Monday, October 21

Our morning task today was:
1.  On a school trip, a class travels 67.25 kilometres by train and 41.9 kilometres by bus. How far did the class travel?

2.  Darren bought a piece of fabric that was 48.8 metres long. Then he cut 13.05 metres of it off to use in a sewing project. How much fabric is left?

When looking for a solution, students remembered to line up the decimals which lines up the place values so that you are adding ones with ones, tenths with tenths … Some students however, changed some numbers when lining them up so that both numbers would go to the hundredths.  For example,
   67.25
 +41.09

We reviewed that 41.09 is not the same as 41.90 and how we can add as many zeroes at the end of a decimal number and the number will still be the same, so the equation should be,
   67.25
 +41.90

We looked at the following cartoon from the Calgary Herald this past weekend.

We looked at the CBC poll tracker.  Students were asked to look at data presented in different ways and try and figure out how to make sense of the data.  There were lots of math connections we could make- decimals, percentages, probability as well as a graph showing continuous data.  Continuous data can include any value between data points. We talked about the difference between a majority and minority government and how that could impact decisions made by the government.  We checked back throughout the day to see if the poll was updated as it was different than last week, but the last update was yesterday.

When we looked more closely at the graphs for Alberta and BC, students talked about how the data might make some people more likely to vote.

We also looked at voting patterns across Canada from the past 3 Federal elections and discussed reasons why citizens may decide which party they are voting for from one election to the next.

In partners, we read more about democracy in Canada including the four principles that support democracy (freedoms, representation, equity, justice). 

We spent time researching in partners about some experiments that we want to do- compost leaves with and without soil and growing a tree from a pine cone.  Stay tuned for more information.

We spent time outside writing this afternoon.

Our day finished with a visit to the poll station in our gym.

Reminders:
- Halloween Dance this Thursday- 5:30-7:30.  Please return your form if you haven't already done so and are planning to attend.
- Thursday, October 31- Black and Orange Day (no costumes)
- Bring in leaves and cones