It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Is this how it is for the elves?

This past week, the students in 6B were engaged in Christmas learning---and maybe some Christmas traditions---like eating cookies---with green icing!

The week started with taking a look at the Top 10 Grossing Christmas Movies in our Math block.  The students guessed which movies made the list (no Home Alone! or Christmas Story!), practiced rounding numbers to the nearest million, created graphs and analysed data.  And what are movies (or the discussion of movies) without some popcorn?  It helped add a little incentive and interest and Christmas spirit!

Most kids chose a bar graph but one set of partners chose a line graph to see when most of the popular movies were made.

For our Readers' and Writers' Workshops, we read "How Santa Got His Job" by Steven Krensky.  This made us think of job applications, which made me think persuasive writing opportunity!  The students were given the task to write an essay or letter in which they convinced Santa to hire them as an elf.  Reasons ranged from being good with tools to being a potential body guard.  No shortage of creativity in these kids! We indulged in cookies and "elf kabobs" (a green grape with a raspberry on a toothpick) this week to get us in an "elfy" way of thinking.

Since we finished that in record time (elf speed?), we've started on planning a trip to the North Pole!  Fear not...this is NOT another field trip but a brochure writing assignment.  Having access to our Chrome books, we were able to begin searching climate, hotels, restaurants and flights to North Pole, Alaska.  The students will work on presenting their findings in an attractive and convincing brochure for a fictional travel agency.

We've spent many spare moments decorating place mats for the Downtown Mission.  

It really is like Santa's Workshop in our classroom at this time of year!

~Miss Brooks

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