A big highlight this month at school has been the students' presentations all about Peru! They've taught each other all about the animals, land, cuisine, holidays, and important cultural features of this fascinating country. You can see one of the games they learned and the recipe for a delicious Peruvian treat below! Today our class worked in our Building Thinking Classroom groups to understand an Inuit number system. In the Arctic, a group of Inuit junior high students and their teacher developed the Kaktovik numerals, a unique numerical system suited for quick, visual arithmetic in line with traditional Inuit oral counting methods. Now, with support from Silicon Valley, these numerals are set to become available on smartphones and computers, bridging the gap between traditional and digital realms. Inuit culture, like many others, has its own counting system, rooted in the body, where quantities are described in groups of five, ten, and fifteen, and then in sets of twenty. This system reflects their use of fingers and toes when counting! The class worked hard using a few clues to uncover the mystery numbers, and we solved all the way to 20 (and then beyond) as a group. We were lucky to pilot a Telus World of Science Edmonton program this week where we learned about viewing computational thinking through an Indigenous worldview. Computational thinking is an important piece of our new science curriculum this year, and it was really special to learn about this way of thinking from Natasha who is a Métis sky scientist from TWOSE. Natasha talked about how she's learned from elders and knowledge keepers, and also scientists and scholars. She taught us about two-row wampum belts and how they were used in the first treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people on Turtle Island, representing the two cultures with the blue river of life beads and white beads representing peace, love, friendship. Natasha encouraged students to tell a story with their beading, and also in our coding in class. We also talked about perfection, and how when we make things as people we want to focus on expressing ourselves rather than being perfect. This tied in nicely with the Métis tradition of including a spirit bead in your beading, which is a bead that is misplaced or miscoloured to remember that no one can achieve perfection all the time. During our beading time, Natasha also taught us a lot about coding such as binary code on computers, algorithms, and loops. The students worked hard on their beadwork, and their designs and beading turned out beautifully. It was a meaningful and enlightening project for all of us! We’ve started coding in our class, which means that we’re telling a computer, app, phone, or website what we want it to do. This week we used an app called Lightbot and a some robots called CPX to practice our skills in communicating, solving complex problems, and thinking logically and critically. The class found designing repeating patterns using the lights and speakers on the CPX especially fun! As this article reports, Today, computing is involved in almost all aspects of our lives, from communications and education to social media, banking, information, security and shopping. Networked computers are capable of controlling our homes’ thermostats and lighting, our cars and our health records. You can read more about the thinking behind students being exposed to coding here, and we will keep you updated on our further adventures in coding!
We're down to the elite eight books in March Book Madness! Students are voting between The Day the Crayons Quit, Gaston, Rescue & Jessica, My Pet Feet, The Tree and the River, Hidden Gem, Beneath, and Big. There are lots of opinions in our class on the pros and cons of each book, and we're eager to learn which books make it into the final four! We learned lots and had lots of fun today at Telus World of Science! We got to watch a special presentation about Indigenous sky stories in the Zeidler Theatre, and we participated in the Thrill Rides program led by our science expert which tied into our class' unit on Energy and Forces. Our instructor helped us review concepts on inertia, energy, gravity, and friction. We also were able to explore all of the exhibits in the facility thanks to our four wonderful volunteers! We were very lucky this week to get to build a snow maze at Millgrove! Classes took turns collecting snow and packing them into molds that our wonderful volunteer Mr. de Boer had built. The result was an amazing maze that has made outdoor recess an absolute delight. These Canadian winters certain have their advantages sometimes!
This week we started our Math unit on fractions! Students will build upon their real-world experiences of “fair shares” to recognize a fraction as an expression that relates a part and a whole. In this unit we will:
We use fractions every day in many different situations. Encourage your child to recognize the use of fractions in daily life, for example, when filling a glass half full, measuring ingredients for a recipe, or sharing an apple. Here are some activities you can do with your child to help reinforce the concept of fractions: Fraction Activities
Recently, we've been diving into the skill of summarizing during our reading time in 3SB! In our mini-lessons, we've been focusing on how to identify the key details in a text, how to organize those details in a sequence for retelling, and how to recall important information. Students have really been refining their skills in making sure their summary of a story or chapter includes the beginning, middle, and end, and they've enjoyed retelling their reading to a partner in class.
We were so lucky to have Kookum Violet (Elder Violet Poitras from Paul First Nation) and our wonderful Indigenous Education Facilitator Ms. Leanne spend time with our class on Thursday! We read a special story together about a First Nations family, the often sacred significance of braids and hair in Indigenous culture, and the importance of kindness in Indigenous worldviews. Kookum Violet shared with us about the value of appreciating our loved ones and telling them we love them, how we need to take care of Mother Earth, about her childhood growing up in a First Nations family, and the challenges of going to school without her family when she was eight-years-old. We learned some important words in Cree and Stoney which the class really enjoyed. The students were absolutely thrilled to spend time with Kookum Violet, and found it very meaningful to learn from her perspective and wisdom. It was such a special visit!
Voting for March Book Madness officially starts next week! Mrs. Pirie has been reading some of the books to us in the library, and we've been enjoying reading the competing books in class as well. We've had some engaging conversations sharing our different opinions about our favourite books, and it's wonderful to hear the students summarizing their top picks, discussing the different purposes and audiences of the books, and evaluatiing the authors' choices. The students can't wait to start voting on March 6, and we're extremely curious to find out which books make it to round 2!
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Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
April 2024
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