March 9th - 13th

Language Arts

We continued to work on our Easter stories during Writer's Workshop.  The students can't wait to share them with you during Student Led Conferences!

There were no WTW sorts this week to allow the students to focus on their Spell-a-thon words.

Math

This week in math we focused on the "stacking" strategy for subtracting multi-digit numbers.

The students enjoyed playing "Slam Dunk" to practice their triple digit subtraction skills.

Science

The students completed two Survivor Building Challenges this week:

Challenge #4 - What a success! We haven't been on the island for very long but have already found a bit of food and now we have some shelter. We do have one problem though! The rain has started to come down quickly and it is beginning to make small puddles around our sleeping area. We are also worried that with the amount of rain falling, the river not far from us may begin to flood. We need to raise the area where we are going to sleep so that it is not on the ground. We head back to the plane and grab another large piece of tin for the floor of our shelter. It won't be the softest place to sleep but at least we will be out of the puddles and safe if the river floods. We drag the tin back to our shelter and start thinking about how we are going to raise it above the ground. Joshua decides that we should use some tree stumps near by to make a to hold up the floor. Which design will hold the most weight? Should we use one larger pillar in the center or four smaller pillars in each of the corners of our tin floor?

Discovery:  Four small pillars support more mass the one large centre pillar.

Challenge #5 - Thanks to your great work, our sleeping area is off the ground and safe from the rain! Now we all can get some much needed rest and go to sleep. Madison and Tayvin wake up before the rest of us and surprise us with breakfast. They have picked some ripe berries that they found growing nearby. We soon realize that we don't have a proper table to eat on. Ava, Hunter, Rohan and Kolbe go in search of materials to build a table. Luckily they discover some useful things from the plane. Kolbe brings back a rectangular piece of metal for the table top. The others bring back different materials that could be used as the centre pillar to support the table top. Ava returns with part of the jet engine, which is a cylinder shape. Hunter finds a triangular pillar which was part of the plane's rudder. Rohan brings back a rectangular crate that must been part of the plane's cargo. We can't decide who's pillar we should use for our table. The table should be strong enough to support our food or anything that we put on it. We need to decide which shape of pillar use. Which will hold more mass - a cylindrical, rectangular or and triangular shaped pillar?

Discovery - The cylindrical pillar is the strongest because it does not have any corners and the weight is distributed evenly.

On Friday we enjoyed the "Magical Munsch" Puppet Presentation featuring six Robert Munsch stories.

Congratulations to Miss M for being our Student of the Week!