Tomorrow is Day 2 - dress to learn outside.

Fresh from the Farm are due this Friday. If you can, please support this wonderful fundraiser for our school. Packages can be bought and donated to the food bank - double bonus! Support Stuart Scott and the Newmarket Food Pantry.

On October 30th the intermediate division is going to the McMichael Art Gallery. This is going to be a great day! Please sign up through Cash Online.

Literacy
Please keep working on your persuasive writing assignment. Please, please, please (I'm begging here) check the rubric (blog - Sept. 26th)  and make sure you have covered what is expected to the best of your ability.  This is due Friday. It can be shared with me online or handed to me in hard copy. The persuasive map graphic organizer needs to handed in Friday as well.

Art
We continued work on our Group of Seven project. By now you should be finished your copy and you should be planning your original piece or working on the written portion of the assignment.

Geography
Below is the assignment we are working on. Today we brainstormed different ideas and questions for the purpose of our study trip and also potential places we could go to study those questions. By now you should have settled on a purpose for your trip and you are looking for potential destinations for your study.

The Monarch Butterfly: a great traveller in peril

Challenge: You belong to a Canadian research team studying the monarch butterfly. You are concerned about a number of issues related to this insect. To answer one of the many questions that your team has, you decide to take a study trip during which you will follow some or all of the path of the butterflies. The trip will be expensive, and you have to complete a grant application to obtain a research grant.

Your grant application will include:

1. The purpose of your study trip. What question do you intend to answer in your research? (Remember! You won’t actually be carrying out this research, so you won’t actually answer this question. You just have to figure out where it would be best to go to find the answer). Include a hypothesis (a guess) of  what you think you will find out.

Example: I will be studying the impact of commercial farming and the use of pesticides.

2. Where you intend to travel to and why?

(You can travel to multiple destinations.)

  Example: I will travel to Springfield Illinois.

(First I found a map of agricultural land use in the United States and found

that Illinois has a large agricultural industry. Then, I did a search on land use

in the Springfield area and found there to be a great deal of agricultural land.)

3. A map, that you created, showing the migratory routes of the monarch and the path you will take on your trip. Please include and label the locations of the towns/cities that you will visit and the route you will take to get there.

4. A breakdown of the distances you will travel on your trip,(shown on your map) your mode of transportation and the approximate cost of travel.

Example: I will travel from Toronto, Ontario to Springfield, Illinois by airplane.

It is approximately 1000 kilometers and the air travel will cost approximately

$500.

Learning goals:

• We are learning to analyse and construct maps as part of our investigations.
• We are learning to describe patterns and characteristics of major natural vegetation regions around the world.
• We are learning to describe some natural processes and human activities that create and change natural patterns, ie vegetation, climate etc..

Success Criteria:

• Research proposal
• I have thought through and included a reason why the monarch butterfly is in trouble.
• I have included a reason for why this is now a problem for the monarch and it was not before.
• I have included an explanation of  what I think has changed. Was it natural or human activity that caused it?

• Destination(s) proposal
• I have included why, geographically, I have chosen my destination.
• I have described the vegetation and land use of my destination.

• Map
• My map is clear and easy to read
• My map is labeled, has a compass rose and a scale for distances.
• My map has a legend to clarify colours and symbols that I use on my map.