I hope everyone has had a wonderful week!
A quick message from the library…
A few quick reminders:
· Monday is a Day 1.
· The hot lunch site is now open for November! The special this month is chicken stir fry, which is available every Friday. Please DO NOT order lunch for Thursday, November 21st as we are going on a field trip that day! The lunch site will close October 30th at 3:00 p.m. and payments will be due by November 6th.
· Aftercare invoices for the month of September have come out and were due Tuesday, October 15th, 2019. Any questions can be directed to Ms. Chiappetta at echiappetta@stjudesacademy.com
· Field Trip permission forms were sent home for our trip to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum on November 21st. These forms are due next Monday, October 21st and the cost is $27.
· Curling permission forms and waiver forms were sent home today and are due back Thursday, November 7th. This trip has no cost as it was already paid for in the athletic fees during registration.
Inquiry into Language – We started the day by sitting in our literature circle groups and had a discussion about chapter twenty – we’ve finished the book! We’re almost through the whole book! A reminder of the roles:
1. The discussion director comes up with insightful questions that will fuel discussion in the group.
2. The literary luminary chooses important passages for the group to read and discuss.
3. The connector makes connections between their own lives and the book (i.e. movies, other books they’ve read, real events, the current UOI, etc.)
4. The illustrator/mapper creates an illustration (i.e. comic, picture, mind map, etc.) based on what they felt during the chapter for the group to discuss.
5. The word wizard chooses 3 words that were interesting or new for everyone to discuss as a group.
Inquiry into Air – We started the day with an inquiry into the properties of air. Yesterday, we did a series of experiments meant to help us examine these properties. The first thing we did is take up our experiments from yesterday to see what we were learning about air. From these experiments this week, we learned many things
· Air has mass
· Air takes up space
· Air exerts pressure
· Air can be compressed
· Air resists things moving through it
· Air expands when heated
· Air has insulating qualities
A quick review of the scientific method:
· P – Purpose (or question)
· H – Hypothesis (educated guess)
· E – Experiment (procedures used)
· O – Observation (what you noticed)
· C – Conclusion (is your hypothesis correct)
· A – Application (where do you or could you see examples of what you learned)
Experiments are used to search for cause and effect. Variables are things that can change during an experiment; this can vary during an experiment. An independent variable is one that is
changed by the scientist. A dependent variable are the variables the scientist observes to see how they respond to the change made to the independent variable. Controlled variables are quantities that a scientist keeps constant.
A fair test has been conducted when one factor (variable) is being changed at a time while all others are kept the same. A fair comparison can only be made once variables are being controlled and only one is changing at a time.
After this, we looked at the particle theory of matter. It is made up of five key points:
1. All matter is made up of tiny particles.
2. All particles of one substance are the same.
3. Different substances are made of different particles.
4. Particles are always moving. (The more energy, the faster they move)
5. There are attractive forces between particles. (Forces are stronger when particles are closer together)
We will continue this discussion on Monday. A reminder that our mid-unit test for air is on Tuesday, October 29th.
French – After this, we had French with Mme. Stella, which you can read about on her blog (https://stjudesfrench-stella.blogspot.com).
After lunch, I went to Glow Zone with the Grade 6 students participating.
Students who did not go to Glow Zone worked on their cars, and the had gym with Mr. Orr, which you can read about on his blog (http://tysonorr.blogspot.com).
Homework:
We do our best to complete work in class. In the event this is not possible, it will go home for homework.
As always, please feel free to email me with any questions.
Mr. Conte
