Overview

Dear Parents,

As we finish another week in the classroom, I wanted to give an overview of what we've been working on:

This week students completed an artist statement based on their Kandisky work from last week in Art and we practiced a new improv game called Bippity Bippity Bop for drama.

In Gym, we've been working on co-operative games, mostly using the parachute this week, and we started our Health curriculum with a discussion about reasons people eat (Medical, Social, Societal, Emotional).

We began our Social Studies program by talking about Orange Shirt Day and some of the Push/Pull Factors for Immigration to Canada. When we talked about symbols that represented Canada, a lot of the students chose animals. When we talked about things that represented their own family's arrival to Canada, many chose to focus on cultural foods, like pierogies or potatoes. These are valid choices, but when we talked about Orange Shirt Day and the challenges that Black Loyalists faced, I felt like students engaged in the bigger ideas that ground our unit, so I hope to move forward with that. We'll be doing some of that through partnering with Ms. Khokar in the Library.

For Language, we read together from the class novel and they wrote a reading response based on a shared discussion question. For writing, they handed in a polished copy of a paragraph to show their understanding of paragraph structure, and we are busy making pop-up book pages in groups to explain some grammar terms like nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and punctuation. I will start sending home grammar homework for practice next week. 

For math, we've been working through the Nelson textbook in Patterning and Algebra, with support from JUMP math. Now that our new workbooks have arrived, I hope to do more work with the JUMP program. Today, we worked on the mid-unit quiz from JUMP, which will go home Monday along with the homework--another practice quiz. I sat with all my math groups today to review their understanding of the trickier patterns that change (Patterns that go up by a new number each time are  harder to make algebraic rules to move from x to y, so we might use t-charts or pictures to support.). I will continue to send home math homework to be completed by Friday, on a weekly basis.

I also have been giving them quizzes to see where their computation skills are. For students who need to practice, the following sites have been recommended to me by Ms. Filan for good math games:

https://pages.sumdog.com/
https://ca.ixl.com/math/grade-6
https://www.brainpop.com/math/

We're using yellow folders to communicate back and forth from home, to write out our agendas, and to stay organized. We're spending time daily, reviewing those organizational details, to help students get in good habits for their future.

Sincerely,
Ms. Goegan

Wassily Kandinsky Resources

Dear Parents,

We are working on abstract art concepts in class, focusing on the example of Wassily Kandinsky. We started with Peter Reynolds' The Dot, which shows kids that we can all be artists and then I showed this slide show, which gives a couple of ideas about how to do projects based on Kandinsky's work at the end.

https://www.slideshare.net/nivaca2/wassily-kandinsky-for-kids


I also showed part of this video in class and thought it might interest some of you to review in more detail. It talks a bit about Kandinsky's synesthesia.

You can also watch this animation, which includes some inspirational music.

Here are some examples of student work.

They made their paintings fit together

Team building

Dear Parents,



I have sent some things home today in students' new homework folders. You can have fun learning whether you share your Grade 6's intelligences or if they're an opposite colour to their siblings (more on that below). I have also sent home another math assignment due on Friday. We will review graphing with patterns in class tomorrow, so it should make more sense then, if you find it challenging tonight.

This has been a bit of a crazy week so far. Because we did not go to Mono Cliffs this week, I've shifted focus in our class to some of those team building activities that would have happened there.

Yesterday, we looked at Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences and figured out what kind of smart we were. We talked a bit as a class about how different approaches can support our learning in the classroom. We all have preferred modalities and we can use them to support areas where we might face more challenge. We also talked about how we tend to like things we're better at and might need to work at balancing our strengths. We talked about the difference between interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence at length too--how knowing yourself and your own needs is different from knowing others.

Here's a wikipedia article elaborating a bit on each intelligence and giving an overview of the theory behind it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

Today we talked about The 4 Colours Theory and how different people have different values and temperments that affect their learning. We had a lot of Orange kids in this class, which suggests we'll lead a year full of action and excitement. Surprisingly there were a fair number of Gold as well, but not so many Greens. To some extent these things are arbritary, but they're an interesting tool for self reflection and coming to shared understandings.

Here's a sense of some of the strengths we're working with:


I don't want to link to a company selling these services, but feel free to google 4 Colours Personality Test and find out more.

This morning we did a cup challenge. Students had to work as a team to stack these cups without touching them directly at all. I've included some pictures of us at work below. It's always nice to see what's happening more directly.

(As always, if you would rather not have your child's unedited face appear here, please let me know. One face has been covered because that student expressed a preference when asked in class).

I'll continue to work on team building this week and next, but we're also honing in on the academics. I look forward to reviewing that in some detail at Curriculum Night on Thursday. As always, I'm happy to respond to questions or concerns on my board email.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Welcome to Grade 6

Dear Parents,

Welcome to Grade 6. It's always a busy start to the year, but I have been especially busy preparing for Mono Cliffs next week. Please get your permission and medical forms back asap or let me know formally if you're not going (i.e. return the form with a "NO").

I also sent home homework for the first time last night, which will be due on Friday. I do think regular practice is important and our math time is much too short to get that all in--I plan to start a more regular homework program once we return from Mono Cliffs, but also felt like students needed to get back in practice more immediately as well. The sheets are from Jump Math and relate to patterning. I hope that you will "help" by asking open ended questions (Sample questions: What do you think goes there? Can you read the question again to be sure?) and providing space and time to support completion of work. I will always try to give ample lead time with homework, but will be tracking who does and does not complete their work. If completion becomes onerous or takes hours, that's helpful information for me to have as well.

As always, you can be in touch via my tdsb.on.ca address (lisa.goegan), if there are any issues or needs.

Sincerely,
Ms. Goegan

Dear Parents,

For the last day of school, students have requested a Teddy Bear Picnic. We'll spend some time outside with our stuffies and snacks. Students are welcome to bring a favourite activity to play at school.

Thanks for a great year,

Ms. Goegan

End of year activism

Dear Parents,

Things are piling up a bit as the end of the year rolls closer, so this post will be long and photo packed. We delivered the backpacks, waterbottles and lunch bags to the local homeless shelter that we had collected them for.  Ms. Khokhar and I are posing with some of the workers at the Redwood, a sign they made for the class and the student letters that I delivered to them.

Me and Ms. Khokhar at the Shelter

From their social media post, it looks like they've posted our letters there. 

I loved the letters that students wrote explaining why they'd decided to help in this campaign.  They  all demonstrated solid kid logic, but the bigger picture also showed that they had a lot of empathy for kids who might be in difficult circumstances. 

I am reluctant to post all the letters here, but each kid wrote one and all of them are different.

"This project was important because we want them to survive and go to school."

"I did this because I didn't want you to be hungry and thirsty. I did this because I didn't want you to be homeless."

"This project made me happy because I like helping people."

"I want to help you because the class is depending on you to help them"

"I did this because I want you to be hydrated and healthy. And I want you not to be sad and left alone."

"This project made me feel happy because now you can go to school like us. You can go to school with lunch bags, backpacks and water bottles."

"This project made me happy because now they can be hydrated. And I think they will be surprised."

"We did this because we want to help you go to school, so we gave you what you need. You're welcome."

"This project was important because everybody deserves to go to school"

"This project made me feel very happy. I feel happy because I did this for you."

I've probably posted more than I should, but they really pull on my heartstrings. I do have photos of all of their letters, if you don't see your child's there and want a copy. The drop off happened last Friday and the poster is posted in our main office for the entire school community. Thank you for your support!

Then, on Tuesday this week, we had our end of year trip to Legoland. As I've said elsewhere, I had a lovely time. We had a great bus driver who cranked the tunes and a dance party on the way up, then a busy day exploring Legoland up in Vaughn, and a sleepy bus ride home. Many thanks to the parents who came for their time and energy! One parent also sent me these photos from our building workshop. 

Finally, we also learned that Eddie was having lunch with our local MPP this Thursday. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, so we wrote some more letters. There wasn't as much time to pre-teach the concepts on this letter, but we already had the toolkit from our last letter. I wanted to show you the anchor chart I made to support students, and then some of what they produced. 

We started from our base understanding. Activists are people, of any age, who see something unfair and work to change it. Then I explained that the government helps make laws and asked why activists might be excited about talking to people who make laws. They made that connection very quickly.

So then we started with practical considerations of a letter form, like the date and the greeting, then I gave a couple of sentence starters for their introduction. 

Next, we brainstormed some topics that students really cared about and these two were the overwhelming majority. I also had two students very passionate about animal rights, who I sent off to brainstorm independently. 

We tried to think of things we wanted the government to -do- to help the problem and they came up with this list. When they went to write, they needed to explain why that idea would help. This was hard for some, who thought it was too obvious...except maybe sometimes it's not as obvious as it seems to them.  

Anchor Chart

This time, some students wrote using the same letter form as before and others decided to write longer letters. More opted for this than I had thought! Again, I've included more than I should have, to give you a sense. I've transcribed some of the shorter/messier ones for ease. If you don't see your child's here, I have also taken a picture of it and would be happy to send it to you. These ideas are theirs, not mine, but it was interesting to see how many referenced things we'd done in our homeless project and how many mentioned fish, from the Great Lakes presentation.

"We have to help the fish that are endangered out of extinction. We have to get the garbage out of the water, because we want our water to be clean" 

Lila's letter 

"I have some ideas about homelessness. Give them food and water so they can live" 

"I think we should plant more trees because we will have more air. We need air to survive"

"We should keep pollution out of the lakes and waters. We need to protect the wild"

"I'm sick/I'm good"--Adriano's illustration

"We should put in more flowers and trees at the park because it will give us better air"

"You should keep wilderness space for animals and not let people there. Why? Because they are nice to you, so you should be nice to them"

"I have some ideas about homelessness, so they don't have to sleep outside because it is not fair because we have a cute bed. So they don't have back problems"

"I am writing because I care about homeless. We need to have money to get for food so they are healthy"

Leah's letter

"We need to stop garbage in the water. It hurts the fish"

Miles' letter

Lukas' letter

"We cannot litter on water or land"

The more I reflect on these letters, the happier I feel to have had the chance to work with these kids all year. Best wishes for a happy summer, if this is the last post for this year!

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan