Friday, March Some more Prezi links

Alyssa:  http://prezi.com/9byh23rtvkv2/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Eric:  http://prezi.com/n56e8ymhdh-g/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Caleb:  http://prezi.com/8m22icmrb9m5/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Elle:  http://prezi.com/frnv65rhst0i/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Tamar:  http://prezi.com/azbhyda5fvwp/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Jessica:  http://prezi.com/nllltagw2yxc/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

The first set of marks will be returned to the students.  Once again, I have emphasized, through the example I posted and the Success Criteria chart, that the projects would be evaluated based on guidelines that have been reviewed over and over.

 

One of the Prezi topics -- Elle's on Nalo Hopkinson -- had a woman who discussed her Learning Difference, or what some know as a Learning Disability.

Some images from yesterday's second exercise on area.

Sample Mr. P art:

I think my photographs are better at conveying a vanishing point:

Homework:

Grade 7:  p. 184 Math (a surprise quiz may be on the table on Area!)
Jonathan, Tracey, Cassandra, Megan to do Prezi presentations

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Here are the first two Prezi presentations.  I hope to post the link to all of them, once they are completed.  I have not viewed them from the blog and hope the links are correct.

This is Trine's:
http://prezi.com/zhsx_chgtspt/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

This is Junior's:
http://prezi.com/p7nqiwtfg5nh/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

This is Kevin's:
http://prezi.com/eo2i56o41-h9/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

This is Brandon's:
http://prezi.com/z4fkdjjcj3_z/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

 This is Jackson's:
http://prezi.com/z4fkdjjcj3_z/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy



We were to have some other students present, but there was a problem with the TDSB network.

In Grade 8 Math, the group just complete their final test, yesterday, on angle relationships in parallel lines.  To prep for the upcoming unit on the Pythagorean Theorem, I am having them do some hands on work to explore the relationship of the Mathematics behind a2 + b2 = c2 (that's  spposed to be "a squared + b squared = c squared).

Jonathan's sample

Kevin's sample (needs to label)

The next day, we continued in the spirit of drawing and cutting by having the students sketch out a triangle on a grid paper and then draw the squares on the non-hypotenuse sides of the triangle.  I will add a few photos of the student work, but I will demonstrate an example:

The sample image I will now show, which  I took from the John A Van de Walle text, also illustrates this work:

After this exercise, from yesterday, we took the drawings and then applied the Pythagorean Theorem to them.  I modeled it with the sample question I did yestersday:

In Grade 7 Math the re-tests for Perimeter, I am proud to say that 3 students joined the club of scoring a mark of 70% and higher:

We will now be taking the Measurement unit into the area of area (pun intended).   To recap, here is the difference between the two:

Add caption

Before any formula is introduced, I want the students to gain an understanding   of what area refers to.  So, we are doing a few exercises that will involve estimation and a bit of cutting.  Last night's homework looked like this:

 Some of the homework looked like this:

Eric's

Eric's finger method

Caleb's method

Tamar's method

The element of cutting is missing from both.  It is not to say they are wrong because both boys came up with creative ideas.  We'll do some cutting today and I will try to capture images of that. Another activity, a group one, will follow this up before we begin to look at the nuts and bolts and formula for the area of a rectangle.








In the afternoon, we proceeded to cut, fold and draw on the rectangle homework from last night to discover which one was the largest.

Mrs. Cimesa (pronounced Cimesha) is a Student Teacher in our classroom from OISE Uof T (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education ).  She is, originally, from Croatia.

Her placement will be for the next three weeks and a few days.  She was a certified teacher in Croatia and in process of making her Ontario teaching status permanent.  Mrs. Cimesa will be teaching the class a unit on Media Literacy, beginning next week.

HOMEWORK

Grade 7:  p. 183 on Area7 Math homework

Grade 8:  p. 249 textbook, question 1 (b,d) + check-marked questions from Math sheet

Both grades:  Prezi presentations (for Language and Geography class)

... have a good evening

ONE MORE THING:

For Grade Sevens, returning to AMG, you must fill out this form, which went home today:

 

Monday, March 24, 2014

A couple of shots from Reading Buddies last week along with an excellent video of Tamar working with one of the students and helping him with his words.  He did a very good job.

This is also a short clip of a video of  last week's visit by Faith Nolan during The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.  https://www.un.org/en/events/racialdiscriminationday/

Faith Nolan:  http://www.faithnolan.org/about

The Prezi presentations will begin tomorrow.  The last of my sharing will happen today and the students will have some time to work on, and polish up, their presentations.  Here is the last update I will probably do.  My presentation is only a working sample, and not a complete example, based on the Success Criteria established:vvhttp://prezi.com/m1_dqxfxppwa/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

HOMEWORK

Prezi presentations will begin tomorrow.
The Grade 8 Angle/Parallel test will be tomorrow.

Happy Friday: March 21, 2014

Following in the UN footsteps, declaring yesterday to be the International Day of Happiness (you have to check this link:  http://24hoursofhappiness.com/), we look at today's important date marking the need to end racial discrimination.  I will post some more information on this today, or over the weekend, but I will introduce the topic to the class by sharing my draft Prezi presentation.

A few weeks ago, I posted an example of a Prezi presentation on Herb Carnegie, a late pioneer of Hockey in Canada. I updated the presentation to give the students a sense of today's UN date and how the presentation could look and sound, in relation to the Success Criteria we developed in class.  Here is the link:

http://prezi.com/m1_dqxfxppwa/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

In light of this, I am postponing the presentations until Tuesday to ensure that all students are ready to present.  We only completed the Storytelling yesterday and some students may need time to update or edit their Prezi because they may not have access to a computer at home.  I would suggest booking some time at the public library to use a computer or making use of one in the AMG Library.  It is always available and often underused.

Here are a few images I took of some draft 1 Point Perspective pieces:

HOMEWORK

As for this weekend's homework, it is a Reading Response for the following article:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/social-media-affecting-teens-concepts-of-friendship-intimacy-1.2543158

The Reading Response looks like this:

The Success Criteria for this exercise is this:

A sample Reading Response was posted by me a weeks ago.  It was from Thursday, March 6.  Please use this as a guide. 

Enjoy your weekend.

Thursday, May 20

Happy First Day of Spring
Happy International Day of Happiness.

"Happiness may have different meanings for different people. But we can all agree that it means working to end conflict, poverty and other unfortunate conditions in which so many of our fellow human beings live."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Message for the International Day of Happiness, 20 March 2014

I hope today, and other days, bring joy  and happiness to you.  Without happiness, a sense of optimism and curiosity, it is very hard to learn.  Do your best to remain open, curious, and optimistic about yourself and things you do everyday in the community circles you move in.

This is a documentary film that I think  I will share, at some time, with the class.  It is simply called, Happy.  Here is the Youtube trailer:

I was very happy to come across this page:

http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/consecutive-interior-angles.html

It has some interactive elements on angles that the Grade 8s might enjoy before taking up the homework.  Before looking at that, we'll look  at another Youtube video, which I posted earlier, but is a review of last night's homework.

 

There are Storytellers who are waiting to bring closure to our creative adventure, but we are now embarking on some other creative elements of One Point Perspective drawing.  I am not sure if that is something that should be capitalized, but I have such a high regard for artists and designers, I thought I would.  

The following images illustrate the concept of the Vanishing Point and One Point Perspective.

I will upload some rough shots of the work the students are doing as we get more into this work.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

This page will come in handy for what we are doing in Grade 8 Math:

http://rumblingsfrom52.blogspot.ca/2014_02_01_archive.html

After watching some of the videos, I gave the students a handout (less the writing by me on it) illustrating some of these angle relationships:

This was posted back in early February and we are only ready to explore some of the angle relationships right now.  The Grade 8s recently completed a Math test with most students scoring above a Level 3.  This is work at Grade level and the group should be pleased with the hard work they put into the Study sheets they did in preparation for the test. 

 If students were not pleased with their mark and scored below a Level 3 (less than 70%),  doing a Rewrite is always an option.

As for the Grade 7s, I decided to hold off on introducing the new concept of Area until the Re-tests are completed for Perimeter.  The last of our review was from today.  I will post some images of the work we did today:

This question proved to be a bit of a challenge for the class.  It involved figuring out the different dimensions of a rectangle that has the same perimeter.  I posted a similar example on yesterday's blog post.

Megan helped figure out the ascending and descending pattern of the width and length of the rectangle in question (it had a perimeter of 20).  To demonstrate this, I used one of the games we used a few weeks ago to prepare for the test.  It is basically a virtual geoboard.  The link for it is from the list of games I re-posted yesterday, I believe.  Note:  the perimeter is the same, but the dimensions of the rectangles are different.

 This example shows how Junior used the correct formula for calculating the Perimeter of a rectangle.  Instead of using the typical formula of P=2(l+w) -- which means that calculating the Perimeter happens when you multiply the sum of length plus width by 2 -- Junior used something called the Distributive Property to calculate the answers for part a + c.  He multiplied the length and width by 2, but did it separately.

For part a, he could have done it like this:  P = 2 (3+2)
                                                                P = 2 (5)
                                                                P = 10 cm

Great thinking, Junior!

Onto a different subject.  The Success Criteria for Mr. Beaupre's Geography Prezi assignment is here.  Actually, it is more of the evaluation form, but this is how the students will be graded:

And, yet another Success Criteria chart!  This one is for the Prezi research assignment.

HOMEWORK:

Grade 7:  Final Perimeter test tomorrow, IPRC letters returned
Grade 8 : Math textbook homework
Both:  Tracey, Trine, Alyssa, Caleb to present their stories 

 

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

The results for the Grade 7 Math test were not as grave as I thought.  We are still spending some time reviewing the questions and using the correct student responses as a launching point. I had a sample question answered by Junior that I did not post from before:

He was one of the few students who used the correct formula for calculating the perimeter of a rectangle.

There is one more section of the test that will be reviewed tomorrow morning for the Grade 7s.  I will be giving them some group work to encourage peer support in understanding some of the more challenging concepts.

Here is an image from a bit of review we did this morning:

This image emphasizes the point that a shape may have different dimensions, but have the same perimeter.  I used the original image from Megan's test to show how she got this question right.  I highlighted in green to make it easier to read.  There will be another question, that I will upload either tonight or tomorrow which demonstrates this concept.

One of the review activities that both grades did involved a review and play of the numerous Math games I posted on the blog.  The students were given ample time to "play" and then record specific notes on what they learned.  As I looked over what they wrote, I noticed that some of the examples were not specific enough.  So, I reviewed 2 of the games and then posted my own response.

Something used during the Grade 8 Math lesson:

Here is an image from Google image of a map near my house.  It illustrates how you may see Parallel and Perpendicular lines on the streets of Toronto.

There is homework from the textbook tonight for the Grade 8s.

The final group of Storytellers should finish up this lengthy project, by Thursday.  Two students were scheduled to present today and did not.  I gave them an extension until tomorrow.  The expectations around this presentation have been explained to the students on more than one occasion.  

Here area couple of images from today's group of presenters:

Have a good evening.  The Grade 7s will be back on for having "official" homework, although they do have Prezi presentations due tomorrow, some have Storytelling to present, and any review of the blog (playing Math games) may help prepare for the upcoming Math Re-test.