Miss Potter's Corner: Skating Week!

WOW! I was so impressed with these kiddos skating abilities this week! It is so much fun to get to spend time with them on the ice. Thank you to Mr. Van Huis for all his hard work setting everything up, and having some skill work for the kids to try out!

Our next Skating week will be Feb 12th - 15th.

A Few Reminders:

- Grade 4's go skiing/snowboarding Monday! Please check your emails for some important information.

We do not return to the school until 4:00pm that day!

- Report Cards go home January 30th.

- There is no school on January 31st (PD Day)

- Grade 4's go to the Edmonton Symphony on Feb. 1st. Please pack a bagged lunch, as we will be at the theatre over lunch time.

Peter Bowers!!

We were so lucky to have Peter Bowers come to our school and do some lessons with us! Peter works with Structured Word Inquiry, which takes the students into a world on in-depth understanding of the English language. Students looked at the word culture and its base, origin and other words that relate to its root meaning.

Ask them about their visit!

Reading:

Students are continuing to work on summarizing text that has been read. This week, we discussed how to write a chapter summary from a novel.

Again, we looked over our story elements and determined what important information needs to be involved in a chapter summary.

Then students worked on their own to write, in their own words, what happened in this chapter, making sure to describe the beginning, middle and end. When writing a chapter summary, it is different than from an entire book or reading. There isn't always a definite problem and solution, and sometimes we can even be left with a cliff hanger!

Writing:

We also finished our read aloud novel, Fart Powder! It was a hilarious novel by Jo Nesbo a Norwegian author. It was set in Norway, and as we read, we would look up the locations on google maps and really felt like we were there!

As a writing project, students are writing newspaper articles based on the main event, (SPOILER ALERT) the stealing of Dr. Proctor's Fartnonaut Powder, and the Independence Day Police Chase/Royal Salute! It was quite an eventful ending to a story.

First, we discussed the text features we see in a newspaper article, who the audience is, and what the formatting looks like.

I reminded students of our writing process as we worked, and for out planning we worked with making "jot notes" on our organizers. Students worked on summarizing the main problem in the story using the 5W's and then we planned our paragraphs.

Students will work on Chromebooks to create their final copy!

In KidBlog this week, our focus was on building our Opinion Paragraphs. Grade 4's are working towards creating more of an Opinion Essay, using a multiparagraph format. Grade 3's are working on building strong sentences, and supporting details.

Our topic this week was: "Who was your favourite Character in Fart Powder?"

We made a Mind Map of all the characters and things we knew about them.

I introduced O.R.E.O. Format to students to help them with creating reasons & explanation.

They did such a good job with this! I can't wait to watch them grow as writers!

"MY FAVORITE CHARACTER IN FART POWDER

In Fart Powder my favorite character is Nilly. I like Nilly because is brave. I like that he is brave cause if he is brave he can do more than other kids and people. Like getting eaten by an Anaconda,That would be hard not to scream but he did not he just found out a way and got out. I also like him because he is good at playing the trumpet,and I know that playing the trumpet takes lots of practice. The last thing that I like about Nilly is that He looks like Ron from Harry Potter,and I really like the movies. This is why I really like Nilly. PS: I love the book thank you Miss Potter for reading this book to us!"

-B.K.

"In my opinion Nilly is my favourite character because he is so tiny. A good reason that he is so tiny is because he could get out of the dungeon of the dead through the toilet. Another reason Nilly is my favourite is because he can talk his way out of really anything. This is good because he can talk his way out of trouble so he doesn't get in trouble. To add to that he was eaten by an Anaconda and survived it which means he good really survive anything. Also he is really brave. Which is good because he wouldn't be afraid of a lot. These are the reasons Nilly is my favourite."

- G.S.

Math:

This week we have continued our math studies with multiplication. We started with arrays this week, and having the students work to understand the differences between rows and columns. Arrays are another way of representing multiplication sentences and create visuals for students. Some of the students really enjoyed this as it helped them gain a deeper understanding of how multiplication is repeated equal groups.

Students worked through word problems, using whiteboards, drawing arrays and finding their corresponding multiplication sentence.

Then in partners, they used dice to create multiplication sentences up to 6 x 6 and drew arrays to count & solve.

We also covered some quick Multiplication Rules to help them with the basic facts. Some students already knew these, which is great, but its always nice to get a refresher!

Science 4:

Grade 4's this week have been working on study/note taking skills. Using an online source all about waste they have been creating their own notes on specific topics.

Thank you for your collection of Fast food garbage! We had a few late entries and will be sorting them next Monday!

Science 3:

Grade 3's were introduced to their next unit of Study: Hearing & Sound. To start us off, we talked about what sound is: Sound is energy that is generated when matter vibrates. These vibrations travel in waves to our ears, which sends messages to our brains!

We did a fun sound matching activity, where students had to listen to sounds and determine what they came from in our environment.

Next week we will start some experiments involving pitch!

Social 3:

India Day was on Friday! Students moved around all three of the Grade 3 classrooms, enjoying different activities to have them experience Indian culture!

There was the Food room! With butter chicken, naan, and mango smoothies!