Passion Project Expo 2015

So this happened today!  Our 5th (we think) annual Passion Project Expo… we had Greek Temple…  canvases of art… medicinal plants… a robot that could solve a Rubik’s Cube… video games designed and played by students… photography displays… music… guitar playing… singing… cookies and great recipes…. weapons of anime… balloon animals and swords…. handmade wooden lacrosse sticks… felt arts… the constitution for a free Scotland… book reviews… poetry… novels…. sketchup designs for a house…. pencil sketchs and drawings….  thank you for sharing your passions with us.

Renaissance 2015

Our grade 7 and 8 students took part in a 2 week Renaissance unit, along with all of our school’s grade 8 students. Kids had the choice of 6 different modules to choose from, 2 of which they would participate in. Topics covered included learning about: da Vinci’s inventions & the impact they’ve had on the modern world; the witch craze; warfare; art; design & architecture; Shakespeare. Students learned about the historical implications surrounding the aforementioned topics and then created presentations to showcase at a Renaissance Fair on Wednesday.

Family members and our whole school was invited to walk around and see what our students had learned. There were demonstrations from learners who had built some of da Vinci’s inventions; dramatic productions of some scenes from various Shakespeare plays; replicas of paintings and sculptures by artists such as Michelangelo, Titian, and Bruegel; and much more!

Here are some photos showing some of grade 7 & 8 students’ final products. Thank you so much to all the teachers and students involved for all your hard work!

 

First week of December!

The first few months of the school year have been flying by! It’s been a whirlwind of class building and assignments and field trips and all sorts of other fun things! The holidays are just a couple of weeks away, and we have more than enough to keep us busy leading up to them.

In the past couple of weeks…

  • Our MACC team concluded The Grey Area Science/Language Arts unit, which had us conducting experiments, hypothesizing, making observations and coming up with educated conclusions.
  • We decorated our classrooms in preparation for the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays (even Mr. Wiskar couldn’t stop his students from infusing his class with holiday cheer)! 😉

    Mr. Wiskar's daughter doing her part to decorate our classrooms.

    Mr. Wiskar’s daughter doing her part to decorate our classrooms.

  • The whole school participated in Wonder Day in celebration of R.J. Palacio’s wonderful book on the power of kindness.
  • Our school did an amazing job of collecting canned and boxed food items for our local Share food drive. We also collected items for Hillcrest’s Pet Tree and Angel Tree so that animals and families in need can enjoy some holiday cheer this Christmas.
  • Ms. Ruhr’s class learned about the different parts of speech and participated (unknowingly, at first) in creating a story using this mad lib. The words we chose fit the story rather well (for the most part)! I am including this just in case you want to try this out with your family and/or friends (at the request of Division 13). 🙂
  • Term 1 report cards are being sent home today.

Also, Random Acts of Kindness continue to occur on a pretty regular basis. I am humbled by the kindness and generosity of spirit that so many of our students are demonstrating daily.

Have a great weekend!

Field trip to the Noons Creek Hatchery

Guest post by Yunmin, grade 6 student

Our trip to the Hatchery turned out to be quite interesting. The first day, we all went to a large field with artificial grass and soil for lunch, because we left the school at nutrition break and reached the hatchery at lunchtime. We sat at the bleachers and ate our lunches, and then people started playing capture the flag on the field for about 40 minutes.

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That’s when the teachers got everybody to walk down to the hatchery. The guy there (I think his name was Dave) showed us a large chum salmon and another big Coho, but smaller than the chum. He squished milky liquid out of the chum called milt. He squished a single, orange-red egg out of the Coho.2014-10-27 13.30.47

He told us if those two things get mixed and fertilize, it can hatch into a baby salmon. We also learned there is no Sockeye salmon near our area. We walked to the boardwalk and talked about fish. That’s when we spotted a bald eagle! We eventually spotted three and saw them capturing fish.

Our second day was unfortunately canceled because the ending of a hurricane was coming and it was dangerous to go there in that weather. We went to the hatchery again the day after, and like last time, we ate lunch first thing. Then we went down to the hatchery and there Dave was showing us a totally rotten, fly-filled Chum salmon. It was the same chum we saw last time. The salmon had sort of decomposed over the days and boy, did it stink! There probably were at least a thousand flies on it! But then when everybody was about to get interested in the chum, something else caught their attention. It was a great blue heron, on a stone in a stream of water right beside us. Some people were very close to it, but it didn’t seem to really care. Dave said it was so used to people around it, it just didn’t care anymore.

We went to the boardwalk again, but we went farther in, to a place we hadn’t been to before. We eventually landed on a bridge. We were given sensory worksheets to fill out – we had to write what we saw, what we smelled, what we touched, and what we heard. For example, we saw a Heron and Chum salmon, we touched some trees, we smelled the salty smell of the sea, and we heard the sound of water flowing downstream. While we were working on that, we spotted another eagle gliding (it suddenly dropped to the water, and when it was about to touch the water it flew up again)! Dave said the animals there included eagles, chum, heron, weasels, bears, cougars, and more.

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People wrote & observed so many things that some of them were way beyond my thoughts. The trip to the hatchery was very fun. We should go to field trips like this more often!

Term 1 Projects, Inquiries, Investigations

In May, we had the opportunity to meet with our current students.  As they start to get to know each other, we started to listen to their questions and interests.  Many of the students were curious about what the Tri-Cities looked like in the past (100 years ago, 50 years ago) and how people lived here before us.  There were many questions about who their ancestors were and how people change over time and history.  Then, there were forward thinking curiosities about how our community will develop and what will the Tri-Cities look like in 10 years, 20 years, 100 years.  Other students started wondering about the local environment and what animals live around us.  The visionaries questioned whether our community will ever accept difference and diversity, how we can improve our community, and how we can address issues in our community like homelessness.

As Ms. Abbot, Ms. Ruhr and Mr. Wiskar started to plan together, we decided to use a guided simulation, a problem based unit to delve into the questions raised by the students.  Over the coming weeks, students will be researching and investigating an hypothetical environmental crisis of dying fish in an inlet.  This week, the students have collected information and created a timeline of development in the community.

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We also started to gather background information about the local history, industries and community development of Port Moody.  Students spent part of a day working at the Port Moody Station Museum.  They learned about the various industries that have been important to the development around Burrard Inlet.  They also learned about the people who lived here and left a legacy here.   The students also had glimpse into the past and they learned about how people lived in the 1880’s through the 1900’s.

When we got back to school, our minds were full of questions.  As we continue with our problem based hypothetical environmental crisis, we will also be working on inquiries into some of these questions:

  • When did Port Moody become a city?
    • Why was Vancouver chosen over Port Moody?
    • Did Port Moody change drastically with the arrival of the railway?
    • Who is the leader of Port Moody?
    • Why was Ioco Road named after the oil company? And not after another person? 
    • What did Port Moody look like before the settlers moved in?
    • How did Port Moody have an impact on Canada?
    • If they didn’t extend the rail to Vancouver, would Port Moody have developed differently?
  • What happened to the Japanese when they were taken away during World War 2?
    • Why did race determine everything?
  • Did many townspeople die of disease or starvation?
  • For the 3 locations of the station, did they move it in parts or did they rebuild each time?
    • Why did they extend the rail to Vancouver?
    • How long did it take for the station to be built?
    • What time did the station shut down?
    • How did they move the station?
    • Why was the station moved 3 times?
    • What happened to the second to last spike, the bent one? 
    • Was the golden spike an urban legend?
    • Why were they going to use a silver spike instead of a golden spike? 
    • Where is the silver spike? 
    • What would happen if they conductor missed the message hoop? 
    • How often did the train come and go from the station?
    • What parts of the urban myth about hammering the last spike are true? 
    • How did the last Spike urban legend start?
  • Who created trains?
    • When they made train cars were they built on the tracks? How did they lift them onto tracks without cranes?
  • How much money did the HBC make? And from the beavers?
    • What tools did they use to remove the beaver skin?
    • Were beavers endangered after the fur trade?
    • Why did the fur trade stop?
    • Who stopped the beaver hunting spree?
    • How did the beaver species survive?
    • How many beavers were left after the hunt? 
    • Was it humane they methods used to get the fur pelts?
    • Why fur so popular? Why didn’t they use other materials?
  • How many Asians worked to built the railway?
  • What was Port Moody like before the train arrived?
  • How is iron ore turned into steel?
  • Why was Morse code invented?
  • Who first decided to build the railway and why?
  • What did money look like in the old days?
  • What does old fashioned candy taste like?
  • How did the museum collect the artefacts?
  • How long is the CPR across Canada? Length across Canada?
    • How many passengers can fit into a train?  How were they designed, features of sleeper cars?
    • How much did it cost to make the station?
    • How does a train work on steam?
    • What has the planned CPR rail line?
    • How much did the CPR rail cost?
  • Why would they make Ioco its own town?
  • Where was most of the shell fishing done?
  • Why did the mills shut down? 
  • How were the logs transported from the forest to the mills?
  • How they persevere the food during WW1 if they were spending 70 days in a trence?
  • How heavy were the train tracks?  How did they move them?
  • Where did the first nations people go when Port Moody and Ioco started to develop?  Did they co-exist together?
  • How Morse code invented?
  • What are other brands from the 1890’s still exist? How did the companies survive?
  • What were the ranks in the Canadian army?
    • How did Col. Moody support the war?

 

 

Olympic Inquiry Project Learning Celebration

For the past two months, we have been learning about the Olympics.  We started the term with a tiered assignment, Olympic Tiered Project,  focusing on Olympic Cities, Olympic Athletes and Olympic Sports.  Students learned about different aspects of the Olympic Games through tasks that were based on multiple intelligence.  Students were encouraged to select tasks within areas of strength and areas for growth. [More projects will be added on Monday]

Olympic Project #1 olivia                                                                Significant Moments in the Summer Olympics – Sena

Olympic Project #1 tara                                                             Dahlia_Vancouver2010Legacy

Then we let the games begin, by diving into some image sets from the Olympics across the years.  We used strategies modeled by Dr. Leyton Schnellert at our professional development learning session in the fall.  You can check out our previous posts about these January lessons .

As students developed their questions and delved into their topics, the energy in the rooms, in the library and in the computer lab rose.  Students were engaged and passionate about finding out about their topics.  Check out some of our topics here.

We collaborated with Evan Cupit, a MACC teacher at Kwayhquitlum Middle, and his class joined with our three classes for a celebration of learning Olympic style.  Here is a highlight of some of our learning: (more of the digital projects will be uploaded on Monday)

In groups of 4, one student from each class (grade 6-8), students looked at each of their projects and gave feedback on a “Two Stars and a Wish” sheet.   After looking at the groups’ projects, student had the chance to check out all the other projects.

 

Let the Games Begin

We are doing inquiry projects based on the Olympics, here are our project topics:

How is Greek Mythology linked to the Olympics?

How does the diet of an Olympic runner compare to that of an Olympic swimmer?
How have the Olympics impacted society?
Why are people competing in the Olympic games?
Something with opening ceremonies
Will the Olympics ever die out?
How/Why does cheating occur?
What breed/height/gender/age of horse performs best?
What is the ideal body type for Olympic bobsled?
Why are the sports in the Olympics at all? Why not culture or something else?
How have major injuries changed snowboarding?
Has athletes success been contributed to by where they were raised?
Similar sports such as luge and bobsled, do they have the same injuries? If so, do   they change the arena the same so the injuries don’t happen again?
Why do athletes use drugs?
How fast will humans be able to run?
Why do we bring nations together with sport?
How is the rate that new records are created different with different sports and   different periods of time? Does the body have a limit for some sports? Can it ever be reached?
Why is jousting not in the Olympics?
What are the advantages and disadvantages to having the Games in your city?
Why were the Olympics originally started?
How do athletes from hot countries train for Winter Olympics?
What countries have won the most medals and why?
If  the Olympics weren’t on TV, would more people go to watch the events or just not care anymore?
Is it talent or hard work that defines an Olympic medalist?
How did the Olympics get famous?
Why does the Olympics happen every 4 years?  How does it impact training schedules? What if an athlete peaks between Games?
Why aren’t some sports included in the Olympics?
Why are some sports excluded or kicked out of the games?
Why are some countries more dominant that others overall?
How does hosting the Olympics change a city?
Why are people interested in the Olympics?
What  is the average diet comparisons between different sports? Summer vs Winter?   Why are they same/different?
What are the standards to training/competing at the Olympic level?
What influenced the Ancient Olympics?
How do the Olympics play into political tensions between nations?
How is society evolving to keep drugs out of the Olympics?
Should the Olympics be opened to younger athletes as well?
How has the drug use detecting developed throughout the years? Why do Olympians   use drugs to win?
Is there anything the IOC can do to make the Olympics safer?
What are the most significant injuries and why?
How do the Olympics benefit sponsored restaurants?

 

Identity Projects

We were inspired by a blog post we saw by Chris Wejr a couple of years ago and were excited to try and Identity Day here in Hillcrest MACC.  The idea behind Identity Day is that students create a project on themselves; there is no criteria, no grades, and no set topics.  Students were asked to design a video, powerpoint,  slideshow, poster, display or anything that would help the other students, teachers and parents learned something about them.

We were blown away by the varieties of topics and conversations that happened as the students began to share.

Student Vote – Presentations from BC Liberal and BC NDP Candidates

On Tuesday April 23rd, Selina Robinson, NDP candidate for MLA of the Coquitlam – Malliard riding, came to Hillcrest to talk with us about local politics and what experiences have helped prepare her for public office. She told us how she ended up becoming a politician, and gave us a bit about her past. She was also telling us some reasons why we should vote for her, and also her plans for if she wins the election. She talked about many things such as her plans increasing funding for hospitals and the health care system, removing the food-banks (because people would have jobs and enough money that they wouldn’t require them) and more taxes for the people who make over $150,000 and on the banks. She also talked about the need to have more grant money available for students to be able to afford post-secondary education.  Selina also talked with us about the Evergreen Line and the need to work with other levels of government to ensure that public transit is safe and pedestrian friendly.  She also discussed the need to work on the congestion in the corridor between Coquitlam and New Westminster.  Selina explained that she was opposed the to the Enbridge pipeline. 

Steve Kim, candidate  for the B.C. Liberals spoke with us on April 24th, he explained how his parents were actually among the first Korean immigrants to come to Vancouver. They had opened the first Korean food shop. He said how great his childhood was growing up in Coquitlam, and said that he quite enjoyed it here. After he graduated from university in Canada and completed a graduate degree in Korea. Steve went on to work for a television show doing marketing which featured 2 farmers sitting on a fence, and they talked about modern-day technology, and how it was, with all of the new-fangled gadgets and Smartphones. Steve was very involved in community non-profit and just 5 weeks ago he was asked to run for the BC Liberals.  After thinking about it seriously, he decided to take a break from his small business and his non-profit work and let his name stand as candidate for the Liberals. Then, the students started asking him questions about what he was going to do about the issues of today, such as the environment, the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and the healthcare of B.C.  He answered most of our questions with personal experiences or stories.

We really appreciated the time that Steve and Selina spent with us – we had a rich conversation after their presentations and the students have even more hard questions about provincial debts and balancing social needs with revenue generation.  The reflections written above are by Evan and Alex.