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  May 6 - 10th This week has been filled with projects and more projects!  We began our week by looking at original ancestors of the Nova Scotia area - The Mi'kmaq. We learned about   the physical evidence of their continual presence on the land. The Mi’kmaq used wampum belts, chewed birchbark, and wrote hieroglyphics; they also etched petroglyphs into stone as physical representations of information. Knowledge was passed on primarily through oral histories and teachings based in practice. We examined their different types of transportation such as bull boats, dugout canoes and kayaks. This inspired us to think about the purpose of boats and to design our own kinds of boats and to determine the best types of materials suited for our boats. Along the notion of designing with a purpose - students were challenged to pick a design task to determine its purpose and design their own. Students were to identify the what they would use to make up these objects, create a list of materials,
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April 30 - May 3 We had a busy, engaging week filled with discovery, learning and fun! One of the highlights of our week was our field trip to Telus Spark. Our program , "A Perfect Try" challenged students to investigate the properties of materials and relate them to a purpose. Students were challenged to choose materials to build an object that had two purposes - for example build an object that can move from one place to another and can hold something. Students worked together as a group to create these objects while testing the appropriateness of materials through trial and error. This program was a direct tie in to our unit on Matter: Investigating the properties of materials.  Other highlights of our time at Telus Spark included the DaVinci Exhibit, the Space Exhibit, The Creative Kids Museum and of course the Playparks!   In Social we have continued our look at the dynamic community of Nova Scotia with a focus on historic and present community members such as the Acadia
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April 22-26 This week we centered a good portion of our learning and inquiry around Earth Day and its focus on Planet vs Plastics. We focussed on the concerns over single use plastics and how we as a community can be proactive in this work. We also focussed on the book Thank you Earth, A Love Letter to Our Planet, by April Pulley Sayre. This was a springboard for us to consider all those gifts that Earth provides for us. Students were challenged with developing their own love letter to Earth that was written in letter format with a greeting, body and sign off. The other success criteria we established were to include 1-3 alliterations (words with a repetition of the same sound) with connecting ideas such as  - marvelous monkeys and gigantic giraffes. Students next steps were to create post cards with their letters, a sending address, stamp and pictures. Here is a glimpse at some of their amazing and thoughtful work! We also examined the book, The Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom an
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April 15-18 This week we continued with our extension activities centered around the story of Napi and The Rock. This included the students using pictographs to assist them in sequencing and retelling the story. We also have looked at different version of the story including one created in conjunction with the Calgary Philharmonic. Here is a link to that production -  Napi and The Rock .  We also continued our in depth focus on Nova Scotia (landforms, features, weather, activities, resources, occupations etc.) through the lens of resources and occupations. We have been examining the fishing industry and fishing pastimes examining the resources (types of fish, seafood) as well as equipment. Our next step was to learn additional facts about lobsters from different media sources such as books and videos. Students used the iPads to collect and share this information. We then moved into a shared reading activity and a building activity where students were tasked with building lobster traps
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April 8-12th Our full week at school was jam packed with lots of learning and opportunities.  Here is a glimpse at our week -  Indigenous Story Telling : We were very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to have Mr. Chris Scout join our school classes on Wednesday. Mr. Scout shared blackfoot oral stories and information with our class. The story he centered our session around is titled, Napi and the Rock. This story is based on the character Napi, a trickster and his encounter with Big Rock (Okotok) which is a rock outside of the town of Okotoks. Students were very engaged to participate in this opportunity and to learn the story. We have extended this oral story work into our classroom with our first step focusing on sequencing and retelling the story. We will share more around this work at a later date.  Literacy - We continue our work around developing our written compositions through activities that promote generating ideas. Over the past week we used a story prompt (pictur
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