September 19th- 23rd

     We are getting into the swing of things with our independent reading and I love how kids are taking  the initiative to sign up for conferences to talk about what they are reading and clarify how they will choose to respond to their novels. We have been working our way through various writing strategies to improve the quality of writing and have also begun our work with Quickwrites. It was great to have so many willing to share their writing with their classmates! We reviewed the paragraph structure and the kids were asked to show me what they know in a descriptive paragraph assignment.

Sharing writing after our first quickwrite

    We talked about the importance of setting academic, personal and health goals for ourselves and visualizing those goals with vision boards. We experimented with Canva, a fantastic digital communication tool last week and now it's time to put it to use with the creation of their own vision boards for Media Literacy. 

    We finished off the week by making sure that we were caught up on all our assignments and then took some time to play word games and then made our way to the ball diamond to cheer on the MDHS baseball team to another victory. We seem to be good luck charms for our secondary teams!

     In History, we started to look at the Inquiry Process and specifically how to ask better questions when doing research.  We learned about Bloom's Taxonomy and higher-order thinking. I shared a critical thinking skills tool with them so they know how to ask rich questions that will drive independent research in the future.  We also began to watch episode 4 of CBC's Canada the Story of Us and learned how the creation of the Welland Canal and the invention of steamships impacted growth in Upper and Lower Canada's economic strength and population.

Learning how to ask better questions collaboratively.

https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/07/a-quick-guide-to-21st-century-critical.html

    In Science, we did a doodle note about the Scientific Method so that we are ready to become young scientists and carry out experiments. Students will have the opportunity to run their own experiments during our first unit on Water Systems. 

Reminders for Next Week:

Wear orange on Friday, September 3oth for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation