After Thanksgiving Update

Thanksgiving has come and gone and we find ourselves in mid-October. Halloween is fast approaching and it is a very busy time of year at St. Gabriel.

We are currently in the middle of our annual canned food drive and "We Scare Hunger" campaign. Each grade has been asked to donate specific canned foods for the Kanata Food Cupboard. In addition, we are fast approaching another school initiative called "Play for Change". The Grade 6 classes are directly involved with this campaign, specifically science classes, where the students are asked to build cardboard arcade games. The idea comes from a little boy named Caine in Los Angeles, California who created arcade games made of cardboard and placed them in his father's shop. Here is a link to a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIFNkdq96Ude 

St. Gabriel has taken the idea and added a twist; the grade 6's will organize and run a day of arcade fun for the younger students in the school. As a part of their science class, the students have begun creating arcade games in which they will allow younger students to play for pocket change. The money collected goes to some of the fundraising initiatives we do each year at the school. As an added twist, the grade 6 students are to include electricity into their games, demonstrating what they have learned so far this year in science class. Students will be adding sound effects, lights, motors and circuits to their games. There has been some great creativity shown so far during the construction phase of this project. The finished products will be on display on Friday October 29th for the "Play for Change" event at the school. 

In Math we have finished our unit on decimals. We have practiced all types of operations using decimals as well as place value. We completed a math assessment last week that was sent home with the students. I wrote comments one each students' assessment so parent and students are aware of how they are progressing in number sense. We have started our next short unit in which we we will learning abut Prime and composite numbers, multiples and factors as well as learning about order of operations, This unit will bring us into November. It is encouraged that students continue to practice their math skills on Prodigy and/or Khan academy. Below are some sample problems from our recent unit:

In Language the students have been introduced to Writer's Workshop and the 3 stages of the Writing Process: 1) Prewrite/Brainstorm 2) Draft 3) Revise/Edit 4) Publish. The class has been assigned a writing assignment in which they are allowed to choose almost any topic and write abut it. They must choose the form in which they would like to write as well as choose an audience to whom they choose to write to. Each student was to begin the assignment by brainstorming their topic and creating a plan for their writing piece. The students are currently working on their drafts and will practice edit/revising their own work as well as their classmates' before they complete their final copies.

Thanksgiving Update

We are entering the Thanksgiving break after a few busy weeks. Hopefully the long weekend will provide everyone with the first well-deserved break of the school year. Enjoy the time with your families!

Recently the students participated in the annual Terry Fox walk. It was a great event and the students actively participated in the event and showed their support in the fight against cancer.

As a part of one of the number of initiatives at St. Gabriel, the school will be asking for students to donate canned food for the Food Bank. The collection of canned food will begin Tuesday Oct. 11th and continue for the rest of the month. The initiative is called We Scare Hunger and the grade 6's have been asked to bring in rice and tuna as a part of the collection. If you can spare any canned goods that would be much appreciated and will certainly go to good use.

The AM group has had plenty to discuss during the current unit of study. We continue to read the book, Iqbal. The students are enjoying the story but also learning about some of the other World issues that exist in other countries. The issue of child labour is a very real problem in some areas of the world and the students recognize this. They had the chance to collaborate in groups and discuss children's rights and differentiate between the terms "rights" and "wants". In addition, the students have discussed the topic of Global Goals. The class came up with their own list of Global Goals and compared them to the 17 Global Goals created by the United Nations. The novel of Iqbal directly ties into a number of these Global Goals and sends an important message to its readers.

  

 

In Math, the group continues to work in the Number Sense and Numeration strand. They have have continued to work with whole numbers as well as decimals. In grade the expectation is for the students to become familiar working with numbers to the thousandths. The class has been rounding decimals as well as adding and subtracting numbers with three digits after the decimal place. 

In Religion the AM group continues to discuss the importance of being God's light. We have also been introduced to the concept of moral conscience and what it means to act as God would.

In the afternoon group, the Science class has there share of hands on time building circuits. They have learned the difference between series and parallel circuits as well how to draw proper circuit diagrams. The students will be quizzed on the first few lessons of the Electricity unit and have started a group assignment on an Renewable/Non-Renewable energy source. In the upcoming weeks the students will have the opportunity to build more circuits as well as other projects before moving onto the next Science unit.


 
 
 
 

In Art, the PM group has been working on re-creating an animated movie poster. The focus of this project was colour and proportion. Some of the final pieces were truly excellent and show off some great skill we have among the group.