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! 

Christmas Card Art - Thanks Mrs. Van Huiss! 

Order forms are available from the office or myself! 

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! I hope everyone enjoys their weekend and sneaks in a bit of spooky fun! 

A Few Reminders: 
- Fred Penner is next Thursday (Oct. 19th). Please fill out the permission forms online. 
--- We need 2 parent volunteers for this field trip.

- Fruit Orders are due October 19th. 
This is our first Grade 4 Trip fundraiser, and what a wonderful one! The fruit is awesome and they added some new products to their order list this year! To check out what the products are like you can visit their website: https://desimonefarms.com/

- No school next Friday (PD Day)

This week was short and sweet! We have been doing a lot of assessments in class, including reading, comprehension and writing. These assessments give us an idea of how students are standing coming into the year and help us, as teachers, ensure we are teaching them to their needs.

In Language Arts this week, we have been working diligently on our KidBlog posts. If you haven't checked out KidBlog yet, it is a spot where students work on daily writing tasks every morning. Through KidBlog students do "QuickWrite" type activities focusing on certain writing skills (opinion writing, personal reflection, journal writing and general sentence structure). We are still in beginning stages and I am excited to watch their progress throughout the year!

We have also worked on our Structured Word Inquiry program, this week looking at how we spell words for meaning. We looked at the word and discussed - why is there a g in sign? When we relate the word sign to signal (where we here the g) we then have to look at the meaning of both words and how they are related in a word family. If you would like to read up more on Structured Word Inquiry, you can visit Peter Bowers site. 

The students had a grammar focus lesson this week, looking at the different types of sentences. There are a few ways to classify a sentence, and this week they looked at Declarative, Interrogative, Imperative and Exclamatory sentences.

Students worked through this by identifying and creating each type of sentences. This idea will be reinforced throughout the year.





Our Patterns unit has come to an end! This week started off with students reviewing our unit through dice games, which they had so much fun with!

To practice increasing patterns, students worked in pairs with 6-sided, 9-sided and even 12-sided die! They would have one die as a starting point and then roll the second die to carry on the sequence. Then writing rules for their patterns. It was a great way to have them engaged and actively reviewing their math concepts!

 At one point it was a race to see who could complete the most patterns in two minutes! Our record was 8 patterns with 8 terms in 2 minutes!

Our Patterns Test was on Thursday, and they will be sent home today to be corrected, signed and returned for Monday. Our biggest skill to focus on is reading the whole questions and instructions. 

Gr 3 Science - Rocks, Minerals and CRYSTALS! Grade 3 students this week learned how to access google classroom via Ipads and work on a digital document. On this document they continued from last week, identifying the rock they chose from their Rock Walk in September. Students used their knowledge of the three types of rocks to try and identify which group their rock belonged to, and then described a few characteristics of their rocks.

If you would like to view your child's Rock Report, you can visit google classroom. They will need their google ID.

We also got up to some business in the kitchen as well! We are making sugar crystals! It is quite the process and looking at our experiments I think this year we may learn from a few mistakes... :)
Students are logging their crystals progress into a google doc as well. Here is one of the photos someone took to go along with procdure!



Gr 4 - This week we looked at how white light changes when refracted through a prism! Using the white light of the projector students spotted rainbows around the classroom! We then filled out a lab report about the results. Students learned that white light is separated into the Visible Spectrum which shows all 7 colours of the rainbow (ROYGBIV).

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.