Our Grade 6 classroom is involved in an art exchange program with a grade 5 class in Helsinki, Finland called Dear You. Each class receives the same art activity and then share the artworks with the other class, either virtually (a Google Slide show) or in the mail.

This week's project was entitled "Lights, Camera, Action!"  The students were all to create a drawing of a character, either based on a real person or fictional that would be the star and basis for the next few art projects we will be working on.

​Many students, after hearing about the project, decided to draw and experiment with their characters on paper first. After they were happy with their character, they experimented with various media materials on waxed paper. Some of the most popular choices included crayons, markers, and pencil crayons. A few tried paint and were not happy with the results, and tried other materials.
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All characters were photographed against the sunlit window, with a few showing colour variations without the backlit sun. Some of the greatest challenges students expressed were with the use of materials on the waxed paper, getting the deepness of colour to come through as they wanted.

A fixed mindset is less open to new learning, and often believes that it is incapable of dealing with a problem, or learning a new way of doing things.  This can be important to student learning because if you believe that you can't do something before you even look at the problem or try, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you will never make a decent attempt at actually understanding what the problem is, or exploring various approaches to the problem, resulting in never succeeding or improving upon your skills.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, is the growth mindset. A growth mindset is more open to new ideas, new ways of solving problems, and having an attitude of trying new and different strategies. This is important to student learning, because if students actually believe that they are capable of training their brain in new ways, and being able to learn new skills and strategies through hard work and effort, they are more likely to try new and different strategies as well as invest the effort needed in order to be successful.

The beginning of the school year is always a busy and hectic time as well as an exciting time. We are all getting to know new people, and sharing information about ourselves. 

One of the first assignments of the year was a poem that describes some of what is important to each student, about their family, ancestry, and their personal identity.

Check out the final products on display!

This was our first opportunity to work on setting up basic series circuits to test what materials would be considered conductors and insulators of electricity by lighting up a bulb. How could what we learn about these materials, help us with our Electricity Game Project?

As a class we have been watching some of the Math Videos and completing some of their math activities from the Week of Inspirational Math at www.youcubed.org/ It talks about the different ways that we can think about our learning of mathematics and has us working in partners to try and solve math problems that are designed to have multiple entry points. Then we all have a chance to see what everyone else came up with. 

Check out some of our work on the problem of Four 4's. Using only Four 4's, and various operations (+, -, x, /, square root, etc.) try to find an equation that will give you every answer from 1 to 20. 

For the people who were at bus patrol training and want to try this out on their own, or those who were in class and can't remember the website, here is the information for getting to the websites. Read everythign first, then start following the instructions step by step. Good luck!

STEP 1:
The first website you want to visit is: http://cs-first.com 
DO NOT sign in. I would like you to scroll down to under the sign in screen and use a join code. The join code for our class is moon49.
It will ask is 55 Upper Canada (select YES).  It will ask Storytelling (select YES).
The website will give you a username and password, You need to write these down in a safe location (probably in your planner somewhere easy to find so that you have it when you are at home and at school).
You are going to select the Storytelling module/icon first. It is a green circle with a pencil inside of it.

STEP 2:
The second website that you are going to visit is: http://scratch.mit.edu 
You must sign in with the USERNAME and PASSWORD that you just got from the last website. The username will start with CS followed by numbers. You are NOT signed into you Scratch account unless you USERNAME is in the top right hand corner of the screen. (Mine is loseyk because I am a teacher).

There are a series of videos that walk you through the different steps. Try NOT to jump ahead as it sometimes will cause problems. Watch a video, Try what they ask you to, then watch the next video. There are add on's at the end of each section that let you experiment with different things (ex. adding sound effects, etc.)

Good luck, and have fun!

Our first art lesson of the year!  Working with geometric shapes and perspective (a vanishing point). Check it out. Do you think you could do the same style of art?

Getting to know each other can be fun, especially when you are attempting a newspaper tower challenge!
Students were each given a stack of newspaper, 1 metre of masking tape and about 20 minutes. It had to be free-standing, able to withstand a wind created by a fanned paper, and use only the materials provided. They had 5 minutes to develop a plan and get themselves organized. Here they are in action!

Take a sneak peek at Portable 6 this year!

How do you "see" or visualize a series of dots without counting them?
​Check out these variations...