Ms. Goegan's Classroom Page

Hour of Code: Minecraft edition

2020-12-08T18:24:00.007-08:00

Dear Students,

I'm going to use this post as a holding place for some hour of code links I think will be fun for us to work on as a class.

Let's start by trying to make a virtual dance party: https://hourofcode.com/uk/learn

I also want to test out if you can download this Minecraft Education program on your computers: https://education.minecraft.net/get-started/download

Don't worry, if you can't we can still do some Minecraft coding: https://studio.code.org/s/hero/stage/1/puzzle/1

Some other areas of coding:

https://studio.code.org/s/oceans/stage/1/puzzle/1 (ai machine learning0

https://app.codemonkey.com/banana-tales/challenges/1 (python)

https://www.tynker.com/lesson/host (tynker)

Henry Moore and Inuit Sculpture

2020-12-02T20:00:00.002-08:00

Dear Students,

We created work that was inspired by Picasso and Matisse, and because we think of them as being modern, were surprised by the visual connections we found with traditional indigenous masks. Here are some sketches students made of First Nations and Inuit masks, displayed near our Cubist Self Portraits:

To inspire our own work with clay last week, we then looked at some Inuit sculpture by a variety of artists, both modern and traditional. We looked at some work available online from museums https://marionscottgallery.com/portfolio-item/modern-masters-northern-quebec/

and work by contemporary artists like David Ruben Piqtoukun: https://davidruben.com/

and Karoo Ashevak: https://www.inuitartfoundation.org/iad/artist/Karoo-Ashevak

This week, we will continue to compare and contrast these with the forms and shapes used in modern art, particularly by Henry Moore.

First a video to give us some sense of his overall style (the background musical choice is strangely ominous):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AHF2EPxZ6A&t=60s

We'll discuss what we see, particularly thinking about how negative space plays into these sculptures, then look at an overview of Moore's work displayed worldwide:

At the Tate Museum in London:

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henry-moore-om-ch-1659/henry-moores-sculptures

And from the Henry Moore foundation's catalogue of his work:

http://catalogue.henry-moore.org/advancedsearch/Objects/classifications%3ASculpture%3Bdepartment%3ASculptures%3BmediaExistence%3Atrue

Finally, if we have time in class or you are curious to learn more, this is a good short backgrounder on Moore and some of his influences:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWIB_rPtTvM&t=187s

Underground Railroad Primary Sources

2020-11-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Students,

For Grade 5's: You will use images from Hands On Social Studies in class to look at primary sources for First Nations early interactions with Europeans.

For Grade 6's, here are a couple of slideshows showing some primary sources about the Underground Railroad:

https://www.eiu.edu/eiutps/Underground%20Railroad%20Primary%20Source%20Set.pdf

https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-underground-railroad-and-the-fugitive-slave-act-of-1850

https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-ff98-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99/book?parent=205503f0-c6b4-012f-8a4d-58d385a7bc34#page/1/mode/2up

and here is a political cartoon showing you some of the ways the Underground Railroad was discussed in popular media like newspapers:

https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-e87a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99#/?zoom=true

Pick one image that you connect with and reflect on it using our graphic organizer.

Math Update

2020-04-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Parents,

I have updated the pages section above. It continues to be a work in progress, but I've added a math tab and moved information that was on a previous page to other sections as appropriate. I hope these link suggestions are helpful and I appreciate your patience as I work through the other sections to streamline information, check working links, and support student learning where possible.

If you have not already connected with the school, I urge you to do so.

For Grade 6 students, under the science tab, you'll find a number of videos relating to the most recent unit on flight for Grade 6, with a worksheet (Ms. Goegan's Questions) that helps you click through on relevant games and short texts on the Smithsonian site, accessed through the link to Mr. Polsky's Page. I also recommend exploring the Fold and Fly link, where you'll get templates for folding a wide variety of paper airplanes.

Sincerely,

Lisa Goegan

Electricity and batteries

2020-01-08T12:09:00.001-08:00

Dear Parents and Students,

In science, we've been looking at how we source electricity and how electricity gets transformed into different kinds of energy, for example in appliances.

We've been discussing the pros and cons of different energy sources and whether or not they can be considered "renewable" or "green". For instance, trees and wood are renewable sources, but give off carbon when burned and simply don't scale to the level that a large Western population uses. We'd use up all the trees if we attempted to heat everything with wood. There are also pluses and minuses to even hydroelectric power, which we tend to think of as clean and renewable, when dams are built on natural habitats or disrupt the water shed.

In many electrical devices, the electrical energy is transformed into a combination of heat, light, movement or sound energy. We've looked at a lot of different examples and tried to imagine the circuits inside that power them.

Today, we also looked inside batteries and talked about chemical energy. We compared 1.5V cell batteries with 9V batteries and talked about the difference between Volts and Kilojoules. For example, a D battery has more Kj than an AAA, but the same voltage: both are 1.5 V. A 9V battery typically has 6 cells inside it, making up 9 volts altogether because 6 x 1.5 = 9.

From Reddit, showing the interior of different 9V batteries

I look forward to making wet cell batteries with the class in our next science session, so they can see the interior more clearly.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Happy Holidays!

2019-12-21T06:28:00.001-08:00

Dear Parents,

Wishing you the best over the New Year break. This time of year always brings out nostalgic memories of crafts and baking, so we sewed ornaments out of felt this past week and decorated gingerbread cookies. I've also sent home thank you notes for all kind gifts I received. Just in case they don't make it out of the backpacks, thank you very much again.

I've mostly done sewing with younger grades before and it's astonishing how much more Grade 6's can accomplish independently, but also what a wide range of skills and experiences they come with. On a personal note, this was deeply satisfying because one student in particular who hasn't been excited by any of my grand schemes so far this year was really happy about his newfound sewing skills.

We made circles

This badly cropped photo also shows some of the paper crafts we've been working on. This student embroidered a name into their pillow.

This one is a snowflake

Here's a star

Here's the collection from Friday morning. You can also see a gingerbread man or two in there.

We mixed icing sugar with lemon juice and students used that to attach their candies and help create their gingerbread personalities:

In the afternoon, we watched Polar Express and I made hot chocolate, by student request after the Holiday Sing A Long.

Again, hoping you have a wonderful break. See you in 2020!

Sincerely,

Lisa Goegan

Literature Circles

2019-12-02T13:24:00.002-08:00

Dear Parents,

Literature Circles are like book clubs for students. Each student has a role to complete and is marked on both their written completion of it and their oral participation in the group's meeting. We will also complete a spelling program and a Reading Response based on these books.

Each student takes a turn completing a different role. The roles I've chosen may change as students become more comfortable with the format and/or need to practice different skills. Each student received a package with all their role sheets and reading expectations in class. They will be given some time in class to complete but may need to bring work home, depending on their reading speed.

Extra copies of the role sheets can be found under the Language tab on this blog, in case students lose them.

For the first books we're reading students have chosen books that link to our social studies curriculum:

4 of these books link to different experiences of First Nations peoples and 3 link to other Canadian immigrant experiences (English/Irish, Chinese, and African). We wanted to give students lots of choices, so there's been some shuffling of books in the last week as new books I'd ordered arrived.

I have read or vetted all these books personally, and tried to pick books that were engaging, historically accurate, written by people from the community it discusses whereever possible, and age appropriate. If you have any questions or concerns about content or even how lit circles should work, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Surrealism in Art

2019-11-19T05:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Parents,

We were making some practice paintings of basic forms, like rectangular prisms and triangular prisms and cubes in order to practice using brushes to make large and small works.

Then we focusing in on the work of Rene Magritte, Salvadore Dali and Man Ray in the last week or so to see what inspiration they could add to our basic paintings.

Together in class, we've come up with some success criteria that these artists used that we can apply to our own work as well.

I asked students to pick one of the following to play with, but when we talked about the Magritte and Dali paintings, they saw that each artist played with all three.

--Be Playful:

•Play with SCALE (make it look big or small)

•Play with TEXTURE (melting, put holes in it)

•Play with CONTEXT (Add eyes or lips or something else that really doesn’t belong, make it dream-like)

--Make sure your additions look as realistic as possible

--Focus on either foreground or background

--Make your viewer question what is real and what is made up

Memory of A Journey--Rene Magritte

The Burning Giraffe ---Salvadore Dali

The False Mirror--Rene Magritte

The Listening Room--Rene Magritte

Here is a small selection of student work samples:

Sincerely,

Lisa Goegan

Math Test Tomorrow

2019-11-18T12:30:00.001-08:00

Dear Parents,

Tomorrow, we'll have a math test based on Lessons 1-5 of the Number Sense and Numeration Unit.

Students are asked to focus particularly on Rounding and Estimating. Today we reviewed leading digits, and the best strategy for rounding when adding vs. subtracting. All students were asked to bring their jump math workbook home and review page 36 in particular, if they have not already finished it in class today.

Our regular math homework will go home tomorrow, be focused on Data Management, and not due until Monday.

We also have grammar homework due Thursday and a grammar quiz (like one side of the homework) will happen on Friday, so that we have time to take it up.

Here's a photo from last Thursday with our snow mascot. Looking very much forward to next week's trip. Remember to return your forms asap, if you have not already!

Best,

Ms. Goegan

Upcoming Overnight Field Trip

2019-11-11T17:07:00.003-08:00

Dear Parents,

I am excited that we have a new date and time for our overnight excursion. We will go to Camp Kearney on Wednesday, November 27th, and return on Friday, November 29th. I've distributed field trip forms and medical forms.

Here is a google slide presentation that will show you a little more about the Outdoor School and what it looks like:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eUwIcHDNZDmdiWmESKTWIxQGa38Rl_xFUJ1mFt12Gn8/edit?usp=sharing

Please let me know if you have any questions. I hope to get forms back to confirm groups and room placements as soon as possible.

Best,

Ms. Goegan

Interview Times

2019-11-04T08:57:00.002-08:00

Dear Parents,

Progress report cards will be coming out next week and in the interest of making things easy, I'm posting my available time slots so that you can schedule yourself in directly. Click on the link and choose a 15 minute slot that works for you (You may need to ensure the AW calendar is on the right date to see the times that are available). An email will be sent to me confirm the appointment.

Thursday Night Appointment Slots: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/selfsched?sstoken=UU5RM3RFdlRBWTR0fGRlZmF1bHR8NWFhNzhlOTEyMmUzYTc5ODI3NjFlYmU1NjBiMzc1OTg

Friday Morning Appointment Slots:https://calendar.google.com/calendar/selfsched?sstoken=UU5RM3RFdlRBWTR0fGRlZmF1bHR8NWFhNzhlOTEyMmUzYTc5ODI3NjFlYmU1NjBiMzc1OTg

If neither of these times works for you, please let me know as soon as possible so we can set something else up instead.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

First Nations Remembrance Day Assignment

2019-11-01T09:15:00.002-07:00

Dear Students,

Edited at completion: Here is the link to the shared google slide presentation. Please feel free to share your work with others. Editing has been completed. I will make this slideshow into a video that we can share.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1s5V2fEz7YG-prD9sUiRLtBFFZBMY0_5OLlDVBL5QGN0/edit?usp=sharing

For our Remembrance Day project, you'll be investigating one of the soldiers mentioned in this document, working in partners.

The short documentary on Cree Code Talkers we watched in class is available on Youtube:

Here are the partners and the names of the people you're researching, as we discussed in class:

Maia/Saaya--Edith Anderson Monture
Alexi/Hunter--James Moses
Charlotte/Gabby--Tommy Prince
Lily/Zoe--Tom Charles Longboat
Rowan/Jahlisa--Joan Martin
Yasmeen/Luna--Mike Mountain Horse
Sebastian/Keats--Jack Beaver
Sam/Aiden--Chief Joe Dreaver
Johnny/Abdul--Francis Pegahmagabow
Lincoln/Everett--Joseph Brant
Matilda/Riley--David Greyeyes
Courtney/Paisley--Nelson Shead
Filip/Elias--Gilbert Monture

Native Soldiers, Foreign Battlefields Link

Here's a digital copy of our worksheet you can use to work online:

Guided Research Questions – Native Soldiers – Foreign Battlefields

1.Where did you get this information? (We will all use this primary source for photos: https://www.veterans.gc.ca/public/pages/remembrance/those-who-served/aboriginal-veterans/native-soldiers/natives_e.pdf, November 1, 2019)
If you use other websites, include url, date retrieved and, for books, use the following format: Last name author, initial. (year of publication). Title of the book. City Province/State/Country: Name of Publisher.

2. Name of the Aboriginal Veteran*:

3. Where did he/she come from (hometown/reserve)?*

4. In what war(s) did he/she serve?*

5. Did he/she receive any medals for their service? Circle: yes no

If yes, which medal did he/she receive and why?

6. Did he/she return home from the war?

7. List 2-5 other facts you learned about your Veteran:

8. If you could ask your Veteran a question, what would you ask them? Why?

9. How do you think their experience of the war might have been different from other soldiers?

Once you have completed this sheet, Ms. Goegan will sign off and you will format your answers and a photo of this person into a single google slide to display during our assembly on November 11^th.

Remember: Not all your information needs to be included on the final slide! Choose the important details to add in addition to the items with a *.

(For the purposes of crediting others' work, this lesson comes from Tamara Hancock's excellent unit, Should I Wear a Poppy?)

Happy Research!

Ms. Goegan

Toronto History

2019-10-23T18:31:00.002-07:00

Dear Parents,

After seeing the Mush Hole, we ate lunch in Berczy Park and students enjoyed interacting with the public art, like the trompe l'oeil building, the dog fountain, and the hands:

Class photo by L.B.W. Thank you!

We also enjoyed the Hockey Hall of Fame public sculpture

We had a bit of time, so we decided to take a longer route home and walk past some more sculptures in what was a kind of mini-labour history walk (the sources of inspiration for which I'm indebted to former Clinton Librarian Gini Dickie's connections to Maureen Hynes and Sue Smith).

We focused on 3 main sites as we walked west along Front:
1. WSIB Sculptures in Simcoe Park. There are two parts to this sculpture, a bronze cast of a worker carving the inscription "Remembering our Past, Building a Safe Future" by Lana Winkler and Derek Lo.

Photo fromWikipedia

Then a long shelf called 100 Workers (by John Scott and Stewart H. Pollock), covered with plaques memorializing workplace deaths of Canadians (1 per year in the 20th century). Some students were really interested in reading all the captions and names. We talked a bit about how laws and regulations were key to making people safer.

photo from Reddit

There's also a sculpture by Anish Kapoor, recently in the news for owning the rights to the blackest black (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anish_Kapoor), called Mountain. As with all these sculptures, students were keen to climb and explore.

2. The Chinese Railroad Worker's Memorial, located at Spadina and Front near the Sky Dome, is by Eldon Garnet and Francis Le Bouthillier. We spent some time here talking about the history of the railway and the poor treatment of Chinese workers.

Photo taken from Atlas Obscura

Here's a link to an Atlas Obscura Article about this history and this site: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/chinese-railroad-workers-memorial

3. Finally, we stopped at The Thimble and Buttons at Richmond and Queen before getting on the streetcar back towards school. This piece, actually called Uniform Measure/Stack by Stephen Cruise, is missing the measuring tape that used to be part of it, but still commemorates the area's history as the Garment District.

I just learned that the measuring tape was a guerilla element, so I'll link to spacing's review of that element: http://spacing.ca/toronto/2006/12/11/thimble-art-starts-to-measure-up/ and a more recent news article talking about its removal: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2015/08/27/blog-street-art-tape-measure-removed-from-richmond-and-spadina/, just because I personally find this fascinating. (There's currently a lot of construction around here, so I originally assumed it had disappeared due to that.)

Photo from CityNews, 2015

I used this last stop to as an excuse to talk about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which was one of the deadliest industrial disasters ever. Because doors to the stairwells and exits were locked to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks, 146 people died, many of them women and recent immigrants. The outrage from this tragedy did lead to more regulations and safety standards. Here's a link to the Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

Shirtwaist Factory Fire (photo from Wikipedia)

Spadina and Kensington Market is an area filled with the history of different groups that have emigrated to Toronto, from the Jewish community that dominated the areas in the 20's and 30's, the Hungarians in the 50's, the Chinese Canadian community and the Portuguese Canadian community starting in the 60's, all the way to the current influx of Latin American restaurants and food stores. I asked students to look for different languages as we went up the street and there were many different scripts to be found.

Of course, I barely skimmed the surface of this history in our little walk and I missed some bits that I'd loved to put in for a next time, but we enjoyed our walk and learned to always read the plaques.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

P.S. There are so many rabbit holes to fall into on this topic, I couldn't resist adding some more articles--especially the ones with historical photos to help show the history in some more detail.

https://torontoist.com/2017/06/protests-parades-walking-tour-labour-history-spadina/

About the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters:

We walked right past this plaque

http://torontoplaques.com/Pages/Brotherhood_of_Sleeping_Car_Porters.html
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sleeping-car-porters-in-canada

About the Yiddish Playhouse at Dundas and Spadina:
https://torontoist.com/2015/07/historicist-torontos-yiddish-playhouse/

About Queen and Spadina:
http://spacing.ca/toronto/2015/06/23/tour-queen-spadina-hundred-years-ago/

Visual History of Spadina in Pictures:
https://www.blogto.com/city/2012/04/a_visual_history_of_spadina_avenue/

History of Toronto's Chinatown:
https://www.rcinet.ca/patrimoine-asiatique-en/2018/05/22/torontos-past-and-present-chinatown/

History of Kensington Market:
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/kensington-market
https://www.blogto.com/city/2011/07/a_visual_history_of_kensington_market/

And, the history of the St. Lawrence Market:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/12/17/once-upon-a-city-st-lawrence-market-at-centre-of-torontos-history-since-1831.html

Math Test tomorrow

2019-10-15T12:53:00.001-07:00

Dear Parents,

Our unit math test was delayed due to picture day on Thursday, but we're back on track. Today we spent time reviewing some of the key learnings that will be on the test. As a result, we don't have a math homework piece this week, but since our Jump Math workbooks have come in, I did send them home with students.

The chapter we've been working on covers material in pages 1-20. Some of that has already been done in class in their notebooks, or sent home as homework, but students who want to make sure they're prepared are welcome to use the book as extra practice for tomorrow. Students could also review the 2 unit quizzes that have already been sent home to see where they should focus in.

Going forward, we'll use the Jump Math workbook as our main focus for in class work.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Overview

2019-09-27T13:30:00.001-07:00

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

2019-09-20T19:43:00.002-07:00

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

2019-09-17T14:04:00.002-07:00

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

2019-09-11T05:33:00.001-07:00

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

2019-06-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

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

2019-06-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

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

STEM? STEAM? STEAML?

2019-05-16T19:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Parents,

STEM usually stands for Science Technology Engineering and Math, and STEAM is also becoming a popular buzzword in education. The extra A is for Art, but I'd also like to have Language in there too, because you get such great authentic writing when you give students a purpose to write about.

It's been a fun week in the classroom. Yesterday, I challenged students to create a shoe out of paper. They got to work in teams and were allowed to use any of our scrap paper plus glue, tape or staples to fasten it together. The shoes had to fit on one student's foot and protect it from the environment. They were very focused for the entire work period and some stayed in for recess, on purpose, to finish decorating their shoes (I see I missed taking photos of these later creations, but will add them in when I show the writing).

Putting final touches on it

Cutting out a sole

Using different pieces to create a shape

Measuring your foot

Shaping it with tape

Cutting out parts of the template

One group's final masterpiece

Today students worked in partners in math. First, we practiced sorting shapes by different properties (Number of corners, Number of sides, Lines of symmetry). Students have these math concepts, but often revert to more basic concepts when asked to sort (e.g.: Big vs. Little or by colour)

The shapes on the left all have 4 corners

Afterwards, students used the shapes to make some fun pictures.

For both activities, part of the goal is to get kids engaged in directed play. They're learning when they are experimenting and testing and taking risks. But these are also language activities, because they ask students to use specialized vocabulary for specific purposes: to label their pictures and to explain their thinking.

Today was the due date for our birdhouse project. This process writing was practice for some of the writing we'll be doing about that. I hope to hang our birdhouses in the parenting centre yard tomorrow in advance of the long weekend and spend some time exploring out there as well.

Sincerely,

Ms Goegan

Becoming Activists

2019-05-06T15:56:00.001-07:00

Dear Parents,

With Ms. Khokhar's support, a long term project Room 105 has been working on is trying to find ways to help homeless people in our neighbourhood. We started by looking at how space in our community is used and thinking about how we might change local High Park to make it more welcoming to homeless people. Students had some great ideas, like building more bathrooms and showers, adding more lights, free entertainments like outdoor movies, and having fresh food available for people.

We have read a lot of books about homelessness, building empathy, examining different types of homelessness, and looking at some of the community resources already in place. Here are some of the class favourites:

I See You:

This book was about noticing what other people ignore and really started us on our path to explore this topic more deeply

The Magic Beads:

This taught us that kids can be homeless too, and they often need to deal with some tough situations as a result

Lily and the Paper Man:

Was the launch point for a conversation about how people who are different can sometimes be frightening and how to deal with our feelings when we see things that make us sad.

On our Street:

This book has a great easy to understand breakdown of basic issues around poverty and homelessness. It would be a great resource in a primary or a junior classroom.

Still a Family:

More about families going through homelessness

Last Stop on Market Street:

This one is about people who volunteer at a soup kitchen and made us check some preconceptions, because we assumed the main characters were homeless at first, before discovering they were helpers. It showed that even people who don't have a lot themselves can still help others.

As a result of all this work, we decided to create a drive at our school, asking people to bring in new backpacks, lunch bags, and water bottles to give to kids at a local family shelter called Redwoods. To help advertise it, students have been making announcements in the mornings and we all made posters that we've put up around the school. We'll be collecting materials until May 15th.

Here are a few of our posters in the school:

Other News, related or not:

We love High Park, and really enjoyed our last trip to the park, where we learned about different kinds of birds, made some nests, and did some birdwatching with binoculars by the pond. Here we are next to our nests.

The final project is almost due. Students will present their birdhouses made out of recycled materials on May 16. I'm hoping we'll hang them in the Parenting Centre yard and see whether we feed more birds or squirrels. (To that end, if anyone happens to have some extra birdseed hanging about, I'd be grateful).

We also have a end of year trip in the works. As a further support to our Matter and Materials unit, we're going to Legoland. We just got in on someone else's cancellation so expect a trip form home very soon for our trip on June 4th. This is a more expensive trip than the HPNC: to pay for everything, including buses, will cost $25. Please let me know if this is a hardship and we'll see what can be done.

Field trip on Tuesday!

2019-04-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Parents,

Just a quick reminder that we'll be leaving promptly at 9 on Tuesday for High Park Nature Centre. We have a lot of parent volunteers this round, and you are all welcome. :) I sent students home with post it note reminders for you.

In case you're late, this time we'll be making our way to the Grenadier Restaurant instead of the nature centre.

Enjoy your long weekend!
Ms. Goegan

Taking care of the environment.

2019-04-14T17:09:00.003-07:00

Dear Parents,

I've been struggling to post regularly, but I'm very happy with the work that we're doing together as a class.

In language, we've been working on writing our own fairy tales that we hope to turn into books.

In math, we focused in on word problems for a couple of weeks and have moved on to 3D shapes.

Display outside Rm 105

We've finished our science focus on Living Things, with a visit from the Great Lakes programme from the Toronto Zoo and we reflected on why it's important to protect water.

"So the animals could live, to drink, to water flowers"

"Because animals and plants will die, and people. So snail shells don't break"

"So animals can live in the world and so fish can breathe"

I also asked students to take their "Big Idea" questions from the beginning of the unit and do their best to answer them. Although I'm not marking them for their reports per se, I feel like these show students' curiosity and engagement in learning.

I'm currently introducing our last Science focus and have sent home a bird house project due May 16th.

In class, we reviewed google images of bird houses made out of recycled materials and the purpose of the proposed bird house. The following were some of their favourites.

Students are asked to complete their projects at home, with parents helping to cut and supervise construction. We hope to hang our finished bird houses in the side yard by the parenting centre.

I'm looking forward to our last trip to High Park Nature Centre on April 23rd. Thank you for your volunteerism and your prompt return of forms! :)

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Reading feedback/Field Trip photos

2019-02-23T18:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Parents,

It was good to meet with many of you over the February reports. A number of parents asked about reading levels for each grade, so I thought I've post a link showing the connection between the letter levels, DRA levels, and what each grade is expecting, more or less.

When we talk reading, there are two main components: Decoding and Comprehension. At first, we want to make sure that decoding is happening and build fluency, but particularly as students go up the grade levels, more often we're asking them to prove their understanding of a text, and that can be trickier to quantify.

So as students begin to approach end grade 1 level decoding skills, I'm really shifting my focus to building their ability to write about their reading and express their understanding.

Here's the chart I'm talking about:
http://rsd407.org/curric/elemglance/readingbenchmark/DRA-BookLevelChart.pdf

I also had a great conversations about sharing resources and was really excited to have these books come in from Carver's family to support our literacy program. We've read a number of books about jazz and blues artists this month and listened to at least one song from each artist. Muddy Water's Mannish Boy has been the favourite, I think, which is interesting because Nina Simone's Feeling Good was way more polarizing last week.

We also had a field trip this week at HPNC. Last time, we learned about squirrels. This time students speculated that we'd learn about another animal and my favourite guess was mountain lion. What we really learned about was noticing animal clues, like food clues, footprints, scat, or bits of fur and feathers. Students explored these inside, then we took our birdfeeders outside and went for a hike to notice some of these things.

So that's what we've been up to this week. I'm looking forward to seeing all the animal projects coming in on Monday. Students have been excited to share.

Best,
Ms. Goegan