Master Gardening 101

As spring is blooming students at Riverside are planting flowers at our sign. We had to weed the planter, pick out the rocks, cultivate the soil and now we get to plant flowers. We cannot wait to see the flowers! We will need to make sure we weed the planter every day!

Operation Passion Project continued

Grade 4,5,6 students at Riverside are finishing the year with Operation Passion Project. Step one is to decide on an Essential Question. We are using our free reading novels to generate ideas. We all picked our novels because of something that interested us, from here we have to think about questions that we can generate from our book. Some examples were research - how has the swim suit evolved through the years and do the modifications being made make them faster in the races? Another question from Sam was is there a material that we could wear but still be strong enough to make a submarine?

Students will develop their questions- using google forms they will fill out the request to research. Here we will be making sure that what the question is really asking is what we really want to research.

During our research we must use both print and internet. We have to check our sources to make sure that the facts are right. We must keep a bibliography.

Then the last part is to share our information. We can make our presentation any way we want, the only rubric we have is did your presentation answer your essential question? Starting means we are just touching the surface, developing means that we need to dig deeper but have some valuable information, meeting means that we have enough infromation, anwered all the questions: but what we are striving for is exemplary means we have gone over and above the project.


Some skills that we will learn besides researching is how to be a critical friend. We need to be able to constructively give feedback to our friends to help them develop the best project ever.

Cycling 101

Through the month of  May students in grade 3,4,5,6 along with teachers, parent volenteers and Medicine Hat Police officers have been taking part in a cycling unit. We started the unit with safety talks from the police officers and then moved to the cycling part. Mr. Scherger led the bike safety inspections and the officers helped out when they were with us. Students started with small rides- learning all the road signals and the road safety. After about a week we rode farther and even on the paths. We had to ride a group so safety was the key. We had to watch where we were going, where others were going. We had to ride up hills, down hills and then across the bridge. Safety was drilled into us from the time we did our ABCD bike inspection to when we got back to the school. In the end we learned enough that we rode the bikes to Strathcona park- thanks to all the parents that came with us on that cold day. A great thing did happen- four students that did not know how to ride bikes learned how and then joined us. Thanks Mrs. J for teaching everyone how to ride. Even now we cross the street correctly on our bikes and even ride them to school more than we did before the unit. Thanks- Ms. Kowalchuk, Ms. Hall and Ms. Prior for coming up with this great idea.

Riverside Market

Riverside Market took place last night. This was the end of two projects- Entrepreneurs and Bring Back the Music.
Brooklyn what did you learn: I learned how to run a cool business. My business was magnets. I had to make the magnets ( and I mean a lot of magnets).  I was luck because I did not have to take our a loan- so I bought my supplies then make the plan on how to finish the project. I knew how much to sell them for because of my market research and the  dragons den. I made about $33 profit. 10% of the profit goes to the SPCA and I get to keep the rest. I was suprised that I sold all of my magnets within the first half hour of the Market and so then I took orders for all the rest.
I really loved the bring back the music- I love the viola- " I feel free when I am playing" "it may sound weird but I love it". It has really challenged me- I need to read music and memorize songs. I had a goal- I really wanted Ms. Christine to invite me to ochrestra- and I met that goal. I am really looking forward to doing strings for the next two years - I am only in grade four you know.