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.