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Wednesday 18 March 2015

Catch That Leprechaun!

In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, we embarked on a design challenge project that required two things:

1.  You had to design a trap to ensnare a leprechaun.
2.  It had to be a Rube Goldberg inspired invention with at least three steps.

The students brought in recyclable materials and we used plenty of other objects from around the classroom.  The reason I like this project so much is because it incorporates everything we have been learning all year long about the design thinking process, namely:  Design, Test, Iterate.....repeat!

Too often school is about trying to get everything right the first try.  There isn't much room for the allowance of failure and yet we learn so much more when we DON'T succeed rather then when we do.  This project experienced many frustrations and failures for my students.  But the best thing I heard around my room was when one of my students said, "Let's just try it guys.  If it doesn't work we'll try something else!"  Imagine if these same thoughts echoed in Math class when trying to solve a problem?

Ya, but what were they learning from this?  It looks like a time waster to me........I can totally see some people looking at this project and saying these words.

But they were learning how to take risks, to problem solve, to design an answer to a challenge question, to fail forward, to work together in a collaborative effort, to be creative, to engineer and construct a workable design model......

Measured by an assessment?  No.  But that doesn't mean learning didn't take place.  In fact, if you talk to the students about the project, I bet they'll tell you they learned a whole lot.

"What if it doesn't work?" one of my students said when it came time to show them off.  I looked at them and said, "I bet you'll be able to tell me why it doesn't work and what you would do different next time?"

Here's some pictures from our fabulous morning.  And yes, we did see some success :)











Wednesday 11 March 2015

Origami

Today we had a special visitor in our class. Haruna Toda is visiting Canada from Japan. She told us about some of what life in Japan is like. We talked about food, local customs, and some of their pop culture. To wrap up we got to try our hand at some origami which is the Japenese Art of paper folding. 

We made Pikacihu. 




Thursday 26 February 2015

Survey Says!

Here my students have created surveys about things they would honestly like to have answers to.  The range in topic but each survey only takes about 1 - 2 minutes to complete.  Anyone with a CESD gmail address can respond but they would like the responses to be limited to their middle school students.

Pick a survey and help us out!

http://goo.gl/forms/03NjHbF9fk - New School Playground Equipment

http://goo.gl/forms/EjBEKjRPGH - Favorite Playground Equipment

http://goo.gl/forms/CvWsZX5SuJ - After School Sports

http://goo.gl/forms/J6wwbdKFEr - Return of Concession

http://goo.gl/forms/xtlTyxHqWs - Do You Want Concession Back?


http://goo.gl/forms/ZHndHo1RJR - After School Activities

http://goo.gl/forms/jN8aPIaRRh - Special Lunch Days at School

http://goo.gl/forms/HkY9xlUKPW - Your Favorite Sport

http://goo.gl/forms/CHnrkQTA3E - Extra Curricular Activities


- Bringing Back Concession

http://goo.gl/forms/yxz9sbxZtF - How The School Day Works

http://goo.gl/forms/GAa6s0lvee - Your Favorite Sport in Gym

http://goo.gl/forms/sH0XTEpkAu - Books in the Library


http://goo.gl/forms/tNeNp8EHPE - After School Hang Outs

http://goo.gl/forms/RlO42aoNUc - Changing Some of the School Rules?


Your help is greatly appreciated.  Let us know what you thought of the surveys by leaving a comment?  Were some of the questions hard to answer?  Are you interested in any of the results?  Give the Grade 6s some feedback on the kids of questions they asked!












Friday 13 February 2015

Iroquois Decision Making

While Athens is an example of direct democracy (everyone participates) the Iroquois is a more representative form of democracy where Chiefs are leaders. And while Athens used voting to reach decisions, the Iroquois made decisions based on consensus. We believe this stems from their goal of maintaining a peaceful society. 

We used this model of Consensus and followed the Grand Council method to see if we could come to a decision by consensus on where we should go as a class on a field trip. 

First we had clan meetings:


Then the Chiefs of each clan (as chosen by the Clan Mother) met in a Grand Council meeting to discuss the options. 


Then the clans met again in pairs to try and reach a decision. One set of clans did manage to make a decision but the other pair did not. Today we learned that making a decision by consensus is really hard!


Flight Competition

In our flight unit we have been learning about many concepts such as what makes a plane aerodynamic, how is it affected by drag, and what happens to flight when we adjust controls such as elevators and ailerons. 

So today we held a flight competition to use our knowledge in developing paper airplanes for each of 3 categories. The Distance competition tests our knowledge of aerodynamics, the Air Time competition tests our ability to create drag while maintaining lift, and the Acrobatics competition tests our ability to make a plane do tricks by using flight controls. 

Here are our winners!  Can you see the difference in airplane design?  Do you know which planes won which competition?





Monday 2 February 2015

Weaving a Story

The Iroquois nation has a series of beads that are traditionally purple and white. They are woven together into belts which are the recordings of historical events. These belts are then kept by a wampum keeper, a girl who would have been trained at a very young age what the symbols on the belts meant and what stories they told. 

Today we created our own....






Thursday 15 January 2015

Inside The Planetarium

Well today was cool!  We sat inside an inflated dome and got to experience a travelling astronomy show! 


It looks small on the outside but it was big enough for all of us!  

We started off by getting to hold an actual meteorite. It's made of melted metal and it's very heavy. 




Then we moved inside the dome. First we went forward in time and watched tonight's stars come out. 


We learned how to locate Polaris, where the constellations are and we saw how stars move across the sky. 

Next we saw where Jupiter will be. We also got to zoom in close to see Jupiter's rotation and well as how it's 4 biggest moons revolve around it. 


We wrapped up by learning how our own moon revolves around us and what phases it goes through. Today we understand our sky a little bit better. 

Thanks to Dr. D and to Westglen School for inviting us. 


Wednesday 7 January 2015

What a Drag!

As we come to the end of our flight unit we find ourselves experimenting with the effect of drag on paper airplanes (it slows them down so they don't travel as far) and parachutes (they will have a slower descent).