Our Last 3 Weeks

Well, this year definitely flew by and has been full of so many wonderful memories. 

In these past 3 weeks, we have been so lucky to enjoy Swimming, Camping and House Cup! 

Swimming Lessons were full of hot and sunny weather, we seemed to hit the perfect weather pocket each day! 

Camp Warwa was a complete success!!!! I think absolutely everyone enjoyed the outdoors, campfires, activities and of course S'MORES. 

While at Warwa, students got to experience a Vertical Playground and Climbing Wall, and be part of a belay team for each other! This was awesome to see all students from across the classes support each other with shouts of encouragement and LITERALLY support them by holding onto the belay ropes! 

Another station everyone loved was ARCHERY! I was beyond impressed with every kiddos focus and determination to hit that bullseye!

Next Up Low Ropes & Group Challenge. Again these were areas where we really saw some leaders start to shine! Every challenge had to be a whole group effort and focused on Safety FIRST!

Our first day ended with a campfire round of s'mores, singing, drama and story time. 

I think they liked their bunks! 

Click here to see our album from Camp Warwa. 

In class, we have still managed to get some learning done! In Math we have been exploring measurement of cm to mm and how to convert measurements. This is a tough concept for some to grasp still, working with multiplying and dividing by 10. 

In Science we finished up our Lights and Shadows unit and spent some time exploring Kaleidoscopes! 

In Language Arts we wrapped up our KidBlog writing, thinking about all the fun memories we have had in Grade 4. Students wrote about what their favourite part of Grade 4 was and why. 

They also wrote a review on Camp Warwa, and decided if they would reccommend it to next years Grade 4's or not. 

Our House Cup winners this term were...........

RAVENCLAW! Congratulations!!!!

We started off our afternoon with some AMAZING SNACKS provided by our awesome parents. Mrs. DG has outdone herself again, creating Weasley's Skiving SnackBoxes! 

While watching our movie, students worked on their own "House Bracelets" choosing the colours of their favourite houses, they created bracelets to take home with them. 

I cannot believe that our year has come to a close, I hope all these kiddos the best next year at RMS in Grade 5! I WILL MISS THEM SO MUCH. 

A Note from the Office:

We hope you have a great summer and we look forward to seeing everyone again in September!  You will receive an email from your child’s new teacher in August.

The first day of school is on Tuesday, September 5.  This will be a full day. Please call the school if your child is going to be absent that first morning. This is very important as we juggle changes in our registration numbers on that first day.

School supply information can be found on our website at    http://rbes.blackgold.ca/parents/school-supplies/   You can order packages throughout the summer, however, there is an additional charge of $5 after the August long weekend.

Additional Summer and September Information can be found on our website on our home page.

During the summer, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact our Principal, Mrs. Kloschinsky, by email:kathy.kloschinsky@blackgold.ca

Lights, Shadows, ACTION!

The weeks are flying by as our year is coming to an end!

Camp Warwa is in less than two weeks! Please check last weeks post for a packing list as to what your child needs to bring.

Swimming starts next week! Please ensure your child comes to school with their swim gear, we will be swimming from 12:30 - 1:30 pm every day.

Our Grade 4 drama students did an amazing job with their performances on Thursday! They put on two shows for all the classes and I was blown away! All that hard work sure paid off!

This week, we have begun a self guided research project on Plants; Growth and Changes. Students will be digging deep into research through various media to create a slide presentation on plants, their parts and purpose, importance to humans and specific plants that require special care. 

With Math, we have begun to convert our fractions of tenths into decimals. This is a bit of a difficult concept for students to grasp at first, as we bring place value back into our conversations. 

 We also started adding decimals together, which will sometimes create a new whole. 

for example: 0.3 + 0.4 = 0.7 

We keep a zero, because adding our tenths together, we still do not have enough to make one whole. 

However: 0.5 = 0.6 = 1.1

If we were to fill in a tens rod, we would have 1 full whole plus one more tenth. Sow we know have 1 and 1 tenth. 

Next week we will wrap up with hundredths, a review and quiz on our fractions to decimals unit. 

In Science this week, we have continued to work with how light refracts, and how the distance of a light source effects the size, shape and darkness of a shadow. Students worked through experiments to see how concave and convex lenses affect light beams and how they alter images. 

Fur Trades and Refraction!

Today our Parent letter for Camp Warwa was sent home. If you missed it, you can find it here!

The past two weeks have gone by so fast!! We have been busy busy busy, as usual, and even had some exciting visitors!

Our First visitor came on Tuesday, a Fur Trader! Tuesday afternoon, the students walked into the class to find a Fur Trade Post set up, and a Fur Trader who shared the tales of how the Fur Trade came to be, who was involved, and how the system would have worked. They even got to see real furs and act out some trade situations!

Our next visitor was just as exciting, if not more! Joe Lomnicki, former Edmonton Eskimo, came and worked with all the Grade 4's on some breathing, relaxing, and yoga! Joe has a different style when it comes to yoga, and we are excited to have him back in the last few weeks of school!

In Language Arts this week, our spelling focus has been on plural and singular forms of common irregular nouns. This was a nice review from our grammar lessons earlier in the year, and it was interesting to see how much the students remembered! 

We also continued with quotations, and how to use them in dialogue. We experimented with some reader's theatre activities and students had some time to write their own dialogue during Daily 5.

In Math, we are continuing with fractions and spent some time comparing and ordering fractions. A couple of the key understandings we discussed are:

In Science, we have been working on lots of different experiments around bending and refracting light! First, we used a prism to separate white light into the visible spectrum. Using the projector light, we were able to spot the rainbows around the room!

Next we looked at how light refracts (bends) as it passes through different densities. One way to observe this over the summer is looking at your legs when you're in the pool! They look a bit different, as the light passes through the water is bends and changes how you see objects!

Then we used a bowl of water to change the pathway of light! This allowed us to see the light beams crossing and changing direction.

After, we checked what materials make good reflectors! After testing out various objects and materials, we decided the best qualities for reflecting are: shiny, metallic, flat.

A Few Reminders:

• Track Day is Tuesday, June 6th. 
• Drama Performances June 8th (day) and June 12 (evening). 
• Swimming is the week of June 12th
• Devon Days are coming!Students are invited to walk in the parade on Saturday, June 10th. 

Bike Safety Week!

What a great week! It started a little cold and rainy but we ended on a hot, beautiful day!

Monday morning kicked off our Bike Safety week! Mr. Larson worked with the students on how to mount a bike, get started pedaling and a quick run through of all the different signals(right turn, left turn, and stop) with the students. Through out the week we kept practicing our signals, as well as, riding around the school yard. The Bike Rodeo was on Thursday at the arena, and students were practicing figure eights, paper boy toss, stopping on a dime and slow races! 

Our Lights and Shadows unit has been so much fun to explore this week! Now that we have a good understanding of light sources, this week we took a look at shadows. What they look like, where we can find them and how they are made.

Students explored the school and playground in a hunt for different types of shadows. Then later in the week, as some may have seen on our Dojo story, we started tracking our own shadow! When we finally had some sunshine in the morning we went outside in groups and students traced their shadows with chalk. They recorded descriptions of their shadow darkness, length, shape and direction.


Later that day the students went back out to their exact spots and observed if their shadows moved. They did!! Tracing their new shadow, and writing descriptions, we came together as a class to discuss why this happens. Depending on our light source (the sun) and the direction it shines, will effect the length and direction of our shadow. Our sun moves across the sky during the day so this changes our shadow. We connected this information to the historical use of sun dials!
The students had a lot of fun with this activity!

In Math we have started working with Fractions. We have discussed fractions as parts of a whole.

Students learned how to read and name fractions. Some common fractions we looked at were halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths and eighths. 






Next week, we're going to take a look at Fractions in a set, and then move onto ordering and comparing fractions.


A Few Reminders: 
- There is no school Monday (Victoria Day)
- Class Photos are May 24th, Grade 4 Grad Photos are May 25th. Students are encouraged to wear something or bring an item that represents their personalities or interests.
-  Timbits Tournament is next Saturday.
- Volunteer Appreciation is June 1st (more details to come)

Long Time, No Post!

April was an absolute whirlwind - I can't believe we're almost halfway through May!

Read to Self Outside!

We have been working very hard in class, and are trying to keep our focus! This gets pretty tough when it's so beautiful outside, so we have tried to enjoy some learning opportunities outside as well!

Our Language Arts focus over the past few week has been on building strong, juicy and detailed sentences. In grammar, we have looked at verbs, adjectives, figurative language(onomatopoeia, similes, metaphors) and how we can use them to enhance our writing and make it more interesting to the reader. 

This week, we read the book Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle. This is a lovely tale about a flatulence prone dog who (SPOILER) saves his families valuables from burglars thanks to his terrible farts! 

With this story we worked on how we can write a News Article! Some of the skills we were practicing where being about to describe a single event, including who, what, where, when, why and how? After the story we filled our a graphic organizer, wrote rough drafts of our articles. With our rough drafts we practiced the editing process to go over our work, check for capitalization, punctuation, and how we can enhance our writing using adjectives or figurative language. Our final drafts were done in google drawings. 

With our figurative language exploration, we also worked on some onomatopoeia art! Onomatopoeia is words that name or form as sound (sizzle, cuckoo), and are often seen in graphic novels. In pairs students searched various graphic novels to find different examples. 

After we had brainstormed all our words, student choose their own to create word art based on the sound it made. 

They turned out GREAT! They were modeled after the style of Roy Lichtenstein's comic book art, using bright primary colours. 

In Math, we have been working through division strategies and basic math facts. This has included completing math word problems and determining if we are needing to multiply or divide to solve the problem. 

Students have been playing various games to practice their times tables up to 9 X 9. Some of the games we have played are Multiplication Grid Races, Multiplication Golf and Multiplication War (with no face cards). You can ask your child to play some games with you at home! The stronger students become with their multiplication table the more beneficial it will be to them when dividing as well. 

In Science, we have begun our unit on Lights and Shadows. Through a few experiments we have concluded some interesting facts about light:
- Light sources can be natural or man made.
- Objects can either emit their own light, or reflect light.
- We see objects because of the light that reflects off of them.
- The Moon reflects light.
- Light travels in a straight path.
- Our sky is blue because like has a rainbow of colours, but when it hits the gases in out atmosphere it scatters the straight path into short wavy lines which produces the blue colour.

In Social, we are beginning to talk about our past in Alberta. This will include learning about our early settlers, Metis and Cree influences and the Fur Trade.

We have had a few visitors into our school in preparation for Bike Safety week! On Wednesday, the health nurse came and gave a very informative presentation on the need for helmets and how important our brains are! Bike Safety starts today, with helmet checks and continues next week, bring your bikes in!!!

Bob the Egg demonstrates the safety of helmets!

Important Dates and Reminders:

- Bike Safety next week! 

- Please sign Swimming, Warwa, and Bike Safety forms on Powerschool. 

- No School May 19 - 22 (Victoria Day)

- Class photos May 24th.