la créativité

Since we are working on innovation in our space unit I thought we would link that to our 4th C, creativity. This month we start every afternoon by discussing a quote. Over the last two weeks we have discussed quotes by Steve Jobs, Picasso, Matisse, Einstein and many others who touch on creativity. So far here's what we think is important about creativity: taking risks, making mistakes, overcoming fear, making connections, knowledge, seeing things other's haven't, thinking outside the box and using your imagination.

One of the interesting debates we had was whether school helps creativity flourish or whether it kills it dead. What do you think?

L'exploration de l'espace - suivi

Most students have collected a lot of data and researched what live would be like on mars and how we would get there. Some of the limiting factors for our designs so far are huge temperatures variations, limited space for food and provisions, cost and time. Most of the groups have brainstormed a few ideas around what to send and how they are going to send it. Now we move one to selecting the best idea, explaining in great detail and justifying why we chose this design.

Yesterday, we had a whole group lesson on some of the verb tenses, linking words and writing characteristics we need to write good explanations and justifications. "To justify we need to prove, give examples or back up our explanation".

"Math in French?!" Of course! If we are going to be sending rockets with provisions we need to be able to calculate lots of important things such as the weight, volume and cost our provisions, the amount and cost of fuel needed, the dimensions of the rocket etc.