Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Homework:

- Blog reading response.  Please see the post on the http://amgfun.blogspot.ca

- Math test (final) on Mean, Median, and Mode (Study Sheets were due today)

- 2 rough sketches of 1 Point Perspective

Sorry for the brevity of my entry.  I am helping coach the AMG Track and Field team and pressed a bit for time.  Please use the agenda to contact me.

Have a good evening.

Monday, April 29, 2013

There was no homework assigned from the weekend.

We had the screening of Brooklyn Castle in our classroom on Friday.  I took a photo of the screening and I figured there were close to 90 people viewing the film.

Due to the screening, we did not have our final spelling dictation for Unit 11, it will be tomorrow.

For homework, the students are to create a Study Sheet for Mean, Median, and Mode.  I strongly encouraged the students to use their Math notebook to help them prepare 2 questions, each, for Mean, Median, and Mode.  The students may use past postings on the blog to help them prepare their questions.

The Study Sheets will be reviewed and feedback will be provided to help prepare for the test later on in the week.

In Art, we are starting to look at art from a One Point Perspective.  Here is the classic illustration of this:

Today the class practiced and we will be working on this over the next few days.

Have a good evening.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Homework:

Stick conversation on the weather in Toronto.  What is a stick conversation? 
I am trying to determine how much the student know about weather and what things affect the weather.  So, I thought I would as the students to use simple figures to have a short conversation about what they know.  This work is to be done in the Geography notebook.  Some students have not completed their title pages for Geography.

One character talks to the other about weather patterns.  This exercise is meant to access prior information about weather.

We spent some time during Geography talking a little bit about the human and physical characteristics of particular places.  I decided to focus on the Greater Toronto Area and ask each student to share something -- during a class discussion -- about the physical and human characteristics.  I plan to compile them in a slide show or movie.  I think this will be a good way to review the concepts from the textbook, assess for understanding while reducing the difficulties with writing that the students often have.

There was one item to add to the Show and Tell from a few days ago.  It was a flute that Kenny had for his Show and not Tell:

I forget what it is called and will have to ask him about it.

We are in the final stages of reviewing the Measures of Central Tendency (Mean, Median, and Mode) and we have been doing some Grade 7 level work!  I am very pleased to see the effort by most of the students while working together to solve some of the problems from the book.

This was the original question from the textbook.  A number of students had difficulty with it, so we spent some more time looking at it and broke into smaller groups.

All of the students came up with a number of different ways to solve the question.  I was very impressed because the textbook only offered one answer!

Another questions was posed that involved the same logic as the first question from the textbook.  I set it up because I knew it would relate to the homework questions I created for tonight.

Here is one of the questions for tonight:

Both will be reviewed in detail tomorrow and then a Study Sheet will be assigned for the weekend.

My apologies for the late post this evening.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Homework:

- Spelling script (past due:  April 23rd)  ... here is another example of the script:

- the Unit 11 work + final spelling dictation is due on Friday
- one person needs to complete the Show and Tell on Thursday
- a select few people need to complete a few questions from a sheet that went home on Mean, Median, and Mode


Speaking of the Show and Tell, here are some new images from our most recent presenters:

There was one more item of homework.  It was for the Math games and sites related to Mean, Median, and Mode.  The link to the activities can be seen on yesterday's post.

A chart was provided for the students to comment on what they learned from playing and looking at the sites.  The chart looked like this: 

Have a good evening.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Getting a little ahead of myself, but one of the review exercises for Math will involve playing some online games.  Please head over to the AMG Library blog  http://amgfun.blogspot.ca/ for the review.

The links from the Library blog may be further explored for review over the last part of this unit.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Homework:

Many of the students, with the exception of 4, completed the Math homework for the weekend.  I will go through the questions in detail.  This will be the second last lesson we will be doing for Data Management.

A script is supposed to be created using the list of 16 spelling words.  I believe I took a screenshot of the sample I was working on for the class:

The Show and Tell presentations need to be completed for a number of students.  Only 4 came to class prepared to present today.  Here are some photos of the presentation:

Have a great evening!

Friday, April 19, 2013

Homework:  Show and Tell on Monday

This is a follow up to a note sent home over a week ago about the Show and Tell exercise I introduced the students to several weeks ago.  I did an example for the class today using some objects I brought from home:

I followed the guide and the instructions for the assignment, which the students have.  This will help them frame the presentation:

I wanted to post this information about an upcoming Parent Conference opportunity some of you may be interested in.  The forms were handed out before but I am not sure if they reached home or not.

The Xtranormal project should be done by now.  The guidelines for the project were summarized on a Success Criteria chart posted in the classroom:

Homework:  p. 19, #4-6 Math textbook
Have a great weekend.

Here are a couple of shots from our field trip to the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Wednesday.  Be sure to ask your son or daughter what they thought of the film they watched.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

I have not updated the blog for a while.  The following film is a summary -- sort of a summary -- of the Xtranormal animation project we have been working on.  This film provides them with a sense of direction of how to sculpt the film.

The class has had a lot of time to work on it in class and are able to access the program from home with the use of their username and password.

Watching the TIFF film, Know My Name will happen tomorrow at the TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre.  I have posted the film trailer before, but I will do it again:

We have been talking a fair bit about the idea of gender in class.  We had a good conversation about how gender identities are locked or fixed in boxes.  The idea of the open "gender box" means that we need to unpack many of our ideas about how boys and girls, and men and women are expected to behave.

We made the further connection that some ideas around gender may lead to bullying.  An extreme example is what happened to Halifax teen, Rehtaeh Parsons who was raped and then had photos of the incident posted online. 





On a different note.  Page views to this blog, over 2 years, have reached over 10, 000.

There is no homework this evening.

Wednesday, April 10, 2011

Homework:

- 2007 EQAO Grade 6 Math questions
- Spelling final dictation + work due on Friday ** 5 sentences were due from the Unit 10 spelling list
- Xtranormal Project (may be accessed from home with the user name and password set up in school)
- Page 5 IEP signatures from:  Kadeem, Zachary, Tia, Ellis, Kenny, Matthew, John, Zhao Lun

We had some interesting conversations and discussions today for the International Day to stop transphobic  and homophobic bullying.  For some, it better known as the Day of Pink.

 There were some really interesting comments I would like to compile into a video, but that will take me a while to put together and edit.

A small group of Grade 1 students stopped by yesterday to visit and send some bucket filling wishes to our classroom.  I have a photo of them, which I will post, but I want to make sure all of the students in that class have had their media release photos signed before I upload it to the blog.  It was nice to see a group of students, so young, embrace the positive messages of helping others and working towards being happy.

The annual Jump Rope for Heart assembly kicked off yesterday.  Mr. Moye is usually the one in charge of organizing it.  I imagine pledge forms will go home soon.  Here are a few photos from the event:

In Mathematics today, we did some review of Mean, Median, and Mode by using some statistics from some online gamers.  I will post two photos:  one of the actual screen shot and one of the calculations done by Sandro, Kiara, Ariane, and John.

Two EQAO questions, from Grade 6, were handed out for homework and will be reviewed, in detail, tomorrow before Friday's quiz.

Monday, April 8, 2013

More to post, but off to a meeting for Track coaches.

Spelling homework:  5 sentences (using 5 words from the Unit 10 spelling list)
1 Complex sentence
2 Compound Sentences
2 Simple Sentences

As a refresher/reminder:

We did an interesting Community Circle exercise today.  I allowed the students to share one thing about their weekend, but then had the following question for them:

I was aiming at them finding specific things or actions they did to get a result.  It could have either been a moment of success or trying to figure out how to deal with a challenging situation.

Here is the prompt I had on the board for when the students were trying to put their thoughts, words, or wishes into action.  A number of students were able to make some concrete suggestions.  Now, it is just a matter of walking the talk in addition to talking the talk.
Details on the Math homework (which was assigned on Thursday!) will be posted.
I actually had to go back to AMG to get my computer.  I forgot it there and apologize for posting this information late.

Okay, what I will do will involve posting some photos from a Math video we were watching in class and then going on to show some calculations and how to solve for Mean, Median, and Mode.

This chart demonstrates how each person ate a certain amount of donuts.

In class, someone used the word "balance" to describe what happen when we average things out.  Here are some calculations and explanation of how we can learn a little more about the Measures of Central Tendency.

The column on the left explains how we find the mean or average.  We add up all the donuts that have been eaten and then divide by the total number of people.  Now we know the answer is 200.  Now, we can use that idea of balance to look at another image of the bar graph:

 So, the average number of donuts eaten across these four friends is 200.  We have balanced out the donut eating among all the people even though Berine didn't eat any in the first place!

Now, there is still the matter of the median and mode.
The median refers to the middle number when they are arranged from lowest to highest.
The mode is the number of measure which shows up the most.

Looking at the calculations again, let's look at the last two measures:

We can see that with 4 number, there are actually two numbers in the middle (100 and 300).  So, we will now have to find the average or mean of both numbers.  Once this is done, we can see the median is 200, the same as the mean.

We have no mode because Bernie, Maria, Buster, and Howard do not eat the same amount of donuts.




There will be one more example I use from the video.  This one has to do with a set of basketball players.

 The question on the show, what was the average height of these players?  It might be easy to say it is 55 because it is half way between 50 and 60, but we have 4 players who are 50 and only one who is 60.  Inches, by the way, the program is American.

So, we not know that the mode is 50, because it is the height that shows up the most.  Let's look at the calculations I did.

We will review the homework questions tomorrow.
Sorry for the late post.