Friday, January 22, 2022

 Hello Room 6 Families,

This week we began a conversation around what we know about food chains. When brainstorming concepts connected to food chains students generated ideas such as  predator, prey, connection, energy transfer, overpopulation, and diagrams. We finished our Friday by looking at these two diagrams, and had partner pair and share time to talk about what noticings we have when comparing a food chain and a food web. This learning will continue next week! 

In math, we began exploring the Montessori Stamp Game as a material to support multi-digit addition problem solving. The Stamp Game supports the development of place value, and is one of Mrs. Morden's FAVOURITE Montessori material! 

 

Today, students worked with Ms. Durnford and Ms. Thomas on coding! 

 

When first asked about coding, students identified that coding involved computers, typing, the internet and games. But then, Ms. Durnford asked us to code her to get ready for outside! Students quickly learned that coding isn’t just computers, and that breaking down skills, being specific and debugging are all part of being successful.  

 

Ms. Thomas then introduced students to the Dash robots. Students worked in a small teams to explore the robot and foundational programming. There was lots of laughter and gasps of excitement and surprise as robots moved, lit up and made sounds. As comfort grew, codes become increasingly complex, and rich conversations were overheard celebrating each teams success and making plans for next steps. Ask your child the name of their robot and what discoveries they had during coding today.  

 

At the end of our session, students were once again asked to reflect on what coding was. This time, student identified that coding is working in a team, communication, learning, teaching, being specific, and most importantly…FUN!   

 

We look forward to coding next time!