Happy Christmas!

We have had one action-packed-fun-filled week!

We started off with discovering about our last objective in Wheels & Levers - Predicting how the change of position of the fulcrum will affect the effort involved.
To demonstrate this, we created a giant lever, identified where the effort, load and fulcrum were and tested out lifting students! I acted as the effort and we moved the fulcrum from middle, to closer to the load or closer to the effort. The students discovered it was easier to lift the load when the fulcrum is placed closer to the load. Then each student had a chance to act as the effort as I was the load! Mrs. Kloschinsky even got in on the fun!

To see all the pictures from our experiment click here.

On Friday morning we were engineers! Students planned, tested and improved marshmallow launching catapaults! Emma and Mackenzie had the most accurate catapault!

In Social, the students have been working diligently on their regions slides projects. They will have one more day when we return from break to tune them up and then they will present their regions to the class.

In Math, we wrote a mid-unit test on Number Sense. Everyone did pretty great! Some of the areas we tested on were number value, place value, expanded form and adding with regrouping.

In Language Arts, we continued to work on our procedural writing structure through Daily 5 activities and on our chromebooks.

We we extremely lucky this week to have Mr. Maltais come in and take us through a Breakout adventure! Students were in groups of 6 - 7 and were given a box with 6 locks.
Through teamwork, cooperation, critical thinking and using their problem solving skills they had to solve clues to unlock the box! Everyone got their boxes open, even if it was over the 45 minute time limit! It was really great to see them working together and thinking outside the box. Ask your chld about it, they seemed to have a blast!

Thursday we had our Harry Potter Party! This was in lieu of a Christmas Party this year, as we had finished the first book and wanted to take time to watch the movie and compare differences. WHAT A FUN DAY WE HAD!
We started off the morning in gym playing our own version of - Quidditch! Students had to pass around a quaffle and try and shoot it into hoops on the wall, all the while, beaters on the sidelines are throwing bludgers at them!












Next we came back to the classroom and completed a couple of different activities, including wand making! Using chopsticks and hot glue each student made their own custom wand! Each student added their own personal flare and design.

 
Next they chose their own colours to paint them!

Thanks to Mrs. DeGray who made some amazing Snitch Cake Pops!!!!

Happy Holidays!

One More Week!

What a week! I can't believe Christmas is just around the corner! Let's hope some warmer weather comes our way.

We have been focusing on different types of nouns over the past couple of weeks in grammar. We discussed irregular plural nouns - those nouns that don't follow our plural nouns rules, such as: feet, teeth, mice or children. Students also have been discussing our various pronouns, identifying them in their reading and writing, as well as knowing when to use a subject or object pronoun. 

Our writing focus this week was procedural writing. When we are writing there needs to be organization and our writing needs to follow a sequential order. This week, students have been writing "How To" pieces. 

We started with the process of how to write a How To! 

First, we need to pick a topic. 

Next, we need to make a plan and list all the steps to the topic (being very specific). 

Then, we take our steps and determine importance! Can we put more than one simple step together to create a compound sentence?

After, we start writing!

As a class, we thought out all the steps on how to plan a party and students drew images to represent each step. Afterwards, we grouped steps together and students wrote how to plan a party.

Students practiced this skill with "How To Make [Their Favourite Sandwich]." After they had chosen their sandwich, they wrote out all the steps and then did their final writing in google drawings. Here are some examples. 

In Math, the students have been working on regrouping using place value and how that relates when we're adding 2, 3, and 4 digit numbers. 

We started off by using visuals and representing addition problems with base ten blocks. This helped the students see - why do we carry that one?! 

Throughout the week we reinforced this concept with practice from our textbooks, in pairs and with various math games. 

We will be having a unit test next week on what we have covered so far in Number Sense. 

Tololwa Mollel is a local author who came and visited our school on Tuesday. He is an author from Tanzania and has written various children's stories. He orally told one of his stories to the students, as well as, having some students come up and do readings from his story A Promise to the Sun. To learn more about this Author, click here. 

In Social, to wrap up Chapters 1- 3 students are working on their regions projects. They are in groups of 4 - 5 and are researching the 6 regions. They will work together to put their information into slides reports and share with the class. 

To review some of the main vocabulary terms from our social chapters we worked with Quizlet! Quizlet is an online vocabulary student site, where students can create/study flashcards and then test themselves on their vocabulary through interactive games. We tried out quizlet live and it was a hit! The students are separated into animal groups - which they have to talk to each other and find out who is in their group - and then compete against each other in teams to find the term - definition answers! Its complicated to explain but so great! It has the students verbally discussing the meaning of terms. 

Next week is our last week before the holidays!
On Thursday, we are going to have our Harry Potter Wrap up Party in the afternoon. 
We will be watching the first movie (Since we have finished the book) and enjoying some snacks! So far I have had lots of offers to bring in food, we have:
- Chips (TM)
- Cookies (CA)
- Sugar Cookies (EM)
- Juice Boxes (HK)

On Friday, in the morning we are going to have a Recycled Christmas Gift Exchange!

In your home, there are probably many items that your child no longer plays with but are still very good toys, or even books they are no longer reading and would love to pass on! Please have your child wrap an item and bring it to school any time next week, and on Friday morning we will have a White Elephant type gift exchange! 

Thank you and have a great weekend!!!

Just a Few Reminders... 
- Holiday Paint Day is this Sunday, if you bought tickets! 
- Christmas Concert is on Tuesday! Performances are at 1:10 pm & 6 pm. 
- Early Dismissal is on Wednesday, Dec 7th. 
- Last day to donate for Christmas Elves is on Friday. 

This week was a busy week with our Christmas concert rehearsals! Our class has been working really hard on their two songs and it really shows, they are doing great! We can't wait to show everyone on Tuesday Night.

Our reading focus this week was to continue to find the main idea in not only one paragraph, but an entire article or piece of writing. In KidBlog, the students read a report on Egypt and worked on determing the main idea and which sentences supported this idea.

We also took time to look at the different way we pluralize nouns, and which word endings change when the word becomes plural. To practice we played a game in teams where students were shown an word and hard to try and write the plural form. They rocked at this! One that tricks us a bit is words that end in "f" or "fe", the f changes to a v and we add es.
Shelf = Shelves
Calf = Calves

We tested our knowledge of simple and compound sentences with a Kahoot! This is a really fun and interactive way to do a quick check and see how students are understanding concepts.

Students continued to work on writing compound sentences within their own writing through Work on Writing. Using given topics, they wrote their own paragraphs using conjunctions to combine simple sentences.

We were so lucky to get to participate in a Google Mystery Hangout today!!! This is when we video call another school somewhere in the world and play 20 questions!! Asking only yes or no questions (and their knowledge of mapping skills) the students narrow down where our callers are from! Today we met a fourth grade class from Green Bay, Wisconsin!

In Science we are winding down our Wheels & Levers unit. Students worked with gears and explored how to use a driver gear and vertical gear systems in small groups. 

Have a great weekend!!!