January 24th

Hello everyone!

In Language Arts today we continued on with our character sketches from last week. Today students were asked to expand their sketches into a character poem. In order to do this we examined three different poems from:

http://www.poetry4kids.com/cat-Character.html

We examined how the poets conveyed information about their characters. Some of the poems conveyed information about the character’s personality (eg. silly, happy, confident, unsure, scared, nervous), while others offered some physical description. We practiced reading a poem and then describing the character that the poem was about. Then students worked the other way – they took their character description and created poems about them. Students were allowed to choose their own format, but many used the following template:

http://www.augusta.k12.va.us/cms/lib01/VA01000173/Centricity/Domain/906/Character_Poem.pdf

In Science today we created two different drive systems: a wheel to wheel drive system, and a wheel to wheel drive system with a belt. Students were able to see how the driving wheel in a wheel to wheel system moves the other wheel in the opposite direction (eg. drive wheel is turning left, other wheel will turn right). However, a wheel to wheel system often has slippage, especially if the wheels are smooth like the cups we were using! So to increase the efficiency of our simple machine we added an elastic band to act as a belt. This caused our drive systems to work much more smoothly, but something strange happened. Now the drive wheel caused the other wheel to turn the same way! This can be remedied by putting a twist in the elastic band. Students discussed where they have seen these systems before (eg. tanks) and how the belt transfers the force from one wheel to the other, making it operate much more smoothly (this is also why they turn in the same direction).

In Social Studies today we started our discussion on the Canadian Shield. We discussed the Canadian Shield, and some of its dominate landforms. We also talked about why the Canadian Shield is often called the storehouse of Canada (all those natural resources). Then we looked at some of the works created by the group of seven (and some of their associates) around Lake Superior and Georgian Bay. Students were asked to identify some of the land features that we could see represented in the paintings. We also read a poem by Carmel Farahbakhsh, a Gr. 5 student from Nova Scotia. This poem, The Magic of the Canadian Shield, contains a lot of rich, visual descriptions. Next class we are going to look at the artwork one more time, and brainstorm our own descriptive words. Then students will be working in small groups to create their own Canadian Shield poem. Check out the presentation here:

http://prezi.com/vvgm7zrv-m_i/canadian-shield/

Homework: Multiplication Quiz (8x and 12x – tomorrow)

Spelling Quiz (tomorrow)

Reading Journal (tomorrow)

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts: Character Poems

Math: Gr. 4 – pgs. 108-109 #1-9

Gr. 5 – pgs. 98-99 #1-12

Social: Forestry flipbook

Science: pg. 10 – Get in Position

French: Les Adjectifs (Self-portrait)

Class Science Fair (March 4th)