Hello Friends!!!
Today we had a really randomly productive day! I think having those super clean and organized desks helped! Today we took on a project to build something. Everyone is doing something a little bit different but the essentials are that we will be calculating perimeter, working with money, adding, subtracting, multiplying, working with area to paint walls, adding in extras like fence post tops, and chandeliers! It was amazing to see students so engaged. I look forward to seeing students skills at applying their math knowledge. I saw sketches of rooms that were equivalent to architecture quality. I am not surprised but absolutely blown away at how some students just completely excelled at this I saw one student recognize needs in his own plan, flaws, problem solve his way through these, design new ideas, and build on previous ideas. students that have told me they are awful at math are shining! I am so excited to see this work! We are even going online and finding products and using prices based on market value. Students all have a folder and need to provide me with a quote at the end of the assignment. It is no easy task but students have just taken off with the idea. We are ahead of schedule in maths, and so it is nice to see that students are taking a lot of prior knowledge to apply to a project such as this. This week we will work on a final plan, and tidy up our work. I look forward to these!
Using tiles donated to us, we used plastercine to depict a scene from our recent novel. We then added a well structured paragraph to explain it. The pictures do these works of art no justice. They are three dimensional and amazing! students put in a lot of planning time and effort. More than I could have imagined! Great work grade 3 and 4.
Well friends, we are back in the classroom with four walls. Lucky for us we have our beautiful collaborative flowers on the wall at least.
I must say that it was an awesome week with you all at Medalta, and I believe that many of those lessons will carry through the rest of the year. Today we are reviewing shapes, perimetre, and grade fours will be moving on to higher digit multiplication. this afternoon we will be finishing up science projects and social projects. Getting ready for our last units in both. And the tipi is soon to come! Any photos students have if you want to send your device and cord to school So it is Saturday morning and I am going through the box from Medalta, getting things organized for the next time I go, making notes of things to do differently and thinking of what went well. I am going through your journals and am just absolutely filled with goosebumps about your writings and your sketches. This is not an experience I can really explain the importance. The evidence of learning is in the students' eyes and their behaviour towards learning and education afterwards. I believe strongly that this is an opportunity these students will greatly benefit from as they move forward in their education. Some of these entries have brought tears to my eyes, to hear a student speak so genuinely and so deep. The perspective they have taken when choosing what to draw or write about shows me that their world has already opened more than it was. There is a picture that I have in my home to remind me that often a person's learning and comprehension is far deeper than is possible to show, and that not always does a person need to be able to express in ways we normally expect to show an understanding. In education it is hard to assess in forms aside from tests, unfortunately. And this week was an opportunity for students to demonstrate understanding and inquiry in a different way. I saw students whom rarely raise their hand, complete an assignment, get to task enthusiastically, show me things they couldn't or didn't feel they could in the classroom. I am very proud of every single student. They really had no idea what they were in for but they trusted that I was going to lead them somewhere positive and they all brought an amazing attitude every single day. There were no complaints, except when snack time was delayed but who among us doesn't get a lil hangry when we don't eat. Thank you to all the parents for the support and for those of you able to come and help us out. Thank you to all the students for making this a worthwhile experience. The amount of work that goes into this on my part is all worthwhile when I see the amount of learning that happens. Beyond learning, seeing smiles on faces while learning, because after all, it isn't about what you learn but how you feel when you are learning it. I hope all my students feel great about their week at Medalta. We have a lot of valuable discussions to bring back to the regular old classroom, and memories together to energize us through the school year.
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January 2015
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