Welcome to Room 10! Our grade 5/6 class is off to a great start for the 2020-2021 school year. 

All parent communication and class learning updates will be delivered through email using School Messenger. 

Students will use Google Classroom at school and home this year. Students have joined the online classroom for if and when needed this year.

If you have any questions, please contact Mr Jassar.

Mathematics

In math, we have been exploring and reviewing equivalent fractions by finding common multiples for either the denominator or numerator. We are putting them on number lines to compare their values. Grade 6s have been converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and representing what they know using pictures and calculations.  

Reading

In book clubs we have made film trailers based on our book club books. We learned how to edit our trailers and film them. We needed to create storyboards, choose our settings, add music, sound effects, special effects using green screen, and experiment with many camera angles. Many of us experienced setbacks that we had to overcome as a team. We also created our own costumes and lines.

These past 2 weeks we have been assigned new book clubs groups. We have been reading City Of Ember, A week in the Woods, Hatchet and Mockingbird to name a few. We have continued posing our questions, writing summaries, and improving our vocabulary. 

Writing

We have been looking at articles and reading through them to analyze the information that they use to make the articles interesting. We take the information and compare the articles as we read. The information that we are looking for is who, what, where, when, why, how, and background information. 

Phys. Ed.

This week in gym we have been working on body movement, we have also been doing stretches and one on one body movement drills. We use mats for better grip and safety. We have been doing lots of challenging poses, which cause many of us to lose balance and hop a lot. We have been playing a game called scorpion tag on scooters and without, to increase our strength. 

Social Studies

In Social Studies we have been preparing to be visited by Greg Mclean, the member of parliament in our area. We have been creating questions we could possibly ask Greg, more descriptive than our basic questions. We also have been doing research in our textbooks, and have been learning about the three levels of government. Federal, Provincial, and Local. Lately we have been learning about what a bill is, a cabinet minister, and an act.

Science

In the past two weeks we have been brainstorming and creating aliens based off of research that we have collected from the planets of our choice. We explored our areas of interest. We did this to demonstrate our learning in sky science. The information we took on our planets helped create adaptations to our aliens. We were able to be very creative. We used multiple mediums to create our 3D and 2D aliens. We learned that the many planets in our solar system are very different from each other, and some share many similarities. 

Upcoming Grade 5/6 Field Trips and 'Celebration of Learning'

Wednesday, April 8th - Leighton Art Centre 

*3-4 parent volunteers will be needed per class

*We'll be traveling by school bus to Leighton Art Centre in Foothills, Alberta

http://www.leightoncentre.org/

Thursday, April 23rd- Calgary Public Library (Central Library)

*3-4 parent volunteers will be needed per class during daytime rehearsals. 

Grade 5/6s will leave school at 9am and their designated rehearsal time will be from 9:30-10:30am with their dance instructor and teachers. 

We will need parent volunteers to travel with us and as supervisors for the remainder of our time at the library. There will be time for lunch and learning activities in the library where students will be assigned their group and a parent volunteer. 

Our second whole school rehearsal will be from 1pm-2pm. We will depart at 2:15pm and return to school by around 2:45pm. School dismissal will be at regular time.

*We'll be traveling by school bus to the Central Library in downtown Calgary

https://calgarylibrary.ca/read-learn-and-explore/central-library/

Alexander Ferguson's Celebration of Learning is the evening of Thursday, April 23rd. Students will be traveling with their families to the Central Library to watch their performances that evening. 

Thursday, June 4th- Heritage Park for AMA School Patrollers

*Many parent volunteers will be needed depending on how student groupings based on park priorities (ideally, one parent per four students)

*We'll be traveling by school bus to Heritage Park located on Heritage Drive in Calgary

https://www.heritagepark.ca/

https://www.heritagepark.ca/plan-your-visit/event-calendar/school-patrol-day

Dear Parents and Guardians, 

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the grade 5/6 field trip to the Alberta Legislature, in Edmonton, on April 8, 2020, has been cancelled. 

With short notice, the grade 5/6 team was able to secure a trip to the Leighton Art Centre located in Millarville, coincidentally still on April 8th. Please stay tuned for more information. 

Thanks for your understanding.

This week in drama we have been learning about film and the techniques used. Depending on the angle of the camera, the perspective of the video/photo will change. We did an experiment where we used a cup and moved it close to the camera lense, and the students would jump in the perimeter that the cup would be in. We are doing these experiments because we are making trailers based on our book clubs books.

For book clubs we are taking a drama approach by making a trailer based on our books. We are learning about manipulating the stage by turning the camera to change the stage. We are planning the trailer by taking scenes from the book. We judged the main scenes to see if it was action, adventure etc. We are still planning the scenes using story boards.

During the past two weeks we have been learning about constellations in the northern hemisphere. Constellations that we can see all year long in the north  are called circumpolar constellations. We have been showing our learning through art projects. We painted using watercolour and added our constellations using white paint. Our art is cut in a round shape to show perspective, that we are looking up at the stars, especially with the trees reaching upwards. We wrote about the important stars in our constellations including indicating the colours and brightest ones, as well as, writing the myths of our constellations.

This month in gym, we have been playing badminton. We have learned different techniques on how to hit the birdie. We learned backhand, overhand, and underhand. We also worked on our aiming by trying to serve a birdie into a hoop and bucket. We learned how to rally the birdie and that helped us with our passing and serving skills. Everyone loved playing badminton so much that the grade ⅚ teachers were kind enough to start a badminton club.

In mathematics these past 2 weeks we have been learning about unknown variables. Instead of answering in a number we would write an equation as an answer for a word problem, this is called expressing. We also had to find the missing variable, for example if the equation was 25=4+n, we would have to find the number for letter “n”, the question is telling us that 25 is the same amount of 4+(unknown variable). You would use computations to figure it out. The answer would be 25=4+n(21), it may look complicated but it is simple. We also learned about inverse relatiionships, so if 30= 5(n), then n will be 30 divided by 5, which is 6.

In story writing, we have been learning how to extend our writing using descriptive language, figurative language and building suspense. We build suspense by including character emotions and their thoughts. You can also talk about what’s going on in the moment of the story, action by action to lead up to an exciting reveal at the end.

This past week the grade 5/6s got to go skiing and snowboarding. We had an amazing time with our friends, and picked up some new skills. Everybody had lots of fun learning how to ski or snowboard on steeper hills, going backwards, and doing 360s. Lots of us just started, didn't ski or snowboard in a long time, or continued working on our skills. We loved going up on the chair lift, we had amazing and smart instructors, and our parent volunteers were great at helping us with our equipment and joining us on our runs down the hill. We highly recommend that AFS students go in the future when they get the chance.

Our Slide Show Link- https://calgaryboardofeducation-my.sharepoint.com/personal/sjhurst_cbe_ab_ca/Documents/Attachments/WinSport_2020_blog.m4v

Got to meet an Olympian (a parent volunteer) and see their 2010 Winter Olympics Bronze Medal- 4 Man Bobsleigh- Team Canada

Paul Davis Cyber Expert Talk 

Last Tuesday, intermediate students at Alexander Ferguson took part in a 45 minutes presentation by Paul Davis, a cyber expert.

His presentation was fact-based. We took time today, Friday, to reflect on our learning to see what we retained from the talk. 

Things we did not realize before:

-any person with average technology skills can find a lot of information about you pretty quickly based on images, time stamps, and especially parents discussing and posting vacation plans and locations.

-many people, including young students, find it disrespectful when people use technology around the dinner table. This is a place for conversation. A suggestion is to post a sign on the fridge to remind family members to leave their phones when at the dinner table.

-Having a discussion and making family 'bylaws' around when to use technology and when to leave it alone are a good idea.

-Many people believe that technology is the way of the future, and learning a new language such as coding is a way to prepare for future job opportunities. We can start with Scratch for a year, and then move on to Python or JavaScript for more challenges. This can make you multilingual.

-Instead of having a social media following, we can make our own blogs with parent support. In the future, when someone searches for something we like to participate in, our blog link will come up first, which could lead to business opportunities.

-It is important to do research about an new app, before downloading it. That way we can tell how it is being used positively and negatively. Parents should always be asked by their child if they can download an app first.


Strategies to stay safe online:

-the best way to avoid bullying online at our age, is to delete all social media platforms.
Most media platforms require people to be 13 years old or more, so at our age we are not legally even supposed to be using social media.

-Parents should respect the wishes of their children if they do not want their images and life moments posted online by their parents

-If we do have a social media account, settings should be set to private, and personal information should never be included in your profile

-If you do have a youtube channel, it is very wise to turn off the comment section, to avoid negativity and hostile comments from strangers. This will avoid a lot of emotional pain because comments are unnecessary and the source of so many problems.

-If you have a webcam, or camera on your laptop, cover it with a bandaid to make sure no one can hack your computer and spy on you

-use strong pass codes, and never share them with anyone else, including siblings

-all electronic devices should stay out of the bedroom, and only be used around family like the living room ((technology plus isolation equals getting hurt with poor choices made)

-never respond to cyberbullying, and outsmart the cyberbully by collecting all of the evidence and reporting it

-digital trails and footprints are permanent

-all choices online are of effort and intent, they are not mistakes but poor choices to hurt others

-pictures never disappear even if they are deleted

-parents need to be aware of what children are doing online

-there are online predators that we need to be aware of by protecting ourselves online

-predators like to find kids on platforms, especially Instagram and TikTok, because they prey on how kids are so trusting

-play online games with real people that you know and communicate to only real people who you personally know

Paul Davis may not be our mom or our dad but he is a proven cyber expert and he wanted to share fact-based information with us. Ultimately, decisions are made at home with your family.