First Full Week!!

All the students have worked so hard this week! 

Our reading strategy focus this week was Questioning: I can ask meaningful questions before, after, and during reading. To introduce this strategy we read the story "This is not my Hat". As a class, we brainstormed and asked questions before, after and during the reading. During reading, to mark where and when we had our questions we used stickies with a "?" and the question on them, and then once we finished reading we went back to see if our questions were answered. The students then practiced this in their own books during Read to Self. 

During Work on Writing this week the students have been experimenting with Free Writing and Looping! They are absolutely loving it so far! When we are free writing, students are encouraged to write as much as they can for short periods of time. At this time they are not worrying about spelling, punctuation or editing. Then the Looping begins! Looping is when you look at your free write, pick a word and it becomes your new topic for a second free write! It can be pretty fun for these kiddos and they can try it at home! 

All grade 4 classes combined this week to create Thank You cards for the wonderful companies who helped with City Slickers this year. In pairs the students used Google drawings to fill in a template and add their own comments, images and personal touch to the electronic thank you notes!

In Math, we have covered increasing and decreasing sequences and comparing their differences. Throughout the week students we able to work in pairs and small groups to play a few math games to create, solve and extend their own sequences. 

In Social we wrapped up our map unit with our Me Map projects! Using all our mapping skills knowledge students are creating their own map all about them! Their maps will include: titles, labels, cities, capital cities, 7 different landforms, legends and a compass rose. So far they are looking great! 

In Gym this week the students have been working on their hopping, skipping, jumping, galloping and balance skills! After lots of practice and games, in small groups, students created their very own "Adventure Course"! 

Current Events

We finally have a Friday we can do Current Events! 

You may have heard your child mention this assignment at home! This is a chance for us to practice our "Determining Importance" at home! Students can find articles on the following sites (Dogo, Times, or Teaching Kids News) which can also be found on the right hand side of this blog under Social Links. Articles can also be found from Local, National or International Papers. 

Please ensure your child has read the article and will be able to summarize it to the class. Below is a description of what they should prepare. 

Musical Ride and City Slickers!

Our school was so lucky this week to be visited by the Lord Strathcona Musical Ride! This was a first for me and it was so amazing! We were first visited by a soldier who explained the history and tradition behind the musical ride. Back in the days of Battles on Field the musical ride routine was actually training for battle maneuvers!

And we were also lucky with weather! The sun was shining bright as we enjoyed the show and got to visit with the stars afterwards!

In Language Arts we are continuing with our Daily 5 routines, Read to Self and Work on Writing. This week our reading strategy focus was: Determining Importance - I can judge what information from the text is important for me to understand. We introduced this strategy while reading a non-fiction article about Endangered and Extinct animals and our impact as humans on them. This was our theme in our KidBlog Posts this week as well! Check our your child's blog here.
Students did responses to reading discussing which animal they'd like as a pet, as well as, a short research paragraph about an animal.

With Work on Writing, this week we discussed what type of things we can write about. As a class, we brainstormed topics and created and IDEA JAR! In this jar each student created a topic that can help you out when you are stumped during Free Writing time. We then worked on our writing stamina by writing about one of our topics for 8 minutes straight!

In Science, we did a few experiments using rollers. In groups, students worked to create a simple machine that would move their book across their desk with rollers. They had 8 minutes to scour the room and the results were pretty fantastic!

After each group presented their new invention we talked about what worked best and what made it difficult to move the book across. We realised rollers work best when they are the same size, a little bit spaced out and have some sort of raining to keep them in place. We also compared a wheel to a roller and completed venn diagrams on google drawings.

In Social, we discussed how to read a legend based on landforms in a region and longitude and latitude. We discussed the major lines on our earth - horizontally is our Equator, vertically is our Prime Meridian. These lines separate our earth into Northern and Southern Hemispheres (along the Equator) and Eastern and Western Hemispheres (along the Prime Meridian). Students created their own little globes with all these lines and then we explored!
As a group, we brainstormed different landmarks and interesting cities in our world. Once we learned about longitude and latitude and how they separate our earth we checked out these locations GPS!

As a challenge, see if your student can explain why some numbers are negative and some are positive!








City Slickers was an absolute blast! We spent the morning dodging cow patties and learning how the cows eat and are milked on the Jesperson Farm. We also attended sessions about auctioneers, canola oil harvesting and uses, barley harvesting and uses, Alberta Health (healthy eating and Canada Food Guide), Alberta Rat Prevention and Alberta Trappers.

We also got to hold cute little chickies!!! 

Not to mention, we received some cool shades! Thank you City Slickers Program!

Bus Safety, Math Facts, and Wheels!

What a great week! It has been great spending these days getting to know everyone and growing together as a team!

If your child is in Cross Country Club, permission forms for the Meets are now online. All information about cost and transportation will be on the forms online. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. 

City Slickers field trip is next Friday, September 23rd. Please pack a lunch that will be easy for the students to eat as we will be eating between locations. 

This week in Language Arts, we have been working with our Daily 5 routines. The students have shown awesome stamina with Read to Self and our big focus has been to pick a Good Fit Book that will be a long term read. This will be the books we discuss or work with in our conferencing. 

When picking a Good Fit book we follow the IPICK strategy: 

This week we also began discussing our 40 Book Challenge. As we grow as readers it is important to broaden our horizons and expose ourselves to various forms of literature. Through the 40 book challenge, the hope is to have every student read 40 books by the end of the year from various genres. This week we discussed three different genres: Poetry, Traditional Literature and Fantasy. 

The students have all created their own study notes, slides presentations, where we defined each genre as a class and researched examples. Students can show you their slide by accessing our google classroom here. 

In Math, we are beginning our unit on Patterns. This our goal was to identify and describe patterns found in tables and charts. Using Calendars and Hundred charts we discussed which patterns we can identify, why or how they occur and how we can create our own patterns. 

We also took some time to practice our basic math facts, which can be fun I promise! We talked through some strategies to help us when multiplying, We used skip counting and our fingers to multiply numbers 1-5 by each other. Afterwards the students tested their skills in some dice games with partners.

In Science, we have begun discussing our first unit, Wheels and Levers. We created a KWL chart about what we know and what we want to know about wheels. Students then practiced reading to someone and researching wheels and shared their findings as a class. 

Next we took our Science outside! We experimented with the use of rollers to ease our effort when moving objects. Students acted as "rollers" as one student was the "log" and moved across the ground. 

In Social, we have been working and discussing the process to creating maps. This week we worked on Titles, Labels, Compass Roses (including cardinal and intermediate directions) and how to use a scale. 

On Thursday, Bus Safety came in! The students tested their safety knowledge through an intense game of Bus Safety Trivia! I was pretty impressed, they rocked it!

Gettin' Back into the Groove!

This week has been busy! We have been working hard on settling into our new routines and even making some adjustments.

We did send home information on our first field trip of the year, which will be on September 23rd.
Click here if you missed the information.

In Language Arts we will be doing Daily 5 in the classroom. So far this week we have absolutely ROCKED Read to Self! These kiddos are awesome with their reading stamina. 

We also put up our Friends Wanted posters! Students will be able to take a peak at these and get a little bit of insight into who our students are, what things they enjoy and maybe spark a conversation with a new friend!

During the week, I have been reading aloud "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". Once we finished the first chapter, students wrote and drew about one of the characters that had been introduced. 

In Math, we have been re-familiarizing ourselves with numbers to 10, 000! We compared numbers up to 10, 000 and then discussed all the different ways that we can represent them. 

- Standard form: 3421

- Expanded Form: 300 + 400 +20 +1

- Words: three thousand four hundred twenty-one

As well as, drawing and in a place value chart. 

The students got into groups of four, rolled some dice and represented their numbers in various ways! They did an awesome job working in teams! 

In Social, we launched our study for the year: Alberta! We will be discussing the changes in Alberta over the year and how it has affected our province.

We also started Current Events, where every Friday students are encouraged to bring in a news article they have already read and can summarize and present to the class. 

In Science, we have talked about the Scientific Method and its purpose. Broke it down into 6 steps: 

QUESTION: Why are we doing the experiment?

HYPOTHESIS: What is your best guess?

MATERIALS: What you need for your experiment. 

PROCEDURE: The steps for your experiment. 

OBSERVATIONS: What did you see?

CONCLUSION: What did you learn?

They might even be able to remember all the actions we created to go along! 

Students then wrote the definitions in their own words and sorted them into the proper order.

Have a wonderful weekend!! 

Good Bye Summer, Hello School!!!!!

What a magical first day! Here is a peak into our room this year! As you might be able to notice, we're going with a Harry Potter theme!

Acceptance letters were sent home to the students which also contained a parent information letter. The purpose of that form is to let you and your child give me a little insight into their personal interests as well as the best way to maintain contact with parents. Please return those as soon as you can.


Our day started out with setting some standards for classroom expectations and routines. The students were allowed to pick their own desks today, hopefully making responsible choices :) and we will probably move about over the next week or so.

As an opening activity, we discussed what Friendship means, why it is important and how to make and keep friends. We brainstormed a bunch of ideas that make you a good friend and qualities you would look for in a friend. Tomorrow we will be writing FRIENDS WANTED ads, which will be anonymous and hung around the classroom.

This afternoon we had a Magical Performance! The main message behind our performace today was Courage, Character and Caring. Through Magic, Steve Harmer discussed the qualities that help us build good character and ways that we should treat and act towards others. Ask your children about some of the lessons they learned about today!