Representing the Main Idea

Owen

Sophia

This week, we continued our reading of Current News Articles. The article was about animals taking over cities because there are less people and cars on the roads.

Instead of writing a summary about the main idea, we did something a little different. Students represented the story in an artistic way. They were allowed to choose the medium they used.

This goal of this activity was to continue practicing summarizing information. This is in preparation for our Independent Research Project due at the end of May. It connects with objectives in Language Arts, as well as Social Studies.

Here are some student examples. We have such a creative class!

Jasper

Jaxton

Abigail

D

Virtue Stories

This year, we learned about the 7 Virtues of Moral Intelligence. We each read a storybook and connected it to one of the virtues. (Click here for the assignment details).

Here are the stories we chose and the virtues they connected with, in case you'd like to re-read one you heard. :)

Summary Writing

For the next few weeks, our class will be working on writing summaries. This is in preparation of an Independent Research Project that will be introduced at the end of April.

Key skills we are working on with these summaries include:
- Finding the "main idea"
- Paraphrasing information in our own words
- Making personal connections with the text

Here are the two articles we read and summarized last week, with some student samples attached.

Turkey Chased by Police!

For the original article, click here.

The main message in this article was there's no need to call 911 because of a turkey. It's important because then the police are wasting their time when they could actually be helping other people. This article makes me feel happy and worried. It made me feel happy because it was kinda silly how people would call 911 over a turkey. I felt worried because if Turk does it again but people don't see him he could get lost. ~ Isla

The main message in this article was that too many people were calling 9-1-1 about the turkey. People must call 9-1-1 only in emergencies. This article makes me feel happy because the Turk is in a safe place which is Ramsay. ~ Nikita

Calgary Cheers!

For the original article, click here.

The main message in this article is that people are cheering on their balconies and porches to support frontline workers! It is important because it's nice to support people that help us. This article makes me feel happy because so many people show appreciation for all the frontline workers! It also makes me feel thankful because people are willing to take the risk to protect us! ~ Priya

The main message was that people are banging pots and pans to say thank you to health care workers. This is important because people are notifying the health care workers to say thank for fighting covid 19 and taking in sick patients with covid 19. This article makes me feel happy and good inside because people are supporting the doctors and our doctors are trying their hardest to fight against covid 19. ~ Jaxton

Quilting: How to Stitch your Squares Together

For previous quilting steps, click here.

STEP FOUR: Sew the Squares Together
Using a thread that's the same colour as your fabric, thread your needle.
Choose two squares that you'd like to be side by side. Put them together facing each other so that you're seeing both of the paper squares.
Starting in one corner, poke through the fabric of both squares. Try not to poke through the paper this time.
Use a whipstitch to stitch the two squares together along ONE edge only. If you run out of thread, tie it in a knot a few times, rethread your needle and keep going. When you get the the other corner, tie a knot a few times.
Then open your squares back up to see that you stitched together the edge that you wanted to. I make mistakes all the time and I use my seam ripper to take my stitches out. Ask an adult for help if you do this.
Choose the next two squares to stitch together and follow the instructions again.

Watch the videos to see the steps.

Here is what the finished product should look like:

Quilting: How to Baste

Here are the steps for completing your quilting squares at home. If you didn't come into the school to pick yours up, you can make a new one with any scrap fabric you have around the house. :)

STEP ONE: Measuring your Squares
Measure accurately so that the quilt pieces will fit together. 
You need four small squares and one large square.
The small squares need to be 6.3 cm on each side.
The big square needs to be 12.7cm on each side.


STEP TWO: Cutting the Fabric
Choose five pieces of fabric that are the same colour palette (monochromatic). The patterns can be different.
Cut out fabric so that is a bit bigger than your paper so you can fold it over on each side (approximately 1 cm extra on each side). This measurement does not need to be completely accurate.


STEP THREE: Basting the Fabric to the Squares
Thread the needle and sew the fabric to the paper. This is called basting. 
Make sure the side of the fabric you want to see is facing out. Whatever side is touching the paper, you won't see.
Watch the video to know how to baste.
(I had to decrease the quality to low to be able to upload the video so I hope that you're able to see it!)
For basting, we usually use a different coloured thread than the fabric so that it stands out easily. We will be taking these threads out later.

Check back soon for a video on how to hand stitch the squares together!

Re-Designing a Social Agency Logo

Here are the current logos for 4 Calgary agencies.

Last week, we took a closer look at the Social Agencies we have learned about this year and their logos. We discussed which logos reflect the organization and the population they serve. We also looked at the symbolism used in the logos. Overall, the class favourite was the "Inn From the Cold" logo because you can see in their logo that families use the space as a shelter. Our least favourite was the Drop-In Centre because you can't learn anything about the DI from their logo.

We then got to choose one of the four organizations to design a logo for. We used graph paper so that we could easily make our logos symmetrical, as well as use polygons in our design. Then, we counted the total area of our logos, so there was lots of Math used in the making of these!

We also coloured ours and described how our designs and colours used represented the social agency. We'll share this work with you at our next Student Learning Conferences (date to be announced).

Multiplication Quiz Wednesday

This is a reminder that students have a quiz on Wednesday, March 18.

They will be expected to:
- Represent Multiplication equations using arrays, pictures of groups, and Base Ten blocks
- Solve equations up to 9 x 9
- Solve 2 or 3-digit by 1-digit equations showing their thinking (ex: 231 x 6) see picture example of the Algorithm
- (Grade 5's Only): Solve 2-digit by 2-digit equations showing their thinking (ex: 24 x 63)

For a review of the different strategies we've used, click here.

To practice, students are encouraged to complete activities on Mathletics under the "Multiplying" heading.