Tuesday, January 7

Welcome back everyone!

Our morning work task today was:
On Thursday morning, a local radio station held a call-in contest.  
Every third caller won a T-shirt.
Every seventh caller won a baseball cap.

In 50 calls, which callers won a T-shirt?  A baseball cap?  Both prizes?

This was a good reminder to read a problem carefully as many students used division (50 ÷ 3) to determine how many callers won a T-shirt and a baseball cap (50 ÷ 7).  Using division rather than determining which callers specifically won each of the two prizes as the problem asks created problems when it came to finding out who won both prizes.

We looked at this cartoon from the Calgary Herald this morning.

It led to some great discussion about why this matters to us here in Canada and what we have learned this year and will be learning about soon.  We discussed the impact to the trees, forests and the environment and a student noted that it is winter here in Canada, but it is summer in Australia.  

We also looked to see if we could find a picture of the fires from space.  We found this image that has been spreading online.  It says that the image is from a NASA satellite.  We looked at the site of the picture, and it is actually a 3D visualization someone has made using data from a NASA satellite. This led to a discussion on checking the source of something to see if it is in fact true and if it has come from a reputable, trusted source.

We went to the NASA site and found this image.  We decided that as it is directly on the NASA site that this would be an accurate photo from a satellite.

In math, Ms. Steeves showed us the following.  

In groups, we had to try and figure out the graphic.  Some of the ideas we came up with included:

When we gathered together we determined the reasons all of the numbers are coloured the way they are with the exception of the gray (1) and red (11, 13, 17, 19) numbers.  Our work with this will continue tomorrow.

This afternoon we continued our work from this morning and used globes and flashlights to help determine why it is summer in Australia now, but winter in Canada.  A question was brought up of how is the Sun shining making it hot in Australia right now but is also shining in Canada, but it isn't hot.  We figured out that the Earth is spinning once each day.  It is also orbiting around the Sun once every year.  When also saw that when it is summer in Australia, the Sun's rays are more direct making it hotter there and the Sun's rays are not as direct and therefore not as strong in Canada.  When it is summer in Canada, the Sun's rays are more direct here so it is warmer and not as direct in Australia, so it is winter there.

 We met with the other grade 6 classes at the end of the day today to "kick off" our Sky Science study with a provocation.  The video below was part of the provocation.

Reminders:
- Grade 6 vaccinations tomorrow
- Blue assessment folders are coming home with our Evidence and Investigation assessment.  Please sign and return.