Learning threads

Dear Parents, 

There were lots of threads to pick up moving through this week.

First, we started with an experiment about the viscosity of various liquids, comparing glycerin to water using droppers. 

 Next, a student followed up on our discussion of leaves last week by bringing in an oak leaf.

Another student brought in a book on Klimt, so much of our creative effort this week was spent researching him and his work, then creating paintings that recreate elements from his, like use of bold colour and background patterns.

Looking at different Klimt pictures on the Ipad

Students at work. You can see the background spirals and bold colour swathes in the two foregrounded works

Trees and people were popular topics

My exemplar is in the background

I hope to show you a couple more of these here, but we'll be putting them up on display in our hallway soon as well, if you happen to be in the school. 

My second idea for what to do with Klimt's inspiration was mosaics. This is proving harder for students to manage and sustain interest in, particularly the abstraction, but we'll keep working on this. 

Of course, the hundredth day is still very much a topic of discussion. Here are students making patterns, measuring the links against the length of the carpet, and counting to 100. 

10 groups of 10

Another recurring math thread in our classroom has been surveys. Students complete them at a variety of levels. Below is an example of an SK carefully writing out his questions and making check boxes, where the JK approach is more improvisational. 

Questions range from "Do you like Star Wars or Princesses?","Do you like Hot Chocolate or Tomatoes?", "Which is your favourite, Kylo Ren or Han Solo?", "Do you like Jellyfish?" and the ever popular, "Do you like Ice Cream?" Hot Chocolate won by 1 and Han Solo by a landslide; the other answers were "Yes". Apparently most people in our classroom like all those things. 

Then, because this is exactly the sort of thing that warms my teacherly heart, here are two students examining our whale tooth and debating at length, which sort of whale it came from. Probably my favourite moment this year was when Nasr actually found a picture of an Orca tooth in google images and carefully wrote it down on a piece of paper to read out loud to the class at the end of the day. 

Finally, you have two photos which show how busy the learning environment really is, with learning centres piled up on each other. 

Counting links, writing journals and doing surveys at the same table

A Ms. Moniz sneaky special showing me working on journals, while art and science go on in the background.