Week Four in Portable Two

Friday, September 28, 2018

We just finished week four in portable two and here is a bit of what’s been going on:

Social Studies Field Trip – On Tuesday, we jumped on a bus to the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford (with the grade fives in Mrs. Stronks’ class). We learned so much (from past to present) about one of the many groups of Indigenous peoples across Canada known as the Haudenosaunee (pronounced: Ho-din-know-show-knee). They were known as the Iroquois by the French, and Six Nations by the English, this group is properly called the Haudenosaunee Confederacy meaning People of the long house. While we were on the field trip, we took a tour of the museum, made pottery (pinch pots), and participated in traditional dances/music. Having this field trip right before Orange Shirt Day was perfect timing. As our bus pulled up to the Woodland Cultural Centre, we saw Canada’s first residential school (which they are currently renovating) with our very own eyes. The whole experience reminded me of the importance of orange shirt day in Canada. There are some pictures below from our field trip and the pottery that we made. I was very proud of the students and their respect/focus/participation in the day’s events.

Visual Art and Language –  As a follow up to our field trip, we reviewed the meaning of some of the new vocabulary that we learned about the Haudenosaunee and the Hiawatha Wampum belt by completing a fill-in-the blank activity. We also made a mini-replica of the Hiawatha Wampum belt out of felt, yarn, and white glue. Here are some pictures of our work:

The Terry Fox Run and Media Literacy – On Thursday, the whole school participated in the Terry Fox Run. As part of our learning in media literacy, we watched a documentary that was created this year called, Terry Fox, Anything’s Possible. We focused on how they made this documentary (from start to finish), who their target audience was, and why they made it. It’s a powerful video and we all felt inspired to make a difference after watching it. Here is a link to the video we watched:

Math and Drama – There are many different numbers in our world (fractions, whole numbers, decimal numbers, percents, parts of whole numbers, even numbers, odd numbers, etc.) and we use them for many different purposes (measuring, weighing, counting, communicating, understanding, etc.). With this in mind, we have spent a lot of time this week on learning about what a “number” really is. To do this, we pretended that an alien landed on planet earth, asked us what a number was, and we had to explain it to the alien. We acted out our plan with a partner (one person played the role of the alien and the other person played the role of the teacher). It was very interesting to observe all of the student’s mathematical ideas, knowledge, and real-life examples as they attempted to explain what a number was to the alien. In the end, we came up with a basic definition that could be applied to many real life situations. Then, we explored many real-life examples of how we use number in our lives to represent how much there is of something. For example, using google earth and google maps, we figured out how many kilometres (km) we would be running for the Terry Fox Run and compared that to how many km Terry ran each day during his Marathon of Hope. We posted some of our math learning on chart papers as seen below:

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to email me at julie.pragnell@granderie.ca OR call me at school: 519-443-8942.

-Mrs. Julie Pragnell