Merry Christmas To All!

I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year! I am looking forward to seeing you all in January!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Concert Information

The Junior Christmas Concert will take place this Friday at 10:50AM in the gym. Our morning class (homeroom) will be doing a song using Boomwackers. You'll have to come to the concert to see what those are!

I have asked students to try to wear Red, White or Green shirts that day and to wear a Santa or Elf hat as well if you have one. If not, please do no rush out to buy one, as I have asked students to bring an extra if they have them, and I have one or two here as well.

We look forward to seeing you at the Christmas Concert!

Gingerbread House Math & A Request for Materials

On Thursday, our morning class will be designing gingerbread houses, and then making them on Friday. Part of the design process will be measuring the proposed angles, finding the area of each face, the perimeter, the surface and possibly the volume of the gingerbread house. Once we have finished all of these measurements and showed all of our learning and thinking, we will make the houses.

I will provide the graham crackers and  royal icing for the houses, but I am asking if families could donate some NUT-FREE candies that students can use to decorate their gingerbread houses. I will bring some, but probably not enough for every house. Students will be working in partners, and perhaps groups of three to complete this project.

On Wednesday, our afternoon class will be building gingerbread houses in the same manner with our reading buddy class. Nothing is required for this, as our reading buddies will be supplying candy.

I would like to thank all of our parents for their continued support in our learning. If you have any questions or concerns about this project, please feel free to contact me at the school.

Math Test Postponed Until Wednesday

Due to our Third Week of Advent Mass on Monday during our math block, we will move our test from Tuesday to Wednesday, to give us a little more time to review. Again, if you are looking for ways to study for this test, please feel free to use any of the blendspace lessons at the link below. Students can also access this through the Hapara Workspace we have used in class.

Data Management Test next Tuesday

To wrap up our Data Management Unit before the holidays, we will be having a test on Tuesday next week. Students have found this unit to be fairly easy, with the exception of finding the mean, median and mode. In particular, at this grade level students are given problems in which they are given the mean and a few values, and have to find one or more missing values.

I often encourage students to "work backwards" when solving these problems. For example, to find the mean, we usually use 2 steps:

1. add up all the values
2. divide by the number of values

To work backwards then, I ask them to:

1. multiply the mean by the number of values
2. subtract the values given to find the missing one. If there is more than one, then any combination that adds to the amount is fine.

Here is an example of a problem:

Herny's scores on a series of tests were: 12, 14, 15, 16 and 10. His mean score is 13. He is missing one test. What did he get on the missing test?

1. multiply: 13 x 6 = 78
2. subtract: 78-12-14-15-16-10 = 11. The missing score is 11.

Another area that students sometimes have difficulty with is constructing good survey questions. I encourage students to:

1. make sure the question is very clear
2. give a few possible answers rather than leaving the options completely open
3. ensure that only one question is being asked. You cannot ask multiple questions in one survey question. You must write another question.

Here is the Blendpace unit for Data Management. If students can do all of this well, they will have no difficulty with the test. Please look over the presentations from the previous post as well. 

Data Management Blendspace

Data Management Unit Has Begun

We have begun our next unit in math, which is Data Management. In this unit, we will mostly be looking at organizing data into graphs and charts, and using mean, median an mode to help us analyze the data.

Here is a Blendspace lesson that I have started putting together to assist students in learning and studying this material. I will be adding to it throughout the unit, so please check back often!

Data Management Blendspace Lesson

Our first lesson was on interpreting graphs, which is fairly easy for most students to understand. Here is a short presentation that can be used to remind students of our learning:

Interpreting Graphs Grade 6

We also have learned about finding the Mean, the Median and the Mode, which are all forms of averages. The hardest part of this for students is not calculating these, but instead we are sometimes given the mean, and then asked to find a missing value. Students must work backwards to find the mean in this case. Please see the presentation below for how to do this. 

Mean, Median, Mode

St. Anne Angel Tree

Please check out the St. Anne website for a letter about our annual Angel Tree. Along with the letter is a permission form to be filled out if you would like your child to take an angel. If the form cannot be downloaded, please write a note in your child's agenda giving them permission to do so.