Freerice

On Friday, students were introduced to a terrific on-line game called Freerice.  The vocabulary game is easy to play, just click on the correct definition for the given word from four choices.  For every word you get right, 10 grains of rice will be donated to the World Food Programme to help feed some of the world's hungriest people.  You get smarter, have fun and help others all at the same time!  Below are some videos giving more information about the game and where the rice goes when it is donated.



This video is from 2008, so some of the donation numbers they mention are much lower than they are now.




If you haven't played Freerice yet, go give it a try!

First Nations Artifacts

Last week, we were lucky enough to again welcome Richard, one of our district Aboriginal cultural facilitators, into our classroom.  This time, he came to teach us about different  tools that were commonly used by the First Nations peoples living in this area.  He brought in several replicas and we had to hypothesize about what the tool might have been used for.  At the end, we shared our hypotheses, then he told us what the tools were actually used for.  Many of our guesses were quite accurate!  Here are a few photos of us examining the artifacts.

Projectile points were used for hunting or fishing when attached to an arrow or spear.

An abrading stone was used for smoothing materials  and keeping knives  sharp.

An adze was used for scraping, cutting and other woodworking.

A biface was used as a knife or as a weapon when attached to a handle.

A pebble tool (the oldest artifact)  was used for smoothing materials and for hammering. 

A stone bowl was used for mixing or crushing plants  for food or medicine.

A maul was used as a hammer.

A drill point was used for making holes in bone, stone or animal hides.

Thank you again, Richard, for sharing your knowledge!

Click here to see the Surrey Schools Aboriginal technology file which shows more pictures and descriptions of tools.

  

Transparent, Translucent, Opaque

Currently in Science we are learning about light.  In particular, we are focusing on the properties of light.  During free experimentation time with our flashlights, we figured out that light always travels in a straight line.  Next, we started talking about how light travels through different materials.  We learned that objects can be classified into one of three categories:

transparent - you can see through the material clearly because it transmits most light (e.g. a pair of glasses)

translucent - you can see through the material, but it's blurry because the light rays change angles as they go through the material (e.g. a bathroom window)

opaque - you can't see through the material because it absorbs the light  (e.g. a book)

To practice our classification skills, Ms. Birdsall divided us into partners and gave us of a bag of objects to identify as transparent, translucent or opaque.  The most surprising was the emergency blanket.  From a distance it looks opaque (kind of like aluminum foil), but when you look through it up close it's actually translucent!

 

Learning about Cedar

Right now in Social Studies, we are studying the First Nations people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. We are very fortunate to have Aboriginal cultural facilitators in our school district who give presentations to enhance our curriculum. Last week, Richard came into our class to teach us about the importance of the cedar tree to the First Nations people of this area. They called cedar the "Tree of Life" because they used it for so many different things. Objects made out of cedar included: longhouses, canoes, paddles, clothing, baskets, boxes, totem poles, rope, tools and many other items. Here are a few of the things made of cedar that Richard brought to show us.

Next, Richard taught us the process of cedar twining.  Traditionally, the First Nations would twine cedar to use as rope.  In partners, we twined the cedar to create bracelets.  To twine the cedar securely, you first twist a section of the bark, then overlap one part of the bark over the other.  The technique takes a bit of practice, but when it's done correctly the rope is very strong.  Here we are hard at work.

 Thank you Richard for teaching us about cedar!

Light Sources Animotos

In Science, we have been learning about light sources.  There are two categories of light sources: natural light and artificial light.  Natural light is light that comes from nature, for example, the sun.  Artificial light is made by humans, for example, a lamp.  To demonstrate their understanding of light sources, students created slideshows using a great program called Animoto.  Here are some photos of the students hard at work on the laptops putting together their slideshows.

 

 

 Here are a couple of examples of the finished Animotos.  To see all of the students' slideshows, please click here to visit students individual blogs where the slideshows are posted.