Miss Potter's Corner: Halloween is around the corner!

Thank you everyone for taking time to come in for Parent Teacher interviews! It was great to touch base with everyone and talk about your kiddos! If you were unable to make it to these nights and are still interested in a meeting, please feel free to email me.

If you would like to see videos from our week you can check out our class dojo story. If you need me to resend home your log in info email me.

A Few Reminders:
- Tuesday is our Halloween Parade! It begins at 9 am in the gym. Please see Mrs. K's blog post about appropriate costumes.
- There is no school Wednesday, November 1st.
- Christmas Card art is done! If you would like to order please let me know as I can send home the forms.

We have been focusing on my FAVOURITE reading strategy to teach these past two weeks! Visualizing; I can create a picture in my mind as I am reading. To kick off this lesson, I read aloud to the students from the book, The Big Bad Bully Bug, without letting them see the pictures. As I read the description of the bug students drew their own visualizations, and they looked hilarious and accurate!

When we discussed visualizing while reading we discussed the importance of using all our senses in our minds picture. If we are able to create a vivid picture in our mind of what we are reading, it shows we are understanding what we're reading. Students practiced this skill with task cards, reading a descriptive paragraph, visualizing, and then describing what their mind picture was and drawing what they saw.

With our adventures into Structured Word Inquiry, we have begun to look at the rule of how we change singular to plural words with the suffixes. The rule we have been focusing on is that if a plural word adds a syllable (i.e. box -- boxes) we use the suffix . However, if we do not add a syllable (cup -- cups) we use the suffix . To test this out, and evaluate students understanding we played Plural Noun Scoot! Around the room were singular words and students had to write the word sums to make them plural. This also brought up the discussion of irregular plurals like teeth, feet, children, women, men, etc. We will look more into these spelling patterns next week.

In Grammar, we have looked at the different types of sentences and identifying them in books and writing. Students are encouraged to use a variety of sentences in their writing. In pairs, students searched for examples in Mo Willems, Elephant and Piggy books. This was a great way to assess if they could identify the different types of sentences, as well as read them with expression and fluency.

In Math we have begun our Number Sense unit: Place Value. Students have been engaging in conversation about what Place Value is, how many digits a number has, base ten models and expanded form.

To introduce this unit we took to the dice! In groups of 3-4 students rolled 9 sided die to create 3 - 4 digit numbers. Once they had a number they practiced writing the number, sorting it into place value, and reading them aloud.

Then we began to discuss what each digits value was, and other ways to represent numbers. Base ten models are one way that we can show a number to 1 000(grade 3) or 10 000 (grade 4).

Once we understand the place value, it is easy to start on expanded form. Students also went back to the die to practice turning numbers from standard form (1847) to expanded form (1000+800+40+7=1847). Expanded form can be show in numerals only or in numerals and words.

Science 4

Our afternoons have been BUSY! We have been trying to find time to conduct experiments with lights! Students were introduced to Hyperdocs and worked through an interactive worksheet on Light Spectrums.

We were also able to check various materials to see if they were good or poor reflectors.

Students came to the conclusion that good reflectors are shiny, hard objects and poor reflectors tend to be dull or soft/bumpy objects.

Science 3

Students spent last week looking at their soil samples, thank you for sending those in! In the soil they searched for organic materials and drew what they found.

Afterwards, we studied the 4 layers of soil and what types of materials can be found in each layer. Students worked together to make a labelled poster of our soil layers and coloured/cut/paste objects you would find at each level.

To review our unit, we had a Boys vs. Girls Jeopardy match! After a lengthy battle and multiple correct answers the boys won by only 100 points! There is some video of our match on Class Dojo!

Students will be completing their Rocks and Minerals test this week.

Tech!

We were so lucky to have one of our students teach us some code today! Lucas has been reading a book about a coding program and walked all of us through the steps of how to create some rainbow cat art! Thanks Lucas!