MakerFaire Links from the notice :)

June 2, 2015

Dear Parents,

It’s hard to believe the year is coming to a close!  We have lots on the go, so here is a reminder list to help all of us stay organized J

1.  Friday is Sports Day!  Please join us!  Your son/daughter has been assigned a house colour.  It would be wonderful if the students could dress in their house colour for the day to show team spirit.  We are also having a bike/scooter parade where students in K-4 can decorate their bike/trike/scooter/wagon/helmet etc in their team colours.  No skateboards, please.

2.  Bayridge is undertaking its very first Maker Faire this year.  All of the classes in the school are taking part.  Our class has self-selected their groups and are busy planning out their projects for the Maker Faire. 

What is a Maker Faire?

An opportunity for the students to make something creative with their classmates.  You can click on the link below if you want to see some information about some of the bigger Maker Faire's that occur:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7ZfqtYFBs#t=172  There is a mini maker faire taking place this weekend (June 6-7) the the PNE Forum if you would like to attend a makerfaire in person.  The link is: http://makerfaire.ca  and here is a link to a youTube video from the mini maker faire website: https://youtu.be/dU7ZfqtYFBs

Our Bayridge Maker Faire will take place on Tuesday, June 16th.  Students will have planned out their creation by then and will spend that day creating it.  The four categories are: animals, transportation, signage, and art.

What is needed to help the students?

All of our projects must be made out of recycled materials.  You should expect your children to come home over the next two weeks looking or asking for materials that they can use on their projects.  The students can start bringing in the materials now and we will store them in the classroom.  They are only permitted to use recycled materials (tape, glue and string can be new). 

Please ask your child(ren) what they are planning to use for their creation and help them save the materials or send it to school with them. 

Come and see the Projects

There will be a gallery walk of the projects on the afternoon of June 16th.  Parents are invited to join us from 2:15-2:30pm to see what the projects in the class look like.

3.  Swimming at Sunnyside outdoor pool:  we will be going swimming on Friday, June 19^th and will need parent drivers to transport us there.  Please mark your calendars J

We are looking forward to a wonderful finish to a wonderful year!

All the best,

Mrs. Williams and Ms. Grewal-Glups

The Birth Lottery-we need your help!

Dear Parents,

This week we started an assignment called "The Birth Lottery" where students randomly drew a country to become their new "Birth Country."  The students were very excited and curious about having a "new" (pretend of course) county of birth!  On Tuesday we looked at the Canadian Geographic site navigation and on Thursday we will be looking at what the various terms mean (building vocabulary).

This assignment is to help the children to understand that they were born into a country of great wealth and opportunity where children have the rights and freedoms guaranteed under the "United Nations Declaration of Human Rights."  It is also designed to "scaffold" our students to help them build background knowledge about the quality of life in other countries.

The curriculum link is: • uses simple maps to interpret and present information

The students have a series of questions to answer comparing their new"Birth Country" to Canada.  The guiding questions are in their Social Studies duotang.  The site we are using for this task is:

http://worldmap.canadiangeographic.ca/

The assignment is considered complete when all of the fact finding questions are completed and the reflection questions on the last page have a connection that the child has made to his/her quality of life.

"Fully meets" means that the student will be able to "make a connection" between his/her quality of life in Canada and what the quality of life for a child in a developing country is like.

We really need your help!  Because the wifi at school is being less than co-operative we need the help of your home wifi and your guidance.  I do not like students doing research on-line unsupervised, so I am requesting that you work on the assignment together with your son/daughter over the weekend, if possible.

I encourage you to discuss this assignment with your child.  If they are curious about any of the facts they find, please help them find answers to the questions they may have.  The conversations that you have with your child are so valuable!  Please share your viewpoint, your questions and your experiences.

The reflection questions on the last page are the "deep thinking" questions.  Your son/daughter may need help to answer these questions because they are still building life experience.  It's OK to prompt your child by asking questions and giving background information.

In class we have been talking about community services such as: healthcare, education, sanitation (clean water and waste disposal), roads/electricity/municipal services, housing, food and transportation-but we are just beginning to build our knowledge about these topics.

We would like to be able to present our learning on Monday and Tuesday next week with the students sharing one reflection question from the last page (they can choose which one.)

Once again, thank you for your continued support.  Ms. Glups and I sincerely appreciate the partnership that we have with you in educating your son/daughter!