Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Tito Awards - April 27th
What the Tito Awards are:
The Tito Awards are awards given out to people for their performances in the play “Louis la Grenouille.”
The Process:
Each student received a popsicle stick with another student’s name on it. They then came up with something unique that they appreciated or something that the person did well on in the play. They also created awards or certificates they would present to them during the Tito Awards Ceremonies. People gave short speeches telling why they were awarding them with that award. The recipient of the award or certificate then gave a little acceptance speech.
Where the “Tito Awards” originated:
The Tito Awards started after the French play “Louis la Grenouille.” Tito is the French class’ pet snake and so the award ceremonies were named in honour of Tito the snake.
By K & G
Friday, April 23, 2010
Louis La Grenouille - April 23/10
Louis is all alone. He plays electric guitar and sings rock music. He finds a lamp floating in his pond and he picks it up and to his surprise a genie pops out of the lamp. The genie agrees to grant Louis a wish to find a friend so he is not alone. Louis encounters a ballerina who rejects him and his music. He keeps walking and he hears an opera singer who also rejects his music. Louis is really frustrated and hopes that he will find someone who likes HIS music. Guess what – he finds a girl frog who likes rock music and likes him. They fall in love as they skip off into the sunset!
Overall, it was very successful. We learned new and more difficult French vocabulary and had lots of fun in the process!
-By M’n’M
Friday, April 16, 2010
Jump Rope 4 Heart - Friday, April 16th
Room 17 ran the stations for the morning session of Jump Rope for Heart this year. These are the nine stations that were there: Helicopters, Elastic Fantastic, Individual Challenge, School, Lemon Twist, Banana Doubles, Long Rope, Crossovers, Single Skipping.
Here is a description of each station:
Helicopters: One person stands in the middle, with everyone else in a circle around them. They take a long rope and whirls it around close to the ground while the people in the circle try to jump over it. If the rope hits you, you trade places with the person in the middle.
Elastic Fantastic: This station includes limbo, high jump, and Chinese skipping. Limbo is where two people hold a rope and one person at a time everybody tries to go under without touching the rope. Each turn, the rope goes lower and lower. High jump is where you try to jump over the rope without touching it and instead of going down the rope goes higher and higher. Chinese skipping is where two people hold two ropes, both holding an end of each, and a person tries to jump over in a pattern. Each time you do the pattern correctly without touching, the two people raise the ropes.
Individual Challenge: At this station, people can challenge themselves by doing tricks, skipping faster or skipping longer.
School: School is where you go through “school” by skipping. Two people turn a long rope and one of the students will try to run through to pass “kindergarten”. To pass grade one, you must run in and skip once and get out. Grade two, you run in and skip twice and then run out, and so on and so on.
Lemon Twist: The students skip with a “skippit” or “lemon twist”.
Banana Doubles: This is where two people share a rope and do all sorts of cool activities.
Long Rope: This is similar to the set-up for school, but instead of doing the “school” rhyme, people do all sorts of different kinds of skipping.
Crossovers: Students cross their arms over and jump/skip.
Single Skipping: At this station, people just jump/skip on their own.
They were all lots of fun, but the favorite station by far was the freezies station. Everybody got to choose a half of a jumbo freezie and relax for a station rotation (7-10 minutes). We’d like to thank the room 21-ers that were leaders of the groups or helped man the stations.
-J&O
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Les Bucherons
By: R’n’A
Friday, March 26, 2010
Wetland, Wildlife, and My Community
Of the animals that are here in Edmonton, 15% are mammals and 85% are birds (of that, 15% are raptors, 20% are water fowl, and 65% are songbirds). Of the animals that are brought in or picked up and brought to the Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton, most are birds and some small mammals. There are usually only a few raptors brought in, such as owls or eagles. The owls can hiss like cats sometimes. Workers must be very careful when handling animals such as raptors.
Birds
We learned about different kinds of birds. Here are some: Songbirds, waterfowl, raptors. These birds can be divers and dabblers…
Divers: dive into the water.
Dabblers: Stick only head into the water when they’re swimming.
Some defenses:
-Pretend their wing is broken
-Quack
-Fluff up their wings to look big
-Parents dive bomb to protect nest/babies
They gave us their hotline and website, so if we do find an injured animal, we can call them and find out what to do. It was a very interesting presentation!
Hotline: 780 – 914 – 4118
Website: wildlife-edm.ca
Monday, March 22, 2010
Alien In-Line
The teacher was a guy named Kenny. At the gym, we learned how to skate and brake and then had some free time to play tag. From January 21-28 (Thursday to Thursday) Kenny taught us how to in-line skate. The first day, he introduced himself and taught us how to put on the gear. Some people were fast at putting on their gear, so they got to do free-skating around half of the gym until the rest of us got the gear on. Once everybody’s gear was on, we could use the whole gym.
On the 6th day, we got to play dodge ball and skittles; I think most of us liked it.
I think that braking and turning at high speeds is hard. We also played dynamite, handball and king court. We did not do too well at these games, as it was not easy because we were on skates.
WISEST - Women In Scholarship, Engineering, Science & Technology
After that cool presentation, I think everyone was excited to get started on our activities. The activities ranged from extracting gluten from flour to making a picture frame out of two pieces of newspaper that could fit five people in it. These are some of the activities the girls from our school did. After we all got into groups, we went to our first activity. Our activity was food chemistry, where we had to get all the gluten out of flour. She then showed us how vegetables can bleed. One was fresh, the other was frozen. Only the fresh ones bled. We also did a smell test were we had to smell different foods.
In our next activity we made the tallest tower we could out of 20 toothpicks, 6 straws and 1 cup of shaving cream; it was lots of fun. After that, everyone from all the schools that participated came together in one big room and did an activity. In this challenge, we worked in a group with the other girls from our school and made the tallest tower out of one sheet of newspaper, a paper ruler, 6 straws, and 30cm of tape. It was a very difficult challenge. We went back to the place where Dr. Armour talked before. To end the event, she did more experiments, including one where she used grape juice to make sparkling lemonade, milk, water and raspberry smoothie. We feel that it changed our perspectives on science and engineering.
By H2O
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
City Hall Mock Meeting
We all learned how to deal with an important role in life. In that hour we also learned how to reach for goals that may seem impossible, but also how to tell ourselves that we can do it anyway. We altogether saw that we can use democracy, even in just a small place such as our classroom, just like how we had to vote on our class pet’s name. Some situations in life may come up where we have to remember our knowledge of democracy; we might even have to use it.
Our whole class enjoyed being able to use the microphones to talk to the rest of the council members. Our tour guide notified us that they have a great microphone system so we wouldn’t yell or speak loud into the microphone. We also got a tour of the building and our class was able to go into the room where the City Council has their meetings. There was a dome on the roof that the tour guide was able to close for us, but it was too bad that it only lasted a few seconds(30 seconds); we all wish it lasted longer.
Classroom Chemistry - Filtration & Mixtures
FUN FACT: Salt is less dense than sand.
By: R & K
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Art Gallery
After looking at the pictures we were told to create our own buildings with the three other people in our group, using the pictures we had seen as inspirations. The materials we used were clear plastic, cardboard, egg cartons, paper towel rolls, etc. Everyone’s was unique and different. Everyone had different inspiration including a bottle, Fort Edmonton and a Wii remote. We were given sheets that told us what the topic was, what it was going to have inside it, where it is located, the weather, the climate, etc.
The people who worked there gave us a sheet of paper where we drew our design. We were also able to brainstorm on the huge sheets of paper that covered the tables. Then we started to build the structures using the sheet we had used earlier to do the planning. We used the materials as we mentioned above. Our whole group had to work on it to finish in time. We had about one hour to complete our buildings. Once we were done we shared what it had inside of it, where is located, the weather, the climate, and our inspirations.
We all had tons of fun and we learned a lot of interesting things about architecture and buildings. Thanks for reading!!
BY M & J
Monday, March 15, 2010
Evidence and Investigation
We had a chance to be a pretend detective, forensic scientist and a lawyer. First we observed what we saw in the “crime scene” and memorized what we saw. The teacher went through some rules of being a detective; the one that stood out most to me was that if you saw a glass with something that looked like coke in it, you couldn’t say “I saw a glass with coke in it” you would need to say “I saw a glass with a coke-like substance.”
The story of the crime is there was a guy named Felix Navidad. Nobody really liked Felix; he was rich and never had a job for more than a month. He was throwing a party in his beach house with some of his closest friends, even though they didn’t consider him to be their friend. The only reason Gene, Kendra, Alfredo and Vera came was because Felix told them that they where in his will. During the hour that his friends were there, Felix was murdered.
As a Forensic scientist we did a whole bunch of tests on most of the things left on the crime scene. The grade six’s spilt up into pairs or threesomes. Here is a taste of what some of the stations were:
As a lawyer we had to take the evidence that the detective and forensic scientists gave us (everybody was a detective, forensic scientist and a lawyer). We then decided who was guilty. Even though lawyers may have a lead they can never be sure if they’ve got the right person, unless they confess. Even then you would never know if they where lying or telling the truth.
Monday, February 8, 2010
"Journey to Ancient Greece"
Our class went to the University of Alberta to look at old artifacts from Athens, Egypt, Israel, and the Roman Empire General. There were mainly pottery, vases, arrowheads, and Roman coins. We also got to look at them closely and examine pottery from Israel during the Roman Empire, dating back to over three thousand years ago.
Fun Fact: Romans lined all of their wine-making vases with lead.
We made "Powerful Research Questions" out of "Wonder Questions" about pottery made from Athens. Here are some of the "Wonder Questions" our class had and the "Powerful Research Questions" we developed from the "Wonder Questions":
-How did they make the dye? ->
How did they color it with their limited resources since they were isolated?
-What is this artifact used for? ->
Why would they make it like that?
-Why did they choose to paint it black? ->
How important is it that they painted it black; does it have a meaning; what meaning?
-What was it used for? ->
What status of people used it and what did they use it for?
-What was it used for? ->
How does this artifact relate to the roll women played in society?
-What was it used for? ->
How important was the material it was made of?
-What was it? - >
Who used it, what was it for, and which class of people made it?
-Is it supposed to look like something? ->
Does black and white represent a feeling or say something about Ancient Athens?
-I wonder who made it? ->
How important was role of the person who made this artifact in society, because he made useful things?
-I wonder how old it is? ->
What does its age represent?
-I wonder if they used it for holy water? ->
Did they used it for rituals and normal pottery and how?
-What was the original design? ->
What did the design represent and why put it on a jug?
-How old is it? ->
What time period was it made in, and what important person could have owned it?
-How old was it? ->
How long did they use it, how many times did they use it, how long ago was it made, and how long did it take to make?
-How old is it? ->
What was happening in Greece when it was made?
Our class looked at a collection of artifacts, including ancient coins and vases from the Roman Empire...
We were also able to take a closer look at some artifacts from Israel dating back to more than three thousand years ago...
We were amazed at how long these artifacts survived, and especially how some were still perfectly intact.
By: B & L
Some of the Things We Did...
-There was a discussion about ancient vases in an art studio. We made "wonder" questions about a vase we chose to focus on.
-The class broke into two groups... While one got to look at different artifacts up-close and took magnifying glasses and measured them, the other had a scavenger hunt for ancient artifacts in the museum. Each group had a chance to do both activities.
Some Interesting Things We Learned...
-There was a bust with the head of a man, the bodice of a woman, and a newly manufactured neck. The person sold it altogether to increase market value.
-Athena is Athen's patron goddess.
-In Greek mythology, Athena gave Athens olive trees to ward off Poseidon.
R & K