We Need Your Help!

The grade 5/6s are collecting the following items for the Drop-in Center.

Toiletries 

o   Razors

o   Shampoo

o   Sun screen

o   Tums/Vitamin C

o   Tylenol/Advil

o   Non-alcoholic wipes

Food Items

o   Coffee

o   Sugar and Coffee Creamer

Clothing

o   Mens work boots

o   Mens bottoms (jeans, shorts, sweats)

o   Mens and Womens socks (new or used)

o   Ball caps

Electronics

o   Computers new and used

o   TVs, printers, phones

Other

o   Water bottles

o   Sunglasses

o   Blankets (new and used)

o   Full sized towels (new and used)

Why are trees important?

What would our world look like without trees and forests?  Would we adapt?  These are the questions that we are exploring during our Trees and Forests inquiry work.   We  have begun to brainstorm some ideas and read the article "No Trees. No Humans" to begin our research.  https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/our-science/no_trees_no_humans

Story Writing and Investigation

We had a very busy week in Room 20!  This week we began a new read aloud called Wishtree by Katherine Applegate.  This book is a fantastic lead into our Trees and Forests Inquiry starting at the end of the month.  We had a lot of really 'thick' questions about Wishtrees and spent some time investigating their history and purpose around the world.  We learned that Wishtrees are very popular in Japan specifically but there are similar trees across the continents. Even Scotland has a history of nailing coins into trucks of trees for wishes.  We are looking forward to Wish Day which is May 1st.  For now we have started our own wishtree in the classroom.

Students are also circling back in their story writing to think about the many parts of a story and what makes a great story so enjoyable to read.  We focused on two picture books called Out by Angela May George and Salt In His Shoes.  Students worked to identify the setting, characters, beginning, rising action, falling action and ending.  The retells were filled with lots of interesting details that definitely made the stories their own.

We finished off our Evidence and Investigation Inquiry with a visit from Constable Anita Swanson, a 12 year member of the RCMP's Major Crimes and Auto-Theft units.  She shared a ton of pictures, photos and videos from her work and explained in detail how investigators in the Forensic units across Canada gather information to put criminals behind bars.  It was incredibly fascinating and impressive to see how much collaboration is required for this highly intense and creative work.

What makes a good interview?

What makes an interview successful?  How do we ensure that we ask the right questions to unlock a person's story?

We had the incredible experience of having 8 visitors from the Calgary Homeless Foundation come into our school to speak with us.  All of these people have been homeless at one point for various amounts of time and we wanted to ask them the best possible questions.  Students brainstormed as many questions as they could and then narrowed it down to the 10 best.  These 10 were then edited and edited until we felt that they were perfect.  Our questions were:

1. How did you become homeless and when?

2. Are you grateful for the life you have now and why?

3. What stage of life were you homeless in?  What was your life like before?

4. Who or what supported you in your journey?  How did they help you?

5. What was your experience being homeless?

6. If you could change any one thing in the past what would it be and why?

7. If you had one sentence to describe when you were homeless what would it be?

8. What did you learn from being homeless?

9. What was your most precious possession that you brought with you?  Why was it so important?

10. Were you separated from your family because of homelessness?

We wanted to ensure that all of our visitors were asked the same questions so that we could then compare and contrast their experiences.  Students also took photographs of our guests and our next steps will be to analyze these photographs.  What makes a good picture?  What could make it better?  How does this picture capture the story?

We will also be working to develop our newspaper writing skills by sharing this life changing experience.