#HClassBlog - "The Benefits Of Unstructured Play" - February 5, 2025

 Introduction: 

Hello everyone! I’m Zoya, writing the blog for #HClass24 this week. I can’t wait to share my experiences with you all! I’ll tell you a bit about myself: I love playing badminton, writing stories, and reading.

The Rose: 

This week’s highlight was when we had our Global School Play Day (GSPD) on Wednesday with Ms. Hislop’s class. GSPD is a global movement where teachers are encouraged to let their students play for an entire day. However, they can not be on screens. Research has shown that play has started to disappear from student live and this day gives kids the chance to reconnect with the excellent social skills that develop when they are allowed to enjoy unstructured play. We took a break from lessons to have fun for the entirety of the day. After some activities in our classroom, we headed to the park to play games and enjoy the playground. Learn more about GSPD here. 

The Thorn: 

There was no thorn this week.

The Bud: 

Next week, Mr. Song, our former teacher candidate from Nippising University, is returning to our class at Sir Arthur Currie! He was with us in October for his first placement and is back with us until March Break. We’re all excited to see him and can't wait to show him what we've been working on while he was away.

Math Mentions: 

In Math, we are imagining we own food trucks and are researching recipes to calculate food costs for items we will sell in this truck. This project helps us apply math in real-life situations. We're currently exploring Google Sheets to create tables for each ingredient's cost while enhancing our tech skills. Here is an example for a pan of brownies.

Literacy:

We’re currently watching a show called Freaks and Geeks for our Health unit. For Literacy, we had a choice of eight topics related to episode two of the series. It involved a character choosing to have a house party when her parents were away. Things went badly when beer made its way to the party. We learned about the dangers of alcohol through this humourous episode. Then we shared our writing with Masonville’s Grade ⅞ class with Mr. DeGryp who are also watching the series.  Then we could see how the other school writes and what they chose to write about. 

Gym Glimpse:

This week in Gym class, we had a blast playing various games. During Global School Play Day, we shared the gym twice and enjoyed fun activities. One highlight was the game Shin Crackers, which had everyone cheering and collaborating!

Two Grade 7 Classes in One Gym.

Science Salute:

In Science, we’re learning about different states of matter and the particle formation in each state. We also learned about the 6 postulates of Particle Theory. We are using the I SHAME mnemonic in order to memorize them. See below.

Next Week: Yaksh will write the blog next week!