French Test!

Friday everyone (except those at hockey) should have brought home a study sheet for the French test. The test will be on March 2. Bon chance!

Hockey players that were gone on Friday-it is your job to get that sheet from Mdm. Henson.

NEW SPEAKING ASSIGNMENT-BOOKTALKS!

Each student in the class will be giving a booktalk to the class. Choose a new book to read (not the one you did your book review on). Remember everyone has read the Wimpy Kid and BONE books so don't do those. Try to pick a book you think not many others have read or know about. Choose a book you really like. It could be a book you are in the middle of now. You don't even have to be finished your book in order to do a booktalk.

What is a booktalk?

A booktalk is like a movie trailer for books. The purpose of a booktalk is to "sell" the book. You want to give enough of the plot to interest the listeners but you are not giving a summary of the book. You don't want to give away the important parts of the book. You certainly never want to give away the ending. You want to highlight the interesting points. You may want to read certain passages to your listeners. The main purpose of a booktalk is to grab the audience's interest and make them want to read the book. It's always a good idea to end the booktalk with a cliffhanger.

How do booktalks differ from book reviews?

In a book review, the reviewer is judging the book. The book is recommended or not. Criticism is often given in book reviews. A summary of the plot may be included. In a booktalk, you assume that the person giving the booktalk recommends the book.

Taken from http://nancykeane.com/booktalks/faq.htm

We will have a sign up spot in the classroom for you to pick a time to do your booktalk. Think about this over the next few days.

File Card Bridges

Today we did an inquiry about bridges. We used file cards (the ones people use to write their notes for giving speeches on) to make the bridges. We had to experiment using one and then two file cards. We also had to change the second file card to see if there was any way to make the bridge stronger. Some of us found that we could make our bridge much stronger by folding the second card accordian style and putting it underneath the first card for strength. See the picture. We also experimented with an arch. We saw lot of arches in one of our background lessons on structures. Finally we tried to change the length of our bridge. By the way-we measured the strength of our bridges by how many pennies it would hold up.

Fabulous "Fake" Birchbark Biting

Check out these pictures of B.'s birchbark biting he made at the Art Gallery.

STRUCTURES!

So we have started our unit on structures. I have found a few websites on different kinds of structures. See the section on the right side for links. Some of them are about bridges, skyscrapers, natural structures and other ideas. You may have to search around some of the sites for different things. As I find more websites I will add them here. Have fun!

Art Gallery Trip

We had a good time at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. One activity we did there was to try making a version of "birchbark biting". One student in our class made an incredible one. The tour guides were amazed by it. We were not allowed to take pictures in the gallery so no pictures of it. Go to the following link to see some wonderful examples of Angelique Merasty's birchbark bitings.

The pictures below are just a few of the pictures from our trip. I will save the rest for Bits of February.

Comments

A few parents have mentioned that they would like to comment on our class blog. I have tried and tried to fix this issue but I don't seem to be able to do it. Sorry! I think it is a "known issue" with the blog.

Bits of January

Book Review/S.S. Test

Your book review is due on the blog on Feb. 8. So get reading and start writing. I have read some of the reviews posted so far and I can see a few books that I want to read.

This a reminder that your test on treaties is on Monday, February 7. The papers in your duotang are good to study from as well as the jeopardy game on the hptweet. Remember that we put a check mark on the pages/ideas that you need to know for the test.