Bike Safety Week!

What a great week! It started a little cold and rainy but we ended on a hot, beautiful day!

Monday morning kicked off our Bike Safety week! Mr. Larson worked with the students on how to mount a bike, get started pedaling and a quick run through of all the different signals(right turn, left turn, and stop) with the students. Through out the week we kept practicing our signals, as well as, riding around the school yard. The Bike Rodeo was on Thursday at the arena, and students were practicing figure eights, paper boy toss, stopping on a dime and slow races! 

Our Lights and Shadows unit has been so much fun to explore this week! Now that we have a good understanding of light sources, this week we took a look at shadows. What they look like, where we can find them and how they are made.

Students explored the school and playground in a hunt for different types of shadows. Then later in the week, as some may have seen on our Dojo story, we started tracking our own shadow! When we finally had some sunshine in the morning we went outside in groups and students traced their shadows with chalk. They recorded descriptions of their shadow darkness, length, shape and direction.


Later that day the students went back out to their exact spots and observed if their shadows moved. They did!! Tracing their new shadow, and writing descriptions, we came together as a class to discuss why this happens. Depending on our light source (the sun) and the direction it shines, will effect the length and direction of our shadow. Our sun moves across the sky during the day so this changes our shadow. We connected this information to the historical use of sun dials!
The students had a lot of fun with this activity!

In Math we have started working with Fractions. We have discussed fractions as parts of a whole.

Students learned how to read and name fractions. Some common fractions we looked at were halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths and eighths. 






Next week, we're going to take a look at Fractions in a set, and then move onto ordering and comparing fractions.


A Few Reminders: 
- There is no school Monday (Victoria Day)
- Class Photos are May 24th, Grade 4 Grad Photos are May 25th. Students are encouraged to wear something or bring an item that represents their personalities or interests.
-  Timbits Tournament is next Saturday.
- Volunteer Appreciation is June 1st (more details to come)

Long Time, No Post!

April was an absolute whirlwind - I can't believe we're almost halfway through May!

Read to Self Outside!

We have been working very hard in class, and are trying to keep our focus! This gets pretty tough when it's so beautiful outside, so we have tried to enjoy some learning opportunities outside as well!

Our Language Arts focus over the past few week has been on building strong, juicy and detailed sentences. In grammar, we have looked at verbs, adjectives, figurative language(onomatopoeia, similes, metaphors) and how we can use them to enhance our writing and make it more interesting to the reader. 

This week, we read the book Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle. This is a lovely tale about a flatulence prone dog who (SPOILER) saves his families valuables from burglars thanks to his terrible farts! 

With this story we worked on how we can write a News Article! Some of the skills we were practicing where being about to describe a single event, including who, what, where, when, why and how? After the story we filled our a graphic organizer, wrote rough drafts of our articles. With our rough drafts we practiced the editing process to go over our work, check for capitalization, punctuation, and how we can enhance our writing using adjectives or figurative language. Our final drafts were done in google drawings. 

With our figurative language exploration, we also worked on some onomatopoeia art! Onomatopoeia is words that name or form as sound (sizzle, cuckoo), and are often seen in graphic novels. In pairs students searched various graphic novels to find different examples. 

After we had brainstormed all our words, student choose their own to create word art based on the sound it made. 

They turned out GREAT! They were modeled after the style of Roy Lichtenstein's comic book art, using bright primary colours. 

In Math, we have been working through division strategies and basic math facts. This has included completing math word problems and determining if we are needing to multiply or divide to solve the problem. 

Students have been playing various games to practice their times tables up to 9 X 9. Some of the games we have played are Multiplication Grid Races, Multiplication Golf and Multiplication War (with no face cards). You can ask your child to play some games with you at home! The stronger students become with their multiplication table the more beneficial it will be to them when dividing as well. 

In Science, we have begun our unit on Lights and Shadows. Through a few experiments we have concluded some interesting facts about light:
- Light sources can be natural or man made.
- Objects can either emit their own light, or reflect light.
- We see objects because of the light that reflects off of them.
- The Moon reflects light.
- Light travels in a straight path.
- Our sky is blue because like has a rainbow of colours, but when it hits the gases in out atmosphere it scatters the straight path into short wavy lines which produces the blue colour.

In Social, we are beginning to talk about our past in Alberta. This will include learning about our early settlers, Metis and Cree influences and the Fur Trade.

We have had a few visitors into our school in preparation for Bike Safety week! On Wednesday, the health nurse came and gave a very informative presentation on the need for helmets and how important our brains are! Bike Safety starts today, with helmet checks and continues next week, bring your bikes in!!!

Bob the Egg demonstrates the safety of helmets!

Important Dates and Reminders:

- Bike Safety next week! 

- Please sign Swimming, Warwa, and Bike Safety forms on Powerschool. 

- No School May 19 - 22 (Victoria Day)

- Class photos May 24th.