Genius Hour Idea Submission

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Reading and Buddy Reading

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It has truly been a joy watching the students step into their role as big buddies. The Grade 7's have been very supportive and encouraging with their Grade 1 buddies, and the empathy they show to their young peers is heart warming. 

Not only are the Grade 7's enjoying reading with their buddies, but its exciting to have a class that knows the value of a good book! Our school put on a fantastic book fair this week, and there's been a great buzz about books that are new to our students, or classroom, and even new loans from classmates. Its great to see!

The two-fold reading experience has provided an excellent set up for our deepening exploration into comprehension strategies, and we are having more and more conversations about what it means to be a good reader. 

Genius Hour

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We have set aside our Friday afternoons this year for something different, something unique. We will be spending our Friday afternoon's as "Genius Hour". Today our work was to unpack the process by looking at this graphic by Gallit Zvi, as we as a few other info-graphics that now live on our wall. Today we explored our passions, and thought about a few we would like to work on by doing something new, something more, or something different (step 2 of the process as Gallit describes it). Next week we will circle back to these passions and progress toward a project question that will drive our personal inquiry and lay the foundation for a the learning that we will share with the class in a few weeks time (step 3!).

How Does Art Reflect Culture? Project

Class definition of culture as a Tagxedo wordle

• Outline
• Groups And Centuries Doc (with links to first assignment)
• Link to Timeline in its own window

Planning and Leading PE Units

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One of the ways we've encouraged students to take on leadership roles this year is by allowing them to plan, prepare, and lead a 3 day unit in PE. The students have risen to the challenge, and the games, skills, and "main events" they have planned for us look great. We are off to a great start working on our fitness and flexibility with some gymnastics skills and activities!

Science Inquiry

On Halloween Day we decided to have some fun building density towers. Students made great observations of our demo tower, asked excellent questions about how we could change the experiment, and then collaboratively designed and conducted experiments using liquids and solids of their choice. It was an excellent morning! 

For many of us one lasting lesson will be not to swirl the old bottles of food colouring found on the Hart Highlands shelves - the plastic may have lost its structural integrity. What a mess!

Global Cardboard Challenge

This week we are starting our preparation for the Global Cardboard Challenge which will take place next Friday, October 10th.

More information will be posted here shortly, but for now here are a few videos to give you a taste of the learning adventure we will be embarking on:


Update: This Challenge was a huge success! I blogged about it on my personal blog here.