Miss Bowie

Hello everyone, and welcome to Miss Bowie's page on the Junior High Blog! It's hard to believe that the first three weeks of school are already over. The days are flying by as we near the end of September, but looking back, we have already learned and accomplished so much in our classes.

Here is a quick update on all of the classes I'm teaching; what we're learning, what activities we have been doing, and things to remember!

Social 6: We are currently learning about the fundamental principles of democracy and how our rights and freedoms are protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Students have completed a WebQuest that required them to do some research on our rights. We even created our own "Classroom Charter" where we brainstormed all of the rights we have in our classroom.

Science 6: Science for the Grade 6s has started off with a unit on Trees & Forests. This unit has been very exciting so far and has allowed us to get outside to do some "field research" (when the weather cooperates)! Students participated in a leaf scavenger hunt last week, where they competed against each other to find certain types and colours of leaves and seeds. Overall, students were very successful -- but the lobed leaves proved too difficult to find! We have counted rings on "tree cookies" and made leaf rubbings. On October 3rd, we will be taking a field trip to JJ Collett Natural Area for the day -- lots of different types of trees for us to explore!

Math 6/7: We are just finishing up our unit on Number Relationships in Math 6/7. We have practiced our knowledge of prime and composite numbers in order to understand the process of factoring. The 7s have also learned divisibility rules to figure out how to find factors for large numbers. If you ever need to know if 41328 is divisible by 6, ask your Grade 7 student!

Social 7/8: The Grade 7/8 class just wrote their chapter quiz for our first unit on Aboriginal Societies. We spent some time studying three First Nations groups (the Mi'kmaq, the Anishnabe, and the Haudenosaunee) that interacted with early settlers in Canada. Students created the most detailed and wonderful mind maps as a chapter project to summarize their knowledge. Up next for us is our chapter on French explorers!

Science 7/8: In Science, we have been studying Interactions & Ecosystems. We have been able to do many cool activities so far. In our first lab activity, students were given tools to use as different bird beaks. They had to go from station to station to try and collect "food". This allowed us to understand the importance of animal adaptations. It was also hilarious for me to watch students try and pick up marbles with scissors! We have recently been discussing human impacts on the environment and we were able to use an online tool to calculate our ecological footprints. Ask your Grade 7/8 student about the size of their footprint! Next week, our group will also be attending the JJ Collet Natural Area field trip where we can examine the interactions in a forest ecosystem.