Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Materials and Structures update

Dear Parents,

I've been waiting for an opportune moment to go through our Scientist in Schools photos for a grand post, and here we are, a week later.

Before getting to them, I wanted to remind you of the upcoming project deadline for our birdhouse project, due this Monday, . Ideally, students should have tested out their projects to see whether they were feeding squirrels and raccoons before their presentations.

I also sent home a number of summer school application forms for students last week. Here's a link to more information about these programs.  TDSB elementary summer program

I had a number of students attend last year who were happy to continue to have some structured learning during the summer months. If you are interested or need more information, please get in contact.

On to Scientists in Schools. Many thanks to Heather, Bri, Kerri, and Mira for pinchhitting at the last moment at the stations.

Students sorted different types of materials

They investigated different fasteners







Built hopefully stable structures as a team. 



Learned about how to make structures more stable by adding foundations


Built structures for different purposes












Played with tools, using different fasteners

















Learned about what kinds of shapes are the most stable








It was a very busy afternoon with lots of great learning and engagement. For our conclusion, we began building chairs out of newspaper, but ran out of time. We still haven't completed them yet. In class, we've been focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of different materials to build, and we'll come back to these as an end of unit focus. 

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan





Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Brief Scientists in Schools Note

Dear Parents,

I could use 1 more volunteer for Thursday afternoon's Scientist in Schools. I have followed up with parents who emailed me, but I'm sure there were a couple more who spoke to me offhand about volunteering. Please be in touch and let me know as soon as possible, if you're available.

Thank you very much to parents who have sent in newspapers! We look forward to using them to make some cool structures on Thursday.

Sincerely,

Lisa

Monday, May 7, 2018

For the brids!

Dear Parents,

It's been a while since I posted here.

I'm handing out a bird feeder project today for our Science unit on Materials, Objects, and Everyday Structures. It will be due June 4th, 2018 and students are expected to complete it at home. If support is needed, please let me know.

Here's a link showing what students in a previous class did with their bird feeders:
http://msgoegan.blogspot.ca/2017/06/birdhouse-workshop.html

Here are some ideas we liked from our class google image search:
Image result for bird feeder recycled materialsRelated imageImage result for bird feeder recycledImage result for bird feeder recycled
Image result for bird feeder recycled materialsImage result for bird feeder recycled materialsImage result for bird feeder recycledImage result for bird feeder recycled materials

I also wanted to update you regarding two other things that are upcoming for the class:

  1. The afternoon of May 17th, we will have Scientists in the Schools come in to do activities related to our Materials unit in Science. We will need a great deal of newspapers for this afternoon and 4 parent volunteers (which I will confirm by email).   If you subscribe to a paper, please save it for us rather than recycling. 


  2.  We also have a year end trip to the AGO on June 19th. I’m hoping to receive all the monies and forms for this trip as soon as possible so I can finalize the paperwork.  Please let me know if extra forms are needed.

Thanks for all your emails and questions,

Lisa