have come up with:

Principles and Elements of Design – how do these impact the way you feel about the piece of art?

-texture

-pattern

-colour – complementary colours, hot and cold, analogous, monochromatic

-shape

-space

-lines

-form

-focus

-balance

-rhythm – repeating sort of pattern

-contrast

-harmony

-unity

Questions you might ask when looking at art

-what is the story?

-what does the title mean?

-what is the style of art? (abstract, realistic…)

-who is the portrait of? What is his or her story?

-is it a portrait? A landscape? A still life?

-who made it? What is his or her story? When did he or she paint it?

-What else was going on in the world when the artist created this work?

-what materials were used?

-is it collage? Painting? Sculpture?
-what feelings are evoked in the viewer?

-what I see…

-what I feel…

-what I hear…

-what I wonder….

-how does this compare to other art I’ve seen?

Together, we looked at "Guernica" by Picasso and wrote a critique for it.

Guernica – Pablo Picasso

Line – the way the artist painted the lines of the necks of people makes the painting feel very dramatic

Rhythm – almost as if it’s a play, lots of action happening, lots of passion, textures with shades of black and white

Texture – on horse, looks like it’s a collage out of newspaper, Picasso might have done that because the newspaper tells a story and the horse tells a story, trying to put pressure on the Germans to make peace?

Colours – dark and solemn instead of bouncy and light and happy, Picasso chose those colours because it’s a war and that’s a dark time to be in

Space – really really tight, everybody all together, other places destroyed, this place is the safest place left, it makes it feel very urgent, all the action of the war is going on at once

What else is going on in the world at the time Picasso painted this? Lots of war and destruction, bombs, he painted this during the Spanish Civil War, 1500-1600 civilians were killed in a Spanish town by German bombers. This makes us wonder what war adds to people’s lives

What I feel – everything feels sad, everything is dying, I feel screaming, death, sadness, pain, I feel like I’m a part of it because so much is going on, you get wrapped into it

What does the title mean? “Guernica” sounds like a made-up title of random syllables and later we read that it means the town that the bombing happened in

 

Pablo Picasso

In class, we read spoke and read about one of the most well known artists of all-time, Pablo Picasso. We were surprised to learn many things about him and enjoyed learning more about the man behind the famous art.

As Shauna read aloud from "Lives of the Artists: Messes, Masterpieces and What the Neighbours Thought", students listened and then took turns summarizing paragraphs. You can read below to see what we learned!

Pablo Picasso

1881-1973

-age 92

We already know:

-abstract artist – not realistic

-blue period

-there are some original Picasso paintings in Ottawa

-knew how to do abstract and portraits, not many artists know how to do that

-from Europe – Spain

-he did a lot of different types of art: ceramics, sketches, paintings, sculpture

We learned together:

-he didn’t do well in school, he had dyslexia

-he brought a pigeon to school and drew it

-he was pretty successful in Spain at a young age

-he lived in an attic in Paris, was robbed for everything but paintings

-whenever he had enough money, he went to the bullfights, because he liked that as a child

-he was extremely productive, a workaholic

-he was pretty small, but buff

-he’s crazy, he went crazy around people, he was a show off

-he had lots of important friends, but he was very violent and they were afraid of him!

-he dated a lot of ladies and a neighbor threw a rock at a window

-he only let one person watch him paint, his second and last wife

-he had four children and had a good relationship when they were younger, when they were older, he didn’t have interest in them

-he had some weird habits: he didn’t throw anything out, he didn’t let anyone dust his studio and he safety pinned his wallet to his vest pocket

-he was paranoid about his security

-he didn’t have a phone until his son had a medical emergency

-he had a strict and sort of strange diet

-eccentric:  different from other people, liked to keep lots of animals

-really big show-off, vain: liked books and movies about himself

-prolific: he made 200 paintings at the age of 90
-source: "Lives of the Artists" - Krull

We learned on our own:
-Picasso's dad painted in the realistic style, he saw his son's paintings and quit painting because Pablo was better! - Pat

Where Challenge Research!

We are right into it now, boys and girls!

  Our Where Challenge projects are underway. You have made your beautiful research folders and we have begun researching in the computer lab

Research Tips:
-Often we are finding words like: polyethelyne, iron oxide
-Search "raw materials"

Topics:
1. Camden - DVDs
2. Daniel - hot dogs
3. Fiona - Paint
4 and 5. Gabby and Vickie - Cameras
6. Haydon - Oil machines
7 and 8. Hunter and Ethan - Diamond jewellery
9. Jack - World Cup Soccer Ball
10. Jackson - dirt bikes
11. Kaleigh - Lava Lamp
12. Laryssa - Erasers
13. Liam - Mood ring
14. Madi - Bubble wrap
15 and 16. Melodee and Lauren - Coca Cola
17. Miguel - Baseballs
18. Millie - Touchscreen gloves
19. Mollie - Ferris wheel
20 and 21. Pat and Finley - Microphones
22. Ricki - Ear piercing gun
23. Thomas - Headphones

???
24. Sophia