Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Enjoy your long weekend, being thankful for the friends, family and food we have around us! 

A Few Reminders: 

- No School Monday (Thanksgiving) 

- School Photo Orders due Oct. 10th. 

- Book Orders due Oct. 10th 

- Fred Penner Thursday Oct. 19th; Permission forms are on Powerschool!

- Patterns Test on Thursday.

If you are interested in volunteering for any field trips this year, please fill out this google form. 

This has been an extremely busy week for us, and we have been working very hard! 

In Language Arts this week, we have begun structured word inquiry. This is a subject area I am very excited to work with the students on, as it helps us understand the written English language! If you would like to learn more about this program you can visit: www.wordworkskingston.com. 

Students were introduced to word sums and word matrices this week. With this program, students learn to spell for meaning and build words based on their prefixes, suffixes, and bases. 

A student creating word sums with prefix + base + suffix

The students really enjoyed the hands on experiences with words!

Our reading strategy focus was Questioning: I can ask meaningful questions, before, during and after reading a text. To introduce this strategy we read one of my favourite short stories, This is not my Hat by Jon Klassen. This is a great story because it provokes students questioning process from the title alone, and throughout the story keeps us in suspense! 

As we read, students generated questions and I copied them on stickies. Students each received a sticky after the story and answered a question. 

Later in the week I read aloud from Tales of Beedle the Bard to students and we practiced this strategy once again. Before, during and after I read students generated meaningful questions about the text. Afterwards they were given questions to answer, and then draw a picture of how the story answered their question. 

In Math this week, we are about to wrap up our patterns unit! Students focused on attributes this week, what they are (colour, shape, size, direction, design) and how they change in a pattern. Students worked on problems and patterns that had 2 or more attributes changed, extending these patterns and creating their own. 

We also discussed what a repeating pattern is and how we determine the core of a pattern. The core is the segment of a pattern that is repeated. Students identified the core, extended patterns and describe the pattern rule according to attributes. 

Gr 4 Science: Is still working with Lights & Shadows! This week students explored shadows through HyperDocs and researched. Students observed shadows, described their qualities(long, short, tall, wide, dark, light, fuzzy and sharp) and searched for images on the internet of various kinds of shadows.  Then they experimented with the affect the distance from a light source to an object would have on the shadow. Using animal puppets and flashlights students observed that when a light source is closer to an object the shadow grows and becomes fuzzy, where as if the light source if further from the object the shadow changes to sharper and smaller. 

Grade 3 Science: Took a look at some rocks and minerals and are also working through a HyperDoc overview of our unit. Looking back on the rocks they collected, and using the knowledge of how to identify rocks, they determined what types of rocks that had discovered. 

In a Google Doc, they will work on describing their rock and its properties, what type of rock it is and write a descriptive paragraph about their rock. 

For Thanksgiving we read the book Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. This is a hilarious book about a Turkey who tries to disguise as other farm animals before thanksgiving so Farmer Jake does not eat him! 

Using this book as brainfood, we did a little letter writing project. Students wrote letters to Farmer Jake, trying to convince him not to eat Turkey this year.. but maybe to try something new? Like cow, pig or sheep? Students we practicing letter format, as well as, persuasive writing. To go along with our letter we did a guided drawing of a turkey and painted them with some water colours! Some students will have to finish up their water colour turkeys next week.