"Yea, A School Project" - AQ Blog December 6

Introduction
This week’s blogger is AQ or Ahmed. He loves coding, soccer, and studying.

This week’s weather was chilly, but very muddy ! It was declared to be “Tarmac Only Recess” on Friday. It’s not much fun running around in winter boots on tarmac, especially when most of the tarmac is taken up by portables and a porta-pack. But, as the saying goes, “You play the cards you’re dealt”, (We’ve been playing card games in math class by the way).

Classroom Quote (Conversation) of the Week

For context, Eric, Henry, & I had finished our work.

Ahmed: Eric, what is Henry doing ?
Eric: He’s working on his “school project”.
Ahmed: But I see him coding a Scratch game?
Eric: “Yea, (winking) a ‘school’ project.

The Rose
Well, I managed to get a 60-day streak on XTRAMath. XTRAMath is an online tool we use to build our operational fluency. We are only asked to go on three times a week, but there are sticker and raffle ticket rewards for certificates and streaks we achieve. A 60-day streak is the top reward and I was excited to meet that challenge. We also welcomed a new student, Mazen, to our class and the school!

The Thorn
Someone from either our class, or the class that visits during French, vandalized an art piece at the back of the room. It belonged to Leart. Mr. Hodgkinson temporarily removed our privilege of staying in during recess until the person responsible admitted their mistake and apologized to Leart. After three days, that person refused to come forward but Leart (much to his credit) announced that he forgave the person anyway. Thank you, Leart. Personally, I think it was the other class -- we wouldn’t vandalize artwork from one of our classmates.

The Bud

Our class will be trying a Minecraft course, in this challenge we will learn about First Nations, and their importance. I was done with my work and Mr. Hodgkinson admitted that he was new to the world of Minecraft. So, he let me help develop the lessons for an activity called: Manito Ahbee Aki - The Anishinaabe Experience. I’m excited to play it with my classmates this week.

Literacy Links
We were asked to pick a song or a poem that we enjoyed and that delivered a positive message, or something motivational. After using the Thinking Stems strategy to organize our ideas, we researched the background of our song/poem. Mr. Hodgkinson provided us with a framework to organize our ideas into paragraphs. Then, we used the RADaR strategy to “Bump-Up” our writing. Finally, we wrote it out in the style of a blog - complete with pictures. Some steps took us a little while, but we managed to get it done. If you’re curious I picked Happy by Pharrel Williams.

Some of our "blog" posts for motivational songs.

Geography
We started learning about spatial significance in Geography and connected it to absolute & relative location. It was pretty simple, we picked a place in the world (that exists) that has spatial significance (either to us personally or in the world) Then, we filled out an organizational framework (Mr. Hodgkinson sure likes frameworks), which was a lot of research.

Next week, we will be putting all that information into an Animoto videos or Google Slides presentations with music. I like using a program called Clipchamp. Hopefully, we will be sharing our work soon.

I’m also still waiting for when Russia finds our coordinates and sends that missile at us. I’m not really scared because Mr. Hodgkinson said we will have enough time to get out of our portable. It will instead hit Ms.Frassineli’s portable instead. I hope not...also, I am kidding. 

Tune in next week when Leen writes our class blog. Thanks for reading.