Monday, December 30, 2013

Science Fair Project Time!

Dear Parents,

It’s time to start working on our Science Fair Projects! Ample time has been scheduled and work has been spread out, so students can complete the work at a comfortable pace.

This is a
major project and will represent a significant portion of your child’s grade for the next grading period(s). The primary objective of this project is to have students approach a problem scientifically. This includes:
  1. Asking questions and forming hypotheses
  2. Creating experiments to test those hypotheses
  3. Organizing data and drawing conclusions
  4. Writing about scientific research
The project must be experimental in nature as opposed to research oriented. In other words, students must do a test, survey, or experiment to determine the answer to their question instead of just looking it up in a book. We encourage students to pick topics that they are genuinely interested in, since they will be working on these projects for the next several months. Topics must also be “original” - something students do not already know.

Project guidelines state that all work must be done by the students; however, assistance may be provided by teachers, parents, etc. It is very difficult to work alone without the exchange of ideas, so we encourage you to brainstorm with your child on different ideas and possible topics your child may want to pursue. Please take a moment to review all the attachments with your child in order to generate topic ideas.
I am looking forward to working with you to make this a valuable learning experience for your child.

links for ideas:
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral/Getting-Started/idea-finder.html

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours, we hope you are enjoying this relaxing break from school.  All the best, and we'll see you in the new year!

Monday, December 2, 2013

Report Cards coming soon!

We have a whole bunch of work to do this week!  We need to do a French test on colours and clothes, get in our fully completed novel study project packs, and a bit of future job stuff.  Many novel study packs got handed back because they were missing assignments, or were not completed enough.  Now that we are really getting into the academics of the year, it has started to become harder as expectations go up.  Students should have work to do each night listed in their Agenda books.