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mr bower s grade 6 newsletter from mr bower we have just finished our second month of grade 6 and i wanted to send home a newsletter describing a sample of the learning opportunities your child has had here at normandeau subject integration i strive to teach students the curriculum through integration while we do still focus at times on subjects like mathematics and science separately i try my best to provide learning opportunities that show how these subjects are in fact very connected math is everywhere science is everywhere learning about these subjects in isolation can make it hard for kids to see the purpose for learning them when kids can see how interconnected the world really is they can see why learning about words in language arts and numbers in math are so important mathematics students learn by attaching meaning to what they do and they need to construct their own meaning of mathematics at all levels students benefit from working with a variety of materials tools and contexts when constructing meaning about new mathematical ideas the learning environment should value and respect the diversity of students experiences and ways of thinking so that students are comfortable taking intellectual risks asking questions and posing conjectures students write on the tokens to show that they can divide up a whole into parts in this case the student has shown how to make quarters students need to explore problem-solving situations in order to develop personal strategies and become mathematically literate they must realize that it is acceptable to solve problems in a variety of ways and that a variety of solutions may be acceptable in class we have focused on making sense of whole numbers and fractions by playing with manipulatives to teach fractions i ask the students to take a whole thing and then share it with their peers for example if there s one whole pizza and there are 10 people we have to figure out a way to share the pizza at least 10 ways the kids then make meaning for themselves what one-tenth 1/10 actually means i also use my family farm and the school s garden to teach students about agriculture to teach students about the circumference of a circle i brought in students use a hexagon to represent a whole and then play with other shapes such as trapezoids and triangles to make parts of the whole in this case the green triangles are sixths and the red trapezoids are halves.

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net wrap from a round baler i challenged the kids to figure out how many bails could be wrapped by the end of the roll here is what we learned standardized measurement is important using people s steps can be inconsistent as everyone s legs are longer or shorter a measuring tape came in very handy the wrap was 100 feet long a bail is seven feet tall the best way to show kids that math is because seven foot round bails are hard to move around and on everywhere in the real world is to solve short supply at school we had to use volleyballs to figure out how real world problems that are in-ato measure the circumference of a circle some kids bent their context and for a purpose rulers around the ball while others rolled the ball to measure how far it went for one revolution we used youtube to watch a video on how the net wrap is applied to the bail because the video did not properly show how many times the bail was wrapped the students timed how long it took to wrap once and the total time it took to wrap and inferred that the bale was wrapped almost three times as a class we pretended to be a round bale by standing in a circle that measured seven feet in diameter we then measured the circumference of the circle and found that a seven foot bale would have a circumference of about 22 feet the kids then determined that 100 feet of net wrap could make about one bale in the coming days we are going to use a virtual world to build houses gardens swimming pools and other structures to learn about area and volume most of what students are learning is as familiar as the mathematics you and i learned when we were in school the changes in alberta s mathematics curriculum are not so much in what students are learning but in how students are engaged with and learning the mathematics teaching math this way consumes a great deal of time and effort but proves to be well worth it all when you see how kids make sense of math language arts and social studies i have read two books to the students thus far the first was a short novel called twenty and ten which was about a family of french orphans who took in jewish refugees during world war ii the second book was animal farm which we used to spark discussions revolving around government and democracy while some of the deeper meanings behind the book were beyond the kid s grasp the book s primary themes of fairness power democracy and government have led after reading two books of very different difficulty levels students could see how even really hard books can be simplified while very easy books can be read for far deeper meaning to some very rich class discussions to supplement our learning about government we have also examined some children s picture books including vote for duck and click clack moo because these books use metaphors to

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tell their stories and make their points kids can relate to some very real world social studies issues revolving around government we have also started a star wars novel study where the kids read silently for at least 10 to 30 minutes many students choose to use their laptops to use www.dictionary.com or www.wookiepedia.org as resources to look up words that they do not understand because kids will often recognize a word with their ears that they could not recognize with their eyes many find dictionary.com useful as it provides both a definition and pronunciation the bulk of our writing to date has taken the form of blogging and commenting on our class ning however we have also just started a creative writing project with monsters inc to gain some inspiration we watched the first 15 minutes of the movie monsters inc and now we are learning to write non-fiction paragraphs fictional information pamphlets and newspaper articles projects like this are less about just watching the movie and more to do with learning about sentence structure and grammar skills we spend a particular amount of time learning how to use commas to create flow in the coming days we are going to discuss the different forms of government democracy and dictatorships that are present in star wars this is yet another way to integrate social studies with language arts science during science we have watched a couple episodes from a dvd series called planet earth which provides breathtaking videos on the world s trees and forests and informative narration on how our world is dependent on our planet s forests these videos also provide an opportunity for kids to learn about a broad range of living things found on under and around trees and study the complex interactions between trees and the larger environment we also will begin to examine how humans use trees and the environmental issues that arise because trees and forests are outside it s important to get outside and interact with the elements while outside students collected items they found from trees which led to a discussion about the different characteristics of the trees including distinguishing between the coniferous from the deciduous trees the superb quality of these videos provide kids with an opportunity to learn about parts of the world that i could never take them to i also brought in wood samples from home that i had chopped and split for firewood while we looked at the rings bark and internal growth of a tree we also examined logs that were split into fourths and sixths ­ which led to a lesson on both science and math in the coming days we are going to identify characteristics of different kinds of trees and classify leaf shapes arrangements branching patterns and the overall form of the tree we are also going to use usb microscopes on the computer to examine what items relating to trees look like when magnified.

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information communication and technology ict the alberta ict program of studies emphasizes technology as a `way of doing things ­ the processes tools and techniques that alter human activity as technology is best learned within the context of applications activities projects and problems that replicate real-life situations the ict program of studies is structured as a `curriculum within a curriculum using the core subjects of english language arts math science and social studies as a base we are fortunate to have access to laptops most of the day and so we use them to access the internet so that we can use many different games programs videos pictures and web sites to support our learning students have used the ning to share their learning in an online learning community youtube and wikipedia as educational resources google documents as a way of collaborating with others with cloud-based computing and screenr as a screencasting program to show their understanding through on-line videos we are also starting to use excel as a spreadsheet to support our understanding for probability collecting data and graphing while technology is very cool and the kids tend to like it very much i want to make it clear that technology does not replace doing things by hand but it does supplement it and so we strive for a balance by creating both an electronic portfolio and paper portfolio of our learning homework and assessment because i strive to give enough class time for students to complete assignments and projects i do not assign homework however if a student does not use their class time wisely they may have to spend some of their own time to complete the project students are welcome to do more on their own time but i do not assign work to be done outside of class however if parents would like ideas for how they can better support their child s learning at home i am more than willing to work with parents to do so i am the kind of teacher who strongly believes in creating an environment where students can experience success and failure not as reward and punishment but as information i substitute traditional grades with informative feedback that is provided to the students while they are still learning report cards will be the only time students will receive a grade in my class while it is true that i do not often grade students learning i assess your child s learning everyday which takes the form of written or spoken feedback from me to help them learn and improve because there is no substitute for what a teacher sees and hears while working with children while they are still learning i do not depend on traditional examinations and tests to assess your child s learning because i can t meet one learners needs by pretending all learners have the same needs i provide children with both differentiated instruction and differentiated assessment essentially this means that i teach your child in more than one way and they have the opportunity to express their learning in more than one way because i really care about creating excellence for all my students i believe it is my professional obligation to define and measure success in a way that is less standardized and more personalized based on your child s needs in doing so i hope to inspire learning and nurture hope in every single one of my students.

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parents please have your child return this final page of the newsletter to me mr bower and if you have any questions comments or concerns you can contact me by phoning the school at 403-342-0727 or by e-mail at jbower@rdpsd.ab.ca or you can return comments on this paper below parent name parent e-mail parent signature comments:

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