Shrek the Musical

What a wonderful performance!! Congratulations to all  the St.Gabriel students that had roles in the play.

EARTH DAY!

In recognition of Earth Day tomorrow the entire school will be going outside for an environmental clean up day. Each class will be responsible for a certain section of the school yard. I would encourage each child to bring a pair of garden or kitchen gloves. We will be outside for about 30 minutes, weather permitting.

TRANSFORMATION GEOMETRY TEST

We will be having a test on transformational geometry on Friday, April 17th. Both grades will have to take a variety of polygons and perform Translations, Rotations and Reflections. They will also have to interpret whether a figure has gone through a particular transformation. They will also be required to tile a pattern on a grid. We just did some examples of tiling patterns today on the computer and we will be continuing with this tomorrow.  Please refer to previous posts for videos of each of the transformations and how to perform them.

WALKING IN THE LIGHT OF CHRIST

Teaching can simultaneously be the most rewarding and frustrating profession in the world. We stress out over curriculum and whether our kids are 'getting it'.  Then, after a particularly poor performance on an assessment by the class, comes the inevitable nauseating feeling,'God, I'm the worst teacher on the planet !'. We face daily challenges to juggle the needs of all our students, no matter where they fall on the academic spectrum.

Then sometimes, when you least expect it, something happens that humbles you.  

We 'talk the talk', as catholic educators we discuss the life of Christ in our classroom, His message and how that message was revealed to us. Fully Alive lessons discuss Friendship, Living in Relationships and how to navigate adolescence within the context of our spirituality. Again, that's all talk, but to be witness to the awesome power of those words put into action by our students is awe inspiring. Our classroom is blessed to have a few students that are teaching me what it truly means to be loving, patient and to put others above oneself. Every single day they take it upon themselves to share their gifts with a student that needs that extra bit of care and attention. A smile at the right time, a simple-'do you need help with that?'. I can't tell you what a difference these small actions have made in the life of this child. I am humbled! Their example makes me want to be a better teacher and a better human being. These students truly walk in the light of Christ. 
Thank you

TRANSFORMATIONAL GEOMETRY

Translations, Reflections and Rotations, Oh my!! Motion Geometry or transformational geometry is basically taking a geometric shape and putting in through a specific transformation. I hope the students were able to watch the videos at home to introduce the topic. The video today is more a step by step guide for performing Translations, Reflections and Rotations. A translation is moving a geometric shape through a specific number of spaces along the x and y axis of a Cartesian grid. Imagine having a triangle on a grid paper and then moving it 3 units to the right and 2 units down and recreating that figure in the new location. A reflection is basically creating a mirror image of a shape. We can have reflections along vertical, horizontal or diagonal mirror lines .  A rotation  can be described by degrees, 90, 180, 270 etc. or it can be described as a quarter, half , three quarter rotation. Finally we have to describe the direction, either clockwise or counter-clockwise. The video below will take them the step by step process to perform these Transformations. They can stop the video at 7:58 for our purposes.

MOTION GEOMETRY: MATH APPLICATIONS IN THE REAL WORLD!

The constant refrain we hear at school, "why do I have to learn this sir?", "when am I every going to use this stuff?".  Well, motion geometry or transformational geometry is the basis for all computer generated images in movies, games and videos. I am including a few videos below that I would like the students to preview before we start the unit.