Happy Christmas!

We have had one action-packed-fun-filled week!

We started off with discovering about our last objective in Wheels & Levers - Predicting how the change of position of the fulcrum will affect the effort involved.
To demonstrate this, we created a giant lever, identified where the effort, load and fulcrum were and tested out lifting students! I acted as the effort and we moved the fulcrum from middle, to closer to the load or closer to the effort. The students discovered it was easier to lift the load when the fulcrum is placed closer to the load. Then each student had a chance to act as the effort as I was the load! Mrs. Kloschinsky even got in on the fun!

To see all the pictures from our experiment click here.

On Friday morning we were engineers! Students planned, tested and improved marshmallow launching catapaults! Emma and Mackenzie had the most accurate catapault!

In Social, the students have been working diligently on their regions slides projects. They will have one more day when we return from break to tune them up and then they will present their regions to the class.

In Math, we wrote a mid-unit test on Number Sense. Everyone did pretty great! Some of the areas we tested on were number value, place value, expanded form and adding with regrouping.

In Language Arts, we continued to work on our procedural writing structure through Daily 5 activities and on our chromebooks.

We we extremely lucky this week to have Mr. Maltais come in and take us through a Breakout adventure! Students were in groups of 6 - 7 and were given a box with 6 locks.
Through teamwork, cooperation, critical thinking and using their problem solving skills they had to solve clues to unlock the box! Everyone got their boxes open, even if it was over the 45 minute time limit! It was really great to see them working together and thinking outside the box. Ask your chld about it, they seemed to have a blast!

Thursday we had our Harry Potter Party! This was in lieu of a Christmas Party this year, as we had finished the first book and wanted to take time to watch the movie and compare differences. WHAT A FUN DAY WE HAD!
We started off the morning in gym playing our own version of - Quidditch! Students had to pass around a quaffle and try and shoot it into hoops on the wall, all the while, beaters on the sidelines are throwing bludgers at them!












Next we came back to the classroom and completed a couple of different activities, including wand making! Using chopsticks and hot glue each student made their own custom wand! Each student added their own personal flare and design.

 
Next they chose their own colours to paint them!

Thanks to Mrs. DeGray who made some amazing Snitch Cake Pops!!!!

Happy Holidays!

One More Week!

What a week! I can't believe Christmas is just around the corner! Let's hope some warmer weather comes our way.

We have been focusing on different types of nouns over the past couple of weeks in grammar. We discussed irregular plural nouns - those nouns that don't follow our plural nouns rules, such as: feet, teeth, mice or children. Students also have been discussing our various pronouns, identifying them in their reading and writing, as well as knowing when to use a subject or object pronoun. 

Our writing focus this week was procedural writing. When we are writing there needs to be organization and our writing needs to follow a sequential order. This week, students have been writing "How To" pieces. 

We started with the process of how to write a How To! 

First, we need to pick a topic. 

Next, we need to make a plan and list all the steps to the topic (being very specific). 

Then, we take our steps and determine importance! Can we put more than one simple step together to create a compound sentence?

After, we start writing!

As a class, we thought out all the steps on how to plan a party and students drew images to represent each step. Afterwards, we grouped steps together and students wrote how to plan a party.

Students practiced this skill with "How To Make [Their Favourite Sandwich]." After they had chosen their sandwich, they wrote out all the steps and then did their final writing in google drawings. Here are some examples. 

In Math, the students have been working on regrouping using place value and how that relates when we're adding 2, 3, and 4 digit numbers. 

We started off by using visuals and representing addition problems with base ten blocks. This helped the students see - why do we carry that one?! 

Throughout the week we reinforced this concept with practice from our textbooks, in pairs and with various math games. 

We will be having a unit test next week on what we have covered so far in Number Sense. 

Tololwa Mollel is a local author who came and visited our school on Tuesday. He is an author from Tanzania and has written various children's stories. He orally told one of his stories to the students, as well as, having some students come up and do readings from his story A Promise to the Sun. To learn more about this Author, click here. 

In Social, to wrap up Chapters 1- 3 students are working on their regions projects. They are in groups of 4 - 5 and are researching the 6 regions. They will work together to put their information into slides reports and share with the class. 

To review some of the main vocabulary terms from our social chapters we worked with Quizlet! Quizlet is an online vocabulary student site, where students can create/study flashcards and then test themselves on their vocabulary through interactive games. We tried out quizlet live and it was a hit! The students are separated into animal groups - which they have to talk to each other and find out who is in their group - and then compete against each other in teams to find the term - definition answers! Its complicated to explain but so great! It has the students verbally discussing the meaning of terms. 

Next week is our last week before the holidays!
On Thursday, we are going to have our Harry Potter Wrap up Party in the afternoon. 
We will be watching the first movie (Since we have finished the book) and enjoying some snacks! So far I have had lots of offers to bring in food, we have:
- Chips (TM)
- Cookies (CA)
- Sugar Cookies (EM)
- Juice Boxes (HK)

On Friday, in the morning we are going to have a Recycled Christmas Gift Exchange!

In your home, there are probably many items that your child no longer plays with but are still very good toys, or even books they are no longer reading and would love to pass on! Please have your child wrap an item and bring it to school any time next week, and on Friday morning we will have a White Elephant type gift exchange! 

Thank you and have a great weekend!!!

Just a Few Reminders... 
- Holiday Paint Day is this Sunday, if you bought tickets! 
- Christmas Concert is on Tuesday! Performances are at 1:10 pm & 6 pm. 
- Early Dismissal is on Wednesday, Dec 7th. 
- Last day to donate for Christmas Elves is on Friday. 

This week was a busy week with our Christmas concert rehearsals! Our class has been working really hard on their two songs and it really shows, they are doing great! We can't wait to show everyone on Tuesday Night.

Our reading focus this week was to continue to find the main idea in not only one paragraph, but an entire article or piece of writing. In KidBlog, the students read a report on Egypt and worked on determing the main idea and which sentences supported this idea.

We also took time to look at the different way we pluralize nouns, and which word endings change when the word becomes plural. To practice we played a game in teams where students were shown an word and hard to try and write the plural form. They rocked at this! One that tricks us a bit is words that end in "f" or "fe", the f changes to a v and we add es.
Shelf = Shelves
Calf = Calves

We tested our knowledge of simple and compound sentences with a Kahoot! This is a really fun and interactive way to do a quick check and see how students are understanding concepts.

Students continued to work on writing compound sentences within their own writing through Work on Writing. Using given topics, they wrote their own paragraphs using conjunctions to combine simple sentences.

We were so lucky to get to participate in a Google Mystery Hangout today!!! This is when we video call another school somewhere in the world and play 20 questions!! Asking only yes or no questions (and their knowledge of mapping skills) the students narrow down where our callers are from! Today we met a fourth grade class from Green Bay, Wisconsin!

In Science we are winding down our Wheels & Levers unit. Students worked with gears and explored how to use a driver gear and vertical gear systems in small groups. 

Have a great weekend!!! 

Time Flies When You're Learning!

I cannot believe we are in the last week of November!

We have been busy this week!

This week we talked about common and proper nouns. The students were given a range of words and without any hints, I asked them to try and sort them into categories. It was really interesting to see how and where their minds went! Almost everyone caught onto the pattern; all the words were nouns and they organized them into 3 categories - person, place or thing. To take it further, we sorted them into common nouns (nouns used to name general things) and proper nouns (used to name a specific thing) which have used capital letters.

For Example:

Common Noun = school 

Proper Noun = Robina Baker Elementary School

Our reading focus this week was to be able to determine the main idea of a non-fiction text. We defined main idea as what the text is mostly about. When we have decided what the main idea is, we have to be able to identify which sentences or facts in our reading can be supporting details. We practiced these skills as a whole class, as well as, in smaller groups and individually. 

In Math, we have continued to further our number sense in working with representing numbers in expanded form and comparing numbers up to 10, 000. 

In Social we have been busy bees! We discussed the importance of the oil sands in Alberta and and how our natural resources help shape our province's identity. We started local by researching and discussing the discovery of Leduc #1! In pairs, students navigated through the Discovery Center's webpage to record some facts and compare how the station looked then and now. Next we looked at the Alberta Oil Sands and practiced our procedural writing to explain how to remove oil from the oil sands. 

We know that fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource, as they can only be used once and take millions of years to form. These resources help form Alberta's identity by creating jobs to our population and help provide energy (such as electricity or gasoline) in our homes and communities. There are also renewable resources for energy, sun, wind and pig poop (ask them about it) that we can use to produce energy as well. 

In Art, our trees are coming along! We identified which colours on our colour wheel are considered warm or cold, and then we coloured our squares accordingly! I think they're turning our great!! 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Two weeks Later

What a busy couple of weeks! I hope everyone really enjoyed their long weekends! 

In the past two weeks, our Language Arts focus has continued to be on writing. Last week we finished up our rough and final copies of our personal narratives. When I am looking over their narratives I am hoping to see they are able to tell about an event in sequential order, they start their writing with one of the four strategies we discussed (Question, Sound, Describe the Setting or Dialogue) and they are able to close up their writing with a conclusion. We will continue to work on these skills throughout the year. 

This week we have been working on compound sentences! A compound sentence is two simple sentences that are joined with a conjunction (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So). Students should be able to identify compound sentences in their reading and their own writing. Students used word tiles to create a simple sentence in pairs or small groups and then each student added their own second simple sentence. We also worked on where to properly place our commas, which go before our conjunction in our compound sentences. ;)

In Math, we are starting to work on our Number Sense. This so far has included building our understanding of the value each digit in a number represents. 

For Example: 5 412

5 stands for 5000, or 5 thousands. 

4 stands for 400. or 4 hundreds. 

1 stands for 10, or 1 ten. 

2 stands for 2, or 2 ones. 

This means students need to have a strong understanding of place value (ones, tens, hundreds, thousands). 

We have also been working on Mathletics! The students absolutely love this site and it is aligned with the Alberta Math Curriculum. There are lots of areas for the students to practice basic fact skills, as well as, review past units and upcoming units for the school year. This is a great way to have your child work on their math skills at home, as I am able to assign specific activities to the students to have them complete. Ask them to give you a tour of the site and different features they can explore! 

In Science students explored various simple machines; driver wheels, levers, pulleys and gears. In small groups the students had to build their machine and note what they learned. 

 

                                                   
                                                      

we discussed the different types of lever classes. Each class has different features and placement of load, effort and fulcrum. Students did some reading comprehension on levers and then completed a sorting activity. 

A Few Reminders: 

- Next Friday is Jersey Day! Wear your favourite jersey!! 

- Book Orders are due Nov. 28th 

- Christmas Concert is Dec. 6th (Please let me know if your family is planning a vacation or if your child will be absent for this)

Halloween Fun & Personal Narratives!

What an interesting week!! The costumes and parade on Monday was amazing!! Everyone looked so great in our class, lots of spooky, cute, funny and creative costumes :)
During the day we worked with all the Grade 4's and did a KaHoot! Survey! KaHoot is an online interactive quiz/survey program that we used to ask some Halloween "Would You Rather?" questions. Students made their choice and backed it up with explanations!

In the afternoon we had a bit of fun! Each portable had its own activity - crafts, games or a movie. Thank you to those who sent in food, we had some full bellies!





We finished up our haunted houses and they look wonderfully spooky! Once the students had completed their house, we brainstormed as a class what you would see, hear, smell, etc. in a haunted house. Afterwards, they had to use these details to write a FOR SALE add for their house!

I hope everyone enjoyed Trick-or-Treating!

This week, our Language Arts focus has been on writing, and specifically, writing Personal Narratives. A Personal Narrative is a true story about yourself and to introduce this idea we read "The Best Story Ever". This book encourages children to look at their lives and write from their memories and heart. Personal Narratives, like most stories, have Characters (who?), Setting (where? when?) and revolve around a main event (what? how? why?),

Then I encouraged students to look back on their past year or more and think of a special memory. With that memory we made brain webs that explained the 5W's. In pairs, they practiced orally telling their story to a friend, practicing sequence and recalling details.

Then we took our web and put our information into a planner that includes an introduction (where we introduce the setting and characters), beginning, middle, end (of the main event/idea) and then a conclusion (that reinstates how we felt about that memory).

Next week, we will work on putting our planning into a rough draft and adding details to make our stories juicy and interesting for the reader.

In Math, we got back our patterns tests and reviewed them. Tests were then sent home to be signed and have corrections done. Most corrections were small counting errors or misreading a question, so it is great to have students double check their work! Every did quite well on the test and the class average was 88%!

In Social we have been focusing on how Alberta's fossils make our history unique and what they tell us about our land. We have been looking into what type of dinosaur fossils have been found in our province now and in the past.

The focus for the past few week in Phys. Ed has been on throwing (underhand and overhand) and catching. We took advantage of the nice weather and had a game of Bean Bag Golf outside! Students threw underhand from hole to hole in teams of four.
Inside we practiced our catching skills by playing a game of Catch Tricks. In pairs, students had to throw a ball up and before they caught it complete a trick (i.e. throw the ball up and clap twice before you catch it again). This was really funny to watch, some of their tricks were great!

 

Just a Few Reminders: 
- Remembrance Day ceremony will be next Wednesday at 10:45am.
- There is No School Nov. 10 & 11th (Thursday & Friday next week).