Where the bison roam....

In my last blog entry, I wrote that the WMS students had just written the DWW, a YK1 district wide writing assessment for students in grades 1 through 8. Friday afternoon was a SIP (School Improvement Planning) professional development day for teachers and this time was allotted to evaluate all of the WMS DWWs. I was a part of this process, working with an EA to assess the work of a grade 6 class - a great opportunity given my interest in research and assessment and as I've never had the opportunity to work on any sort of school wide or district wide assessment.

Although I did have a chance to read through the class writing before the Friday afternoon marking session, we still took the time to read each personal narrative out loud and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each piece before filling out the rubric. For the DWW rubric, we would mark students with a 1, 2, 3 or 4 (with 3 being at grade level) only. In my practicums, I'd been been marking with a + or -, and I found it challenging not to have this option. I like the process of moderated marking and it was valuable for me to see how the rubric was filled out in terms of being able to track student progress from September to January to May.

In my J/I English class at OISE, we (the teacher candidates) spent a lot of time discussing how to best assess student writing. What came out of these conversations with my classmates - who all love reading and writing and want to pass this love along to their students - was the challenges of evaluating writing, particularly creative writing. Is it possible to accurately assess writing with a rubric? Is it better to give descriptive feedback? Perhaps a little of both? If writing is about taking risks (which we all agreed it is) and a student takes a risk and does not succeed, should that student be penalized? My professor for that course once said that if we were unsure about what mark or grade to give (if we were struggling with whether to give a student a 2+ or a 3-, for example), we should give the student the benefit of the doubt. This really resonated with me and I think it is good advice for assessment (and other teacherly things as well). I love reading and talking about student writing. Although I think I can read a piece and quickly sumise its strengths and weaknesses, I find it difficult to mark with a rubric. I wonder if, with more experience and / or more exposure to student writing, I'll struggle less with this kind of assessment.

Speaking of writing, there were still more tests at WMS. Early this week, grade six teachers were busy preparing students to write the AATs - Alberta Achievement Tests (the Northwest Territories use the Alberta provincial tests). French immersion students wrote two versions of the AATs - one in English and one in French. I assisted with the English Language Arts portion of the test, in which students wrote two pieces - a fictional story and a functional (newspaper) article. I think there will be a team that assesses these tests, but I'm not sure if this will take place during my internship.

In between classes.

Some other highlights and thoughts:

• Music concert at Sir John Franklin High School. This year I've only been in elementary or middle schools, so it was great to be able to visit a high school - the students seem so grown up! One of the things that struck me during the concert was that one music teacher led all three bands that performed that day (the concert band, the rock band and the jazz band). Each band practices for 90 minutes each week and this drove home the point of how much time and dedication it takes for teachers to run extra-curricular activities or groups, but also how essential and valuable these are to students and the student experience. 
• I had set up a couple of math and science classes to observe, but the teacher was sick and with the AATs things got switched around a bit. I'll try again this week.
• My morning runs and afternoon practices continued for the track and field team despite a week of  wind and rain (it actually snowed one day)!

WMS hours this week:
Monday and Friday: 8:15 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Tuesday: 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Wednesday: 8:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Thursday: 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Around town: armed with advice from the WMS Social Studies teacher and the front page of the Yellowknifer, the Victoria Day weekend included several outings / activities:

First, it was over to Fred Henne Territorial Park, one of the amazing territorial parks in the Yellowknife region, to cheer on the brave folks taking part in the Polar Plunge - an annual event that raises funds in support of the Special Olympics NWT. While Claudine and I were safely and dryly ensconced on the dock, teams of people dove and swam into the icy waters (and when I say icy I mean it - most of the lake was still covered in ice). Below a video... and please excuse my sniffling throughout - it was cold out there!

Taking the plunge!

Claudine takes photos of the Polar Plunge... and yes, that's ice covering the lake.

Then, it was on to search for bison. Despite all of the promising road signs along Highway 3....

we had to get close to Behchoko before...

Beautiful and amazing.

I finally had dinner at Bullock's Bistro in Old Town. This "fish shack" is famous for its generous portions, laid back atmosphere (people write their names on the walls) and terrible service (although the service was pretty good the night we went... must have been an off night). I had the arctic char. Grilled. So very very delicious.

I'm not one to take pictures of my meals, but just look at this!

I made another visit to the amazing Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, this time for a lesson in beadwork, where I learned that I need to take more lessons in beadwork. Some people were really fast at beading... me, not at all. Such challenging and intricate work!

I also checked out the Sapsucker Birch Syrup Sugar Shack Open House and partook in birch butter, birch syrup, birch tea, bannock and apple fritters.

The trail to the Sapsucker Birch Syrup Sugar Shack.

Enjoying the Sugar Shack!

Collecting birch sap.

Bannock on a stick: baking bannock over an open fire and then smothering it in birch butter is the bomb.

Finished off the long weekend hiking the Cameron Falls Trail in Hidden Lake Territorial Park. The trail takes you over rocks of the Canadian Shield that were shaped by glaciers around 10,000 years ago.

It doesn't look like it here, but this part of the trail is quite steep.

Inukshuk on the trail to Cameron Falls.

Beautiful Cameron Falls.

In other news, I can now make my way around town quite easily and have been able to get to the Co-op grocery store without assistance. Regarding the issue of sleep or lack thereof, my newest strategy is making myself as physically tired as possible (this usually involves the Morning Wake Up run, a run with the track and field team after school and then off to the gym to jump rope, take a class or run on some sort of gym machine) so I fall asleep in spite of what I consider to be a daytime sky at night.

Here comes the sun...

Another busy week at WMS!

I started running with the track team during Morning Wake Ups - a great program which gets students active and focused before the start of classes through 20 minutes of daily physical activity at the beginning of each day. Since I have the "sweeper" role for this activity, it's more of a run / walk situation than a run proper, but it's fun to be outside in the morning with the kids. I'm helping out with the track and field team after school on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Doing As, Bs and Cs with the WMS track team. It may not look like it here,
but there was a biting northern wind blowing through YK on this day. Brrr.

This week, the students worked on the District Wide Write (DWW) - a Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (YK1) writing assessment for students from grades 1 to 8. Written three times a year (the May assessment is the third and final instalment) the DWW provides a diagnostic tool for teachers to help target instruction, as well as a means to track student growth and improvement. This year, the genre for the DWW is personal narrative. I feel fortunate to be able to see this roll out while I'm at WMS. Next week, I'll be part of a team of teachers who will work together to evaluate the DWWs through moderated marking.

Jobmatics' Smart Focusing, an initiative supported by Northwest Territories Education, Culture and Employment (ECE), also started this week. It's another one of the programs at WMS geared to adolescent learners and it looks like I'll be able to see this program run in its entirety during my internship. The program helps grade 8 students reflect on their own skills and provides tools, skills and strategies for work and learning. I'm particularly interested in how the program will position the current work environment to students (where most people will work at, or in, more than one career over the course of their working lives).

I always think of education and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson's excellent 2006 TED talk, "School is Killing our Creativity," in which he observes that educators and education specialists do not know what jobs will look like in five years, let alone 50. We cannot predict how work, culture and technology, the environment and the economy will change. Sir Robinson suggests that, in this ever and quickly changing world, what we can do is give students the tools and models for comprehending and navigating change. This means cultivating our student's inherent sense of creativity and curiosity.

I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but there's a lot going on at WMS! Highlights from this week include: 

• teaching a review of figures of speech (hyperbole and personification) to a grade 8 class who are in the middle of a poetry unit and about to embark on writing their own poetry.
• learning how to play Dene Hand Games in physical education class. The grade 8 and grade 6 students were very patient with me as they tried to teach me this game. 
• connecting with the school's guidance person about my interest in counselling. Our conversation is an ongoing one, as students often stop by to speak with him while we are chatting. 
• meeting with the librarian about the school's library and helping out here by going through all of the English language books and pulling all of the old and / or damaged books and flagging all of the books for a classics section and a picture book section.
• attending the information night for the grade 5 parents and students who will be attending the school in the fall.
• Greaser Day. Grade 8 students are reading S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders for their novel study. This week they screened the film and showed great school spirit by dressing up as greasers and socs.

My hours for this week:

Monday and Friday - 8:15 a.m. to 3:30 p..m

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

I continue to explore Yellowknife - I feel like I have so much to do and see and not much time left! This weekend I walked around Old Town, which is part of YK's waterfront on Great Slave Lake.

View of Great Slave Lake from Old Town. The lake has started to melt but people still feel comfortable biking
and snowmobiling across it. Me? Not so much. I continue to admire the lake from the shore.

Yellowknife Cultural Crossroads decorates a stone hill along the road that leads into Old Town. The project is a collaborative work of Metis, Dene, Inuvialuit, English and French participants and is
dedicated to all peoples of the North.

Old Town, now home to some galleries, restaurants and several historical buildings, has a colourful past. It was a bustling boomtown (tents and log cabins) of suppliers and outfitters that supported the gold trade. This is also where you'll find Ragged Ass Road (as immortalized as the title of Tom Cochrane's second solo album).

I attended the 30th annual Yellowknife Trade Show, a huge community event with an estimated attendance of 11,000 people... pretty good considering the population of Yellowknife is 19,000. I also participated in a Zumba fundraiser for the BHP Billiton Relay for Life team (for the Canadian Cancer Society).

Zumba fundraiser. (And yes, we're in the WMS gymnasium - go Wildcats!) 

The days are getting longer - there's almost 19 hours of sunlight now. During the "nighttime" hours (11:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.) it's still not completely dark. (!) My sense of time is completely off... I'll think it's 3:30 in the afternoon and it's already 8:30 p.m. and I find myself wide awake at 2:30 a.m. A quick aside: when my sister first moved to Yellowknife, we would often tease her that she would get Midnight Sun mania because of all of the sunlight in YK in the summer. I don't think it ever affected her in a major way, but it sure has affected me. (We're going to put a couple of blankets over the window blinds tonight.) However, save for the dark circles under my eyes, I think it's pretty amazing and cool how long the sun shines here.

Finding my way

For this first week of my internship, I've been finding my way around Yellowknife and École William McDonald Middle School.
________

I've arrived in Yellowknife for my OISE internship!

United in Celebration sculpture by Frame Lake

The week leading up to getting here is a bit of a blur – literally and figuratively. I handed in my final OISE paper the morning of April 19th and we were in the car on the road to Calgary that afternoon. We made the drive in record time – two days! – arriving in Calgary on Saturday afternoon. This left some time to get a proper night's sleep, vote in the Alberta provincial election, move our Toronto belongings into storage with our Calgary belongings, and visit with family before leaving for the north on the 23rd. 

I arrived in Yellowknife a couple of days before the start of my internship at École William McDonald Middle School (WMS) and was able to explore the city a little bit – my sister took me around to the Yellowknife Public Library, Old Town, and to WMS – so I'm not exactly sure how I managed to get lost on the way to school one day this week. And I still haven't been able to find the Co-op grocery store on my own.... Clearly, I have a terrible sense of direction. (There are actually other incidences where I got lost this week, but I'm too embarrassed to reveal them here.) 

On 50th Avenue

The first weekend in Yellowknife I had to opportunity to visit, with my sister and her friend, Frozen Rock Studio. 

On the way to Frozen Rock Studio (the Yellowknife Islamic Centre is the building in the background).

We met with local artist Jamie Look, who creates beautiful sculptural jewellery from muskox and buffalo horn and sterling silver. 

Local artist Jamie Look makes jewellery from muskox and buffalo horn.

Jamie's work table featuring some of her latest jewelry designs.

Jamie shares the studio with several other artists, so also we had the opportunity to visit and speak with Derrald Taylor, a wonderful carver originally from Tuktoyaktuk. He was working on a polar carving made out of alabaster. It was such a special experience to speak with Jamie and Derrald about their work.


My sister and I also visited the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (PWNHC), the government of the Northwest Territories' museum and archives. I think this is an fantastic place for a lot of reasons – the centre has exhibits, collections, conservation programs, archives, provides financial support to artists and cultural organizations and authorizes archeological studies in the Northwest Territories and you can go there for FREE. Amazing. The day we were visiting, the centre was hosting a Queen's Diamond Jubilee Tea. 

Celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

On Sunday, I met with my internship site supervisor, the principal of WMS, for a tour and a discussion of my interests and opportunities at the school. This week served as STEP / observation days, where I was busy making connections with teachers, observing classes, getting a sense of the culture of the school and getting to know the students. Faculty have been welcoming and generous with their time and school administrators have provided me with a work space in the office, for which I am ever so grateful.

Ecole William McDonald Middle School - where I'll be for the next five weeks!

There are several highlights from my first week, some of which include:

• helping out with the Morning Wake Up activities (who knew middle school students would love jumping rope so much?!)
• conferencing with grade 6 students about their writing (newspaper articles)
• participating in moderated marking
• viewing grade 8 video assignments where students created television shows for teens through a specific lens / genre (they were terrific!)

This internship is going to be a fantastic experience because I'll be able to explore several interests – language arts, social studies, guidance, library services, and assessment – while I'm at WMS. There is a lot happening at the school, so this first week of observations and conversations has been incredibly valuable. I'm also looking forward to being at WMS because I'll get a good sense of the challenges and rewards of teaching the adolescent learner. Grades 6, 7 and 8 can be such an intense time for young people and I've been thinking a lot about the kinds of support that they need during this time. WMS has several great programs that support adolescent learners, which will be the topic of next week's blog.

Speaking of next week, I'm hoping to create some sort of structure or schedule for my next four weeks at WMS so that I can pinpoint some language or social studies lessons I can help with or teach, to continue my conversation with the school’s guidance counselor and to connect with the librarian. I'll start helping out with the track and field team this week and hope to start taking some photos so I can include them in my next post. Should be a fun week!

(This week, my daily school hours were 8:15 am – 3:30 pm.)

Resolution / Week 4

(For those just tuning in, I’ve decided to format the four entries of this blog to follow the four parts of the narrative form I’m teaching my grade 5 class. This week: the Resolution.)

The resolution = THE END. Or more specifically, the point in the story when the problem or complication is resolved.

I think I (inadvertently) solved my complications in week three, so I’ll use this time / space for some other thoughts.

Week four was a busy one for the grade 5s at Owen. Our three classes of about 70 students and five more from Mrs. Gillespie's HSP class worked on finishing their culminating task - a narrative comic about consumption and environmental impact. Here's a favourite from my class:

I am thankful for many things about this practicum, including:

Pretty good (and many) alarms: I did not sleep in! This is due, in large part, to my pathological and extreme fear of being late and the three alarms I set every morning. You may think this is a bit over the top, but there was a time in which two of my alarms failed to work... on the same morning. I don't even know how that could have happened...

An understanding partner: What has it been like to live with me in a small one-bedroom apartment during this practicum? With a person who gets home at 5:30 p.m., eats dinner, then puts on her robe and then gets in bed to mark papers or do lesson plans until she falls asleep / passes out from exhaustion and then is woken up by three alarms (see above) at 5:30 a.m. only to hit the snooze button every 10 minutes until 6 a.m. and then is out the door at 7:15 a.m and then starts all over again at 5:30 p.m.? Only one person knows and I am afraid to ask him. (And yes, we are still together.)

Grade 5: I always suspected I would like to teach 10 year olds and well… I was right about that. It’s a really special, interesting and creative age.  I learned a lot from this class of grade 5s. And here they are:

Moving on: So, two weeks today, I’ll be on the road – probably somewhere in Northern Ontario – back to Calgary, then to Yellowknife for my internship then back to Toronto before a summer job as a Teacher’s Assistant for an overseas grade 12 Classics and English course and then back to Toronto to pack up the apartment and then back to Calgary to see if I can actually find a teaching gig in Alberta. In the meantime, I’m trying to get through these last few assignments, stay engaged in what happening in class and say goodbye to Toronto friends.

Speaking of goodbye... here's a Bitstrips farewell from a student. There are so many things I like about this comic, but I especially love that my avatar 1) wears chartreuse pants 2) carries a satchel and 3) sings "La La La!" all the way home. When I look at this I feel happy.

(Blogs I commented on: Amy, Jen, Winzie, YiLin.)

Complication(s) / Week 3

(For those just tuning in, I’ve decided to format the four entries of this blog to follow the four parts of the narrative form I’m teaching my grade 5 class. This week: the Complication.)

If you were to read the last two blog entries, you might come away thinking that it was all fun and Jeopardy games in my March practicum. But I’ve been saving the challenges (or complications if you were in my grade 5 class and we were talking about narrative writing) for the this entry:

1)   The wall. I hit a wall after week 2 / at the start of week 3. (Half-way done  - yay! Half-way to go – ohhh…) I’m not exactly sure why I seem to have lost some of my momentum… but I do remember the same thing happened during the November practicum. How can I keep motivated? And keep my energy up? Perhaps part of the problem this practicum is that I can see how close I am to the end of this whole thing. In less than a month I'll be packing up and driving back to Calgary... and then from there to Yellowknife for my internship. This week, I just tried to focus on whatever was planned for the next day. I'd worry about tomorrow, later.

2)   A cough and a sneeze. I got pretty sick the first weekend of March Break. Awful head cold and cough. Ugh. I’m just getting over it now.

3)   Is this thing on? No technology in the classroom. Not really a challenge, but something I really miss from my last practicum where I was lucky enough to have a SmartBoard. It was great to be able to bedazzle my students with YouTube videos and other interactive experiences. So I've just been using other no-tech ways to create the same kind of interactive activities (cutting out pictures and moving them around around the whiteboard with magnets, post-it notes on chart paper, four corners, etc.).

4)   Co-teaching. It’s harder than it looks. And more rewarding than I thought. Oh – and did I mention it was hard? At Owen P.S., the three grade 5 teachers co-teach and co-plan language arts, science and social science. So the three TCs also co-teach and co-plan. With all of the group work that we do in class, you would think that I would be prepared for the co-teaching experience. But not so much. Take three people, with three different ways of communicating, different strengths, and different speeds of working... You almost need another practicum to figure out how to co-teach! I have already used the words, “hard” and “rewarding” to describe the experience. I’ve also found it: confusing, gratifying and creative. 

Over the winter break, I listened to the great Tina Fey’s audiobook Bossypants. I mention this now because in the book, she outlines the rules of improv comedy. I think her rules also apply to co-teaching. (Actually, I think Fey would argue that these rules are also good rules for life.) To paraphrase shamelessly from Fey’s book…

1)   Say yes.
This isn’t to suggest you should blindly agree with everything - it’s more of a reminder to respect what your partner has created and to start in a generous and open minded place.

2)   Say yes AND.
Agree, and then add something of your own. It’s your responsibility to contribute. Be sure to add something to the discussion.

3)   Make statements / don’t ask questions all the time.
By asking questions all the time, you put pressure on your partner to come up with answers. Don’t be the person who always raises questions and points out obstacles. Be part of the solution.

4)   There are no mistakes, only opportunities.
I think I like this rule the best of them all. Don't be afraid of failing. Try things. Be brave!  

Back in the classroom, we had a great week with Scientists in the School coming in for one afternoon. The students seemed really engaged with all of the experiments and activities and I took away some strategies to make science challenging, fun AND organized (see my second blog, where I talk about my fear of leading science experiments).

We also began our culminating task, which will be a Bitstrips comic.

I hope to take the weekend to refocus and recharge.

Ever onward…

Initiating Event / Week 2

(For those just tuning in, I’ve decided to format the four entries of this blog to follow the four parts of the narrative form I’m teaching my grade 5 class. This week: the Initiating Event.)

I’m not really a “quote” person, but the one I like above others is attributed to the English romantic poet, William Wordsworth: “To begin, begin.”

When I used to have a day job / work in an office, I would actually keep this saying in a place where I could see it easily and often, because I easily, and often, would put off doing things. I am, for all intents and purposes, a slow starter.

In our grade 5 study of narrative writing, we’ve been talking about the second element of the narrative form - the Initiating Event - as the event that sets the rest of the story in motion. You can’t have a story without it.

For me, week 2 was the Initiating Event for this practicum. It was the week that I really started to feel more at ease being in front of the classroom and with my lessons and with the material I was teaching.

In this practicum I am co-teaching and co-planning a unit in language arts (narrative writing) and science (matter). I’m comfortable with the language arts, but science… not so much. I am intimidated by science. (Yes, even grade 5 science.) And I am nervous about conducting experiments in class.

As a student, I love doing science experiments. But as a teacher, I'm unsure about being in charge of the learning that accompanies an experiment of the science persuasion. There are so many questions:

What if I forget to give the students a fact or piece of information that is vital to the success of the experiment?
Where can I buy petri dishes?
Should the students wear safety goggles for this?
What is sodium bicarbonate?

But mostly I think I'm concerned about the elements of the experiment I can't control (which is a big deal for someone like me, who is most comfortable when prepared).

This week, the grade 5s and I conducted a science experiment. There were empty water bottles and balloons and vinegar and baking soda. We combined the baking soda and the vinegar to create a chemical reaction that resulted in the production of a gas (carbon dioxide) that filled up the bottle and inflated the balloon.

The kids loved it. And everything, for the most part, worked the way it was supposed to. And the kids learned what they were supposed to learn. And I can’t wait to do some other cool science experiments with them again.

In language arts, the grade 5s have been been writing short stories and sketches inspired by picture books, images and objects. This week, the inspiration is Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King. After listening the the music piece a couple of times, the students came up with a list of how the music made them feel and what they imagined:

Can't wait to read those stories!

On Friday (the day before March break), we (the grade 5 TCs) put together a science Jeopardy game for our students, complete with Jeopardy theme music. Working in teams, the students had to come to a consensus on the correct Jeopardy question. So much fun!

The Jeopardy game was followed by the annual student / teacher basketball game, an exciting match-up that ended up with the teachers squeaking out a 38 – 37 win over the students. I tried to take some photos but my camera wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the pace of the game. This is the best of it.

Looking forward to March Break... 

Orientation / Week 1

In the spirit (and celebration) of the Narrative Writing unit I am co-teaching and co-planning with two other Midtowners, I am going to attempt to write my four blog entries in line with the four elements, or parts, of the narrative form we are teaching our grade 5s: orientation; initiating event; complication; and resolution.  

So here we go:

Orientation

The setting

Ecole Owen Public School: As soon as you walk into Owen, you feel at ease. The design of the school is amazing: all 13 classrooms circle the library. Oh – and the classrooms DON’T HAVE ANY DOORS. That’s right, people. No doors. Prior to seeing / experiencing this no doors situation for myself, I was skeptical that it could actually work. But it does. It contributes to the "community-ness" and openness of the school. You feel it when you’re there – it’s palpable. And I especially love that the library is at the centre of it all and acts as a common area for the students.

The characters

Me: feeling tired. (Even before practicum began I was exhausted. I had a lot of projects and assignments due the week prior. I was hoping to start this practicum well rested, with all of my lesson plans completed. In reality: not so much. )

My AT: a creative and generous teacher who gives helpful feedback on my lessons.

My class: 23 interesting, amazing grade 5 students.

And more! Two other grade 5 TCs (we co-teach and co-plan the grade 5 lessons), their students and their ATs. 

First week at a glance:

Although I’d had seven STEP days at the school, I felt pretty rusty on my first official day of teaching. Was I talking too much? (Probably.) Was my voice too quiet? (Perhaps.) Too loud?  (Not likely.) Was I asking the right questions?

Speaking of asking questions: during that first week I was reminded of some observations / realizations from my last practicum. For example, the need to ask good, clear questions of the students. Case in point:

Me: Can someone tell me what types, or kinds, of writing you have learned this year? (Hoping for the answer: persuasive writing or procedural writing.)

Student answer: Cursive?

(Needless to say, I wasn't expecting that answer - which was absolutely correct - and I made a mental note that I really should be asking better questions.)

Other first week highlights include:

During a discussion of the possible resolution in the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, one student was having a hard time accepting the connection between the complication and resolution as it was presented by his classmates. “I’m just not buying it,” he insisted. (He finally did get a resolution that he felt was satisfactory.)

During the "Ice Race" competition (where students had to see how quickly they could melt an ice cube and changing the state of matter from a solid to a liquid), one student put 10 coats on an ice cube, in an attempt to make it melt faster. (That strategy did not make the ice cube melt faster.)

One student used the word “frittered” in a poem. As in “to tear or break away”. Awesome. 

We had the opportunity to get all 75 of the grade 5 students involved in the Sandal Design project, in which they applied their knowledge of using cylinders and triangles to resist the forces of nature to make sandals out of bristol board. The students then tested out their sandals in a fashion show in the library.

(Let me just say here that it took me a couple of attempts at making the sandals before I could construct them strong enough to actually walk in / on.) Great job grade 5s!

So, it's been a great week be teaching grade 5 at Owen. Now, onto week 2...