Our class crafted an email to the Calgary Bee Keepers Association to get advice on directing our donation. What a great response we received! Copies of each are attached below. I will be sure to emphasize that this was a student led initiative when we get back to Liz Goldie. Dear Calgary Bee Keepers Association: We are Grade 4 students at Olympic Heights School in Calgary. Recently we learned that bee populations are decreasing at an alarming rate. We were troubled when we heard about this because bees are so important to the world. We have been learning about plants and know that bees are critical as pollinators. Losing them could lead to major problems for all living things. We decided to have a bake sale to raise awareness of the problem and to raise money as well. Students who spent $2 or more more also got a pack of flower seeds . We ended up raising $564! Now for our question: Where can our money go to ensure it does the most good? We have looked at Friends of the Earth's Bee Cause and The Sierra Club’s Save the Bees project, but we wanted to get expert input on the subject. Can you give us your opinion, as people who obviously care about bees, about where our donation could go to help protect this valuable resource? Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to your response. Grade 4, Room 18 Olympic Heights School Calgary Good morning Ron.
What a great way to teach your students that they can influence desired outcomes by their own actions. A few years ago there was a major concern with the bee populations decreasing and what the world would look like without bees. Because of actions taken by many people, we have been more responsible and knowledgeable when it comes to bees and what we can do to help improve their habitats. Consequently, the honeybee populations are increasing across Canada and, in Alberta, populations have increased nearly 10 % over the past 10 years (Alberta Agriculture tracks honeybee populations every year). This doesn’t mean we don’t still have to be diligent and especially when it comes to our native bee population. Our main goal at Calgary and District Beekeepers is the education of our beekeepers and the public. We present exhibits at Aggie Days, Stampede, Millarville, Chestermere fairs, and downtown office buildings in an effort to make people more aware of the challenges to the bee populations and how we can help. As you know, every person we can educate, helps out. In addition, we provide presentations to schools, community centres, Girl Guides, retirement homes and just about any group who asks. If you are interested, we could come to your school and talk about bee populations, what the challenges are to the bees and what they can do to help. You may have already covered this so this may not be needed. We do bring an observation hive which is pretty cool howeverJ To cover our club operating costs, we charge a fee however. So in terms of donation, I would recommend donating the money to actual research on how to treat the bees for diseases and parasites such as mites. It is these diseases that are responsible in a large part for the honeybee decline. I can contact some researchers in Alberta for a list of projects so you can donate to a specific a research project if you like. They are also doing a study on native bees at U of A which will finally give us an idea of our native bee populations in Alberta. Helping to fund any of these projects would likely have a better impact than funding large organizations. Our club just purchased 2 observations hives for honeybees that we take to schools and for our exhibits. These hives will also be used for a garden dedication at Renfrew Community Centre on June 14. If you would like to donate to pay for these observation hives, we could fill them full of bees and bring them to the school to show the kids. We would also bring a hive so the kids know the bees will go in the hive and help pollinate local fruit trees, berries and flowers. We can talk about anything bee related you may want the kids to know more about. Just some other thoughts. Regardless on where you decide to donate, the time you have taken to teach your students about bees and more importantly about taking action for change is outstanding. Where the money goes is just an added bonus to what you have done for these kids. Best Regards, Liz Goldie
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Below is an example of the type of work we have been doing over the past couple of days.
We will be moving into decimals next week! Today we began to look at the difference between fractions of a whole and fractions of a set. Below is an example of the work we did in class. Discuss the way that breaking up the shape at the top into a set of shapes can change the way we represent the fractions.
I found a website that has some interesting and helpful resources for learning fractions. It also has downloadable PDF worksheets for practice. The link is below.
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AuthorMr. Long Archives
March 2019
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