April 6

Learning About Epilepsy

IMG_2371 Last month, our class was lucky enough to have a special guest speaker teach us about epilepsy, as it was Epilepsy Awareness month.

Our 45 minute presentation was filled with information which was not only informative but very helpful.

IMG_2372Epilepsy affects 345,000 people in Canada but anyone can have a seizure. You don’t have to have epilepsy to have seizures. In fact, 1 in 10 people will have 1 seizure in their life.

So, how do you know if you have epilepsy? It takes having 2 or more seizures for the same cause or for unknown causes.

There are more than 30 different types of seizures. The 3 most common are:

 

1. Tonic clonic

2. Absence

3. Complex

Seizures are rarely a medical emergency so when DO you call 911?

You call 911 if the person having the seizure is pregnant, diabetic, in water, not breathing, if it’s their first seizure, or the seizure lasts more than 5 minutes.

When you witness someone having a seizure here are some things to remember:

1. Stay calm

2. Place the person on their side if it’s safe to do so

3. Put something soft under their head

4. Don’t hold the person down

5. Don’t put anything in their mouth

Did you also know that seizure response dogs are specially trained dogs whose job it is to warn their owner that they are about to have a seizure? So amazing!

 

Category: 2014-2015, Teacher Talk | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 6

Social Issues Book Clubs

As we wrap up this unit, I’ve been so impressed by the level of dialogue within each group. We’ve had to learn to compromise which book we choose in our groups, how many pages or chapters we will read up to, come prepared with all that we need…there’s a lot to it!

As a culminating task, groups are preparing a book trailer of one of their top choices of books from their book club. Stay tuned for that.

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Category: 2014-2015, Reading Workshop | 1 Comment on Social Issues Book Clubs
March 8

Learning From Jack Gantos

jack gantosWhen writing, it is great to learn from the pros! Recently, we’ve been learning different ways to gather ideas for writing realistic fiction. Over the last few days, we’ve had Jack Gantos as our teacher of writing. He’s the author of the Rotten Ralph series, Joey Pigza series, Jack Henry series, and other books, too!

When working abroad, I had the pleasure of meeting Jack Gantos and listened to him share his tips and strategies when writing. I was more than happy to share his presentation with the class this year. Writing can be a daunting task, especially when staring at hundreds of blank pages in our notebooks. We learned that just writing 10 minutes a day can be a great start to building a story. Jack showed us his Grade 5 writer’s notebook, which he shows in the picture above. He writes all of his books in his notebook first and he’s kept all of his notebooks from when he was a child. Pretty neat!

To add to our repertoire of generating ideas for fictional writing, we’re taking Jack’s advice and drawing a map of our house and finding stories that hide within our house–either in our bedroom, in the kitchen, backyard, wherever! We might dismiss the ‘everyday’ things that happen to us and overlook them as potential stories to nurture and develop. Most of Jack’s stories that he writes about come from things that happen to him in his own life.

Stay tuned for more about our realistic fiction writing adventures!

Mrs. S

 

Category: 2014-2015, Writing Workshop | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 5

Packages Galore!

Have you ever been, let’s say, to a grocery store, and stopped to think about how things are packaged? A lot of time, thought, creativity, and money often goes into designing and building a package…perhaps more than we realize!

Sometimes the packaging can cost more than the item it’s protecting!

Packaging serves many purposes including protecting a product and making you want to buy the product. Packaging can take many forms and use a variety of materials. Packaging has been given a bad rap in recent years because it contributes heavily to our waste system and it just gets tossed into the garbage or recycling.

How a package is wrapped affects how it is shipped and how much it costs to ship it. Irregular shapes tend to take up more space (volume) and will cost more money. Rectangular prisms ship more easily because they stack nicely on top and beside one another and there is little  to no wasted space inside a shipping container.

Our class has been researching about packaging lately as it relates to our volume unit.

Have a look at some of the packages that we’ve looked at. Some of them are quite unique!

Click here for a blog that shows you some really neat design packaging ideas.

Category: 2014-2015, Math | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 3

Digestive System

Dear Class,

This morning, we began talking about digestion and the fact that it really begins in the mouth, not in the stomach. There are many parts to the digestive system that all work together to help break down our foods and deliver the nutrients throughout our body as energy.

Have a look at this short video below to get a sense of how it all works:

Click here for a link that will take you to Build-a-Body which will give you even more information about each part of the digestive system.

Mrs. S

Category: 2014-2015, Science and Social Studies | 1 Comment on Digestive System
February 24

Human Body

Today was a fun warm up to our new Science unit on the human body. Students were asked to work with a partner to tape various names of bones to where he/she thought they belonged on their partner. Some of the body bone names students were familiar with while other names were a bit foreign to us.

Do you know where your phalanges are? What about your clavicle or your femur? We had a time limit to finish this and at the end, we took it up and discovered just how close or how far away we were from our original guesses.

How many bones are in the human body? Does anyone know?

Have a look at us in action!

 

Category: 2014-2015, Science and Social Studies, Teacher Talk | LEAVE A COMMENT
February 24

Valentine’s Day Dance

This year at our school we had a Valentine’s Day Dance. It was on Friday the 13th due to Valentine’s Day being on a Saturday this year. For the primary and junior grades, there was cool games, amazing music, and excellent prizes! For the intermediate grades, there was slow songs and a lot of other things! We have a Valentine’s fundraiser and the class that brings in the most collected money wins an ice cream sundae party!

Photo Credit: smkybear via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: smkybear via Compfight cc

How do you celebrate Valentine’s day at your school?

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February 24

Time to Read Together

In reading workshop we are in a unit called social issues. We have gotten into groups and we are starting book clubs. We are going to read books with social issues like divorce, bullying and theft. I am reading the book Out of my Mind. Out of my Mind is a book about Melody a disabled person who cannot talk or walk. She joins a Quiz team and competes in a test on national television. If she wins it would be the best thing that happened to her in her live.

Photo Credit: pgcummings via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: pgcummings via Compfight cc

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February 24

Our 2nd Life!!

Hey, it’s Kendra, Kianna, and Julia!!!.

So you’re probably wondering who and what Our 2nd Life is. Well they are 5 guys that are very inspirational, famous and very funny! They are Youtube stars and have been ever since 2010! Their names are Jc Caylan, Connor Franta, Sam Pottorff, Ricky Dillon, Kian Lawley, and Trevor Moran!! They also have their own Youtube channels and someone wrote a song about them called The o2l song. They are so amazing, funny, perfectly unperfect, and tons more!!!!!!! We love them sooooooo much!!!!!!!!

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