For years, the issue of putting fluoride in Calgary's drinking water has been an issue. We didn't do it, then we did do it, now we don't do it, but there are some new developments in this cycle and today you are going to take a good look at this issue and really push your thinking skills to the test. I have designed a list of 20 questions that will force you to employ each of the reading strategies we have been practicing since Grade 6. You should come out of this assignment with a deep understanding of the article. Good luck. Copy and paste the questions along with your edited responses on a Microsoft Word document Here is an article from yesterday's issue of the Calgary Herald. Read through it with every ounce of your reading skills because I am going to ask you some questions that test your reading skills. Click here to connect with the online articleMonitoring Meaning Questions (8) - do NOT use your online dictionary1. The article states, "City council voted decisively Monday to revisit the issue of fluoride in Calgary’s drinking water". In this context, what does the word "decisively" mean? It means the decision was made with confidence and speed. 2. The article states, "even as elected members acknowledged the risk of reopening a longstanding public debate". In this context, what does the word "longstanding" mean? Something that goes back in history for a long time and is still relevant. 3. The article states, "a longstanding public debate that has attracted plenty of social media vitriol". In this context, what does the word "vitriol" mean? Harsh and toxic argument and criticism. 4. The article states, "Council voted 13-2 to review new evidence on the merits of fluoridation gathered by the University of Calgary’s O’Brien Institute for Public Health in a report that will be presented at city hall in June." In this context, what does the word "merits" mean? Merits means the reasons or major points of something. 5. In the article, Dianne Colley-Urquhart is quoted as saying, “There are certain topics that really get people riled up and they really get involved and fluoride is one of these". In this context, what does the term "riled up" mean? Emotionally excited and passionate. 6. The article states, "While councillors Ray Jones and Sean Chu were the only councillors to vote against the proposal Monday, a number of council members had reservations about reopening the debate on fluoride." In this context, what does the word "reservations" mean? Reluctant and cautious. 7. The article states, "He also countered a concern raised during Monday’s debate that the O’Brien Institute had “already formed an opinion” and might not be capable of offering objective advice." In this context, what does the word "countered" mean? Introduced the opposite perspective. 8. The article states, "The study suggested that defluoridation had a negative impact on the health of Calgary children." In this context, and knowing what you know about prefixes and suffixes, what do you think "defluoridation" means? It means the fluoride is coming out. Now, let's test your understanding of the ideas presented in this article with some questions that can be answered by thoroughly reading the article. 9. What exactly did the city council vote in favor of? They voted to review the evidence being gathered by a U of C research group about the impact of defluoridation back in 2011. 10. What was the vote result? 13-2 in favor of reading this report in June 11. Who voted against Dianne Colley-Urquhart's motion? Ray Jones and Sean Chu 12. When did Calgary vote to take stop adding fluoride to our drinking water? 2011 13. What does Mayor Nenshi think about the fluoride debate? He thinks the debate is strange and the decision made in 2011 was questionable. 14. Is Coun. Farkas for or against the motion put forward by Dianne Colley-Urquhart? He is generally in favour 15. What happened three years ago when someone else attempted to reopen the fluoride debate? It was shut down with a vote against 10-4. 16. What does city council plan on reviewing in June? A U of C research study 17. What did the 2016 University of Calgary study suggest? A U of C research study Going beyond the article: now it is time to put your higher level thinking skills to the test. Using what you read in this article, and knowing what you know about the world, share your thoughts on these questions. I suggest you thinking in terms of paragraphs, because questions such as these require ample explanation. 18. Why do you think this debate over adding fluoride to city water gets people so worked up? 19. Do you think the decision should be made by council or by a public plebiscite? 20. What other issue can you think of that attracts this level of controversy? BONUS QUESTION: In order to understand this issue better, what would be a good idea for every Calgarian to do? FINISHED EARLY? There are three opinion articles in the "Related" section of the article, near the bottom. Read these opinion pieces and I am sure you will see, this is a complex and confusing issue.
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Inspired by the work of Kelsy Norman, I have created a mini project that requires each student to learn some facts about a specific town, village or city in Alberta. Each student has been assigned a place in Alberta with some specific questions to research:
Students are free to conduct independent Internet research and share their findings by designing a digital poster in Pages. But, that's not the end of it. We will produce a slick video in which each student shares some of the information they learned about their assigned place. This will be an amazing production once it is finished. I plan on helping students learn effective and dynamic video techniques as well. Another important learning outcome of this assignment will be the various answers to the question about why these places came to exist. We have been learning about how the Canadian government took steps to encourage settlement in the West and by learning the origin story of these places, students will see that immigration to the west followed certain patterns. Some places were railway towns while some were previously part of the fur trade. Some were commercial centers that extracted rich natural resources from the land while others were agricultural centers. By analyzing the factors and forces behind these origin stories, students will gain an understanding of and appreciation for what led to the settling of Canada's western region and what role these places played in the development of the country. Here is a video created by Kelsy Norman that helped ignite our curiosity of Alberta's non-major cities. Project exemplar:I constructed an exemplar using Calgary as my place. Be sure to check it out:
There are three important rules you must know before knowing when to double a consonant or not: 1. If a one-syllable word has a short vowel sound and ends with one consonant, double the final consonant before adding a suffix that begins with a vowel or y. Examples: swim = swimmer dip = dipping sag = saggy 2. If a one-syllable word ends with two consonants or two vowels and one consonant, do not double the final consonant before adding a suffix that begins with a vowel. Examples: help = helper read = reading rush = rushed 3. If a one-syllable word has a short vowel sound, do not double the final consonant before adding a suffix that begins with a consonant. Examples: sad = sadly bag = bagful fit = fitness Practice: add the "ing" suffix to each of the following words properly1. bleed = _____________
2. stomp = _____________ 3. run = ______________ 4. meet = _____________ 5. fit = ______________ Students in 7.1 and 7.2 have been closely following this municipal story for over a year now! We began examining this issue soon after the completion of the Olympics in South Korea and we have followed the developments with a very close eye. This week, students of 7.1 and 7.2 cast their vote on the issue and the results were 29-23 in favor of moving forward with the bid. As a show of solidarity, I cast my actual vote on the "Yes" side.
The results of the plebiscite were very clear with the "No" side earning 56% of the votes to 43% casting their ballot for the "Yes" side. This issue has been an interesting one to follow, and it provided a rare example of Direct Democracy in action which was a major theme in last year's Grade 6 Social Studies curriculum. I was thoroughly impressed with how students were able to learn about this issue while also looking at the issue from a variety of perspectives. Thank you to all families who engaged their children in this issue. I enjoyed hearing about all the dinner table conversations on this topic. We spent some time this week exploring the history of Blockbuster Video. It's actually quite an interesting historical story. We analyzed the history through the various strategies we have been practicing which allowed us to generate some great ideas. We read news articles, watched information videos and listened to some first-hand accounts of people that actually visited one! Now, it is time to check for understanding so Mr. Fawcett is in the process of designing a summative quiz that will focus on three primary areas:
1. Knowledge of the BIG SIX thinking skills. I will ask a series of questions designed to test whether you understand what each of the strategies is all about. A sample question could be, "When a historian researches how many people were impacted by an event, and to what extent they were impacted, that historian is considering the __________________________________ of the event." a) Continuity b) Historical Significance c) Cause d) Ethical dimension 2. Knowledge of the topic. I will ask a series of questions designed to test your knowledge of the actual topic we used to practice our thinking skills. A sample question could be, "At its peak, how many worldwide stores did Blockbuster operate?" a) 400 b) 4000 c) 9000 d) 19000 3. Performance of Thinking Skills. I will ask a series of questions designed to challenge your usage and application of the BIG SIX. A sample question could be, "Discuss the historical significance of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope". In your response, I would be looking for evidence that you have asked and responded to some of the guiding questions for that specific skill. To perform well on this portion of the quiz, it would be wise to review the document titled "The Six Historical Thinking Strategies With Guiding Questions". This document is available here or on your FreshGrade. It has been reviewed a number of times in class, most recently when we explored the new legislation regarding cannabis use. This quiz is still in the design process but will be administered mid-week, next week. Good luck in your preparations. Next week will mark the introduction of the "Big Six" historical thinking strategies that support and enhance much of the work we will do in Social Studies. Mr. Dittmann and I have created a Keynote slideshow of historical images to accompany our lessons on these important strategies. For students or parents who are interested in learning more about these strategies, feel free to check out the Historical Thinking Project website by clicking here. The "Big Six" are explained on the "Concepts" page.
City council recently voted to host a plebiscite on Calgary's potential bid to host the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. In class, we will read, review and discuss three articles pertaining to this issue. Questions have been assigned to challenge students' reading strategies and comprehension have been furnished. Article Links:Written Response Questions:
Class Discussion Questions:What have we learned from the reading of these three articles?
What questions linger after reading these three articles? How has the information in the article impacted my own opinion on this issue? We begin this year's foray into Social Studies by examine the history of Canada. We will be using the Voices and Visions textbook as our primary resource and the goal is to learn about the history of our country before and after Confederation in 1867. We begin by learning about the indigenous people of this land. A digital copy of the first chapter can be found here. For parents wishing to learn with their children, I recommend speaking with your child about the information contained in this chapter.
Some of the big questions we will be focusing on in Chapter One are: - What is culture? - What does a pluralistic society mean? (benefits? challenges?) - What do we need to know in order to best interpret a historical image (Skill Check on page 6) - How did the Mi'kmaq, Haudenosaunee and Ashinabe live prior to contact with Europeans? During Thursday evening's "Meet the Teacher" presentations, I referenced an article written by a former Connect teacher named Dave Scott. Dr. Scott's article, "Why your child will benefit from inquiry-based learning" addresses some of the common misconceptions surround inquiry education and shares actual research findings to provide some clarity for those still trying to wrap their heads around what this approach to learning means. The original version of the article, published on the Conversation.com website can be found here, but I have pasted the article below for anyone interested. Why your child will benefit from inquiry-based learning
David Scott June 18, 2018 5.02pm EDT “Inquiry-based learning” is a hot topic in education these days, both in Canada and around the world. In Canada, Ontario’s incoming premier Doug Ford recently declared his opposition to recent curriculum reforms including the inquiry-based “discovery math.” “Kids used to learn math by doing things like memorizing a multiplication table, and it worked,” Ford said during the recent provincial election. “Instead, our kids are left with experimental discovery math. That hardly teaches math at all. Instead, everyone gets a participation ribbon and our kids are left to fend for themselves.” Ford is not the only Canadian critic of a vision for education organized around discovery, exploration and inquiry. Promoted in the provinces of B.C. and Alberta, this vision has been criticized by media columnists such as David Staples and Margaret Wente — who have argued that “inquiry” has left parents and students confused, and is jeopardising Canada’s position as a global leader in education. They have called for a return to traditional forms of education focused on, as Staples put it, “explicit instruction and diligent practice that leads to automatic recall of basic facts.” Criticism like this has created significant uncertainty around the value and efficacy of inquiry, not just in Canada, but in other high performing jurisdictions of education including Singapore and Estonia. Beyond ‘discovery learning’In a recent study, together with colleagues at the University of Calgary including graduate student Cameron Smith, I examined the evidence for various arguments made against inquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning. Our research shows the critics do get one thing right: There is a lot of evidence that “discovery learning” — where students must uncover key principles or information on their own — has limited educational value. The problem with using this research to dismiss inquiry altogether, however, is that it does not distinguish discovery learning from other approaches to inquiry that have been shown to possess significant educational value. These include guided approaches to inquiry such as project-based and problem-based learning. They also include approaches to inquiry aligned with the authentic education movement involving authentic intellectual work and discipline-based inquiry. Within these approaches to inquiry, students are given opportunities to engage in meaningful work worthy of their time and attention and connected to the world in which they live. They also move beyond memorizing information and algorithms — towards demonstrating deep understanding of key insights, concepts and processes by applying them within unfamiliar contexts. Success on standardised testsExamples of this kind of inquiry include a Grade 5 investigation into how water could be desalinated and purified after contamination by a tsunami. They include a Grade 8 exploration where students considered whether the conditions leading to the Italian Renaissance were present in the city in which they lived. In contrast to what the critics of inquiry claim, these investigations all required direct instruction and the need to recall basic facts. However, they also extended these traditional approaches to education in ways “that might support deeper understandings and more engaged learning.” To promote deeper learning, teachers introduced ongoing feedback loops and had students explain and justify their reasoning. Multiple large scale studies in the United States and in Canada have demonstrated that students who engage in this kind of inquiry perform better on standardised tests than students in more traditional learning environments. The ‘Hattie effect’So why have a number of studies found inquiry-based approaches to possess limited educational value? Education researcher John Hattie, for example, reviewed more than 800 research studies and found that inquiry-based teaching had a very small effect on student learning. Hattie’s oft-referenced study is limited in a number of respects. “Piagetian” programs, which emphasize challenges that require learners to apply higher order thinking, were ranked as the second most impactful of all the approaches examined in Hattie’s study. But these approaches were presented as distinct from inquiry, despite shared affinities with both guided and authentic approaches. Further, the majority of studies used in Hattie’s analysis were conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s. In contrast, a recent synthesis of contemporary research in The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences found that both guided approaches to inquiry and approaches growing out of the authentic education movement promote deeper understanding and more intellectually engaging learning experiences for students. Inquiry is not unguided discoveryThe research clearly shows that ministries of education — in Canada and globally — should maintain their commitment to curricular shifts towards inquiry. However, there is a need to help the public better understand the research basis that has informed this change in direction. As part of this work, we must engage more vigorously with politicians and popular commentators who have misrepresented inquiry as a process of unguided discovery devoid of instructional supports. David Scott Director, Student Experiences Community-Based Pathway, University of Calgary What do historians do? That is the question that was posed to students today. "Study history" was the most popular response so the follow-up question was, "So, what does study history mean?". That one was met with some quizzical looks. This year, the main Social Studies goal for us will be unpacking the strategies that historian use to "study" history and demonstrating our abilities to employ these strategies.
The work we do in this area will be guided by the work done by the Historical Thinking Project headed up by some researchers from a collection of schools including the University of British Columbia and Alberta. Their goal was to help students and teachers learn how to study history by implementing SIX distinctive thinking strategies dubbed "The Big Six". In Grade 7, students study the history of Canada, and the emphasis on the Big Six helps guide this inquiry and equip students with more than just historical knowledge of events, people and places. This work will support and challenge them think like historians and approach the events of the past with confidence and capability. The end result will be students who can intelligently communicate their understanding of history through a variety of historical lenses. |
Mr. FawcettThank you for visiting the Humanities blog. Visit regularly to see what interesting work we are doing. Archives
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