Grade 4 Grad Photos - Students can bring in items that show their personality or passion!
ELA
We are wrapping up our Poetry Unit! Students have spent so much time creating various types of poems of topics of nature, seasons and Earth!
With it being Earth Day over the weekend, we have let this topic flow into our week. We spent some time looking into Earth and talking about why it is important that we care for our Earth. As a class, we brainstormed all words and ideas that came to mind.
Using these words, we went to wordart.com to create some concrete poems! Concrete poems are in the shape of the topic, and students typed in 10 - 15 phrases or words in relation to Earth or Earth Day.
To demonstrate how light travels we used our flashlights and some cue cards to conduct a discovery experiment! Students lined up cards with holes punches and shone the light through, and then continued to mark spots and create new holes. As they lined up their cards they notices that light travels in straight lines. Then they were able to experiment how light moves as they moved their flashlights around the hole and watched their little spotlight dance on their cards.
We have had such a fun week for Science! Mr. Maltais was in again and helped us code Microbits to read light levels! Our first string of code let us measure light by bar graph. As students moved around the school the Microbits LED lights would show a bar graph of high, low or medium light levels.
The following day, students experimented with a different form - Acrostic. Since they we're already so well informed on Earth we stuck with that topic for these poems as well. They can be see in our front foyer!
We have also finished our James and the Giant Peach novel study! We absolutely adored the book, and will take some time to watch the film and compare the two. Students will write a review piece on which format (book or film) they preferred.
MATH
This week in math groups, I worked one on one with students reading word problems and determining if we needed to multiply or divide to solve the problem. This is a struggle area for most students, but with some guidance everyone was able to solve the problem.
Students also played basic fact games to enhance their division and multiplication fact knowledge. It is important that we work to reinforce the connection of multiplication to division through games, or fact family work, to help students be more successful when working on more complex division problems.
SCIENCE
To demonstrate how light travels we used our flashlights and some cue cards to conduct a discovery experiment! Students lined up cards with holes punches and shone the light through, and then continued to mark spots and create new holes. As they lined up their cards they notices that light travels in straight lines. Then they were able to experiment how light moves as they moved their flashlights around the hole and watched their little spotlight dance on their cards. 
We have had such a fun week for Science! Mr. Maltais was in again and helped us code Microbits to read light levels! Our first string of code let us measure light by bar graph. As students moved around the school the Microbits LED lights would show a bar graph of high, low or medium light levels.
Next, the students changed their code to show a numerical value of the light reading. This game them a number from 0 - 25.5. With this code, the following day we conducted an experiment! Students tested different materials (plastic cup, milk jug square, paper square) and recorded their light levels in Google Sheets. Then, using their recorded data they created bar graphs to pictorially represent their data.
With their readings, we discussed why we think different materials had different readings. They picked up right away that some objects were different in their ability to see the light shine through them. This lead us to discuss three new terms: transparent: when all light can pass through an object/material, translucent; when some light can pass through an object/material, and opaque; where no light passes through.
SOCIAL
As we begin to dig deeper into Alberta's and people, we have begun to discuss the language and practices of First Nations, Metis and Inuit. You may have heard your child sharing some interesting information about buffalo and how vital they were to Indigenous peoples survival. They hunted the buffalo in a few different ways, and how they used every part of the buffalo.
Indigenous peoples also had languages that differed between each band. This may have been a difference in dialect, sound or overall language. However, due to European influence, many Indigenous peoples began to speak English or French. A lot of traditions and celebrations are tied to language as well, and if not passed down from previous generations, they can be lost.
TEAMWORK & COOPERATION
In honour of poetry month, the Grade 4's read a poem at assembly about Teamwork.
Students worked together as a team to read the poem and create some actions to go along.
