Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Social Studies Mapping Skills


We are currently studying
Mapping Skills

We have headed out on our first journey around the world to discover the 7 continents. Our first quizzle on the continents required more practise and our second quizzle revealed great success.


Our next focus brought us all back to North America where we have studied all the oceans of the world; as well as, Latitude and Longitude.

We will be discussing the following: The Arctic CircleThe EquatorTropic of  CancerTropic of CapricornNorth and South Pole
We will then move to lines of Longitude which will take us to Greenwich, England and the Prime Meridian.The International Date Line


Since our class quizzle went so well we are heading back to Canada. Our next challenge is to identify all the Provinces / Territories with their capital cities. We will be doing class maps and interactive flash cards to help with this skill. 


Our first Social Studies Test revealed challenges for a number of students in identifying Provinces and Capitals. A re-test has been planned for Wednesday, October 31st.



Monday, March 19, 2018

Reading:

Reading: 

Our most recent Critical Reading exercise is about an 11 year old who was the first to discover a major fossil in the world.


As a class we have been working on Directed Reading Exercises; whereby, your son / daughter has been introduced to a new Success Criteria on How to Answer Reading questions.

The process of showing them how to repeat half of the question with half of the answer takes practise. Basics are the focus; including placing a capital at the beginning of the sentence with a period at the end of a complete thought.

In time, students will be working in Google Docs and learning how to access their comprehension questions in our Google Classroom. When they have successfully completed their Reading assignments they will ' Share ' their work with me electronically.

This ' Sharing ' allows me instant access to your son / daughter's Reading seat work. I can then suggest editing or adding suggestion and evaluate their efforts and then ' Share ' their work back to them electronically.

Parents, in time, will hopefully find success accessing their son / daughter's work and they can see first hand the progress your son / daughter is making in their Reading.

As a class we will be involved in a Global Reading program based on the newly released novel: A Boy called Bat.
This young boy is autistic and his mother being a veterinarian decides to one day bring home a baby skunk since it's mother was killed in a road accident. Bat loves all animals and immediately falls in love with the kit but mom puts conditions on his being adopted by her son. Bat has thirty-one days to convince his mom to keep his lovable skunk. 

Our class discussions of lovable Bat has lead to Chapter 1, 2 and 3 comprehension questions being assigned. 
We discussed the technique of repeating half of the question with half of your answer with your son / daughter. To many this is foreign, so this process will take practise to answer in complete sentences, and in time, learning to add proof to their answers.