Nov. 19 - 30

A Few Reminders: 

ELA

Writing
A big focus on our KidBlog writing was working on creating strong supporting details, with varied sentence starters. On Talk About it Tuesday students discussed their favourite board games. Choosing one, they had to explain why it was the best board game ever!

We also started to expand on our reasons, by giving examples or explaining why it is a good reason. This was the students firts introduction to O.R.E.O. Style opinion writing! We always triple stuff our oreo's with at least 3 strong reasons.

Students then took their planning and put it into well polished paragraphs! They did such an awesome job! When they went from plans to paragraph they worked hard to check their own work for punctuation, capitals and complete sentences! 

Here are some samples of work!

They did so great I had to put them up on our Daily Prophet wall!

In our Grammar work, we looked at incomplete and complete sentences. Students learned that sentences have to have a subject and predicate in order to be a complete sentence. The subject is WHO or WHAT the sentence is about. This usually is the main noun in the sentence. The predicate is what the subject is doing.

Reading 
We have been working on our inferring and predicting skills. Although these skills are similar, they are definitely different! Inferring is when we read between the lines to find out about character feelings, setting, or what is happening right now. 

To introduce this, we watched a video fro the series Simon's cat. These are videos without words, where we have to use our background knowledge and personal experiences to infer the characters feelings.

• How do you think the cat feels?
• Where do you think they might be going? Why?

We used our inferring skills on a second video - again with no words - to look for clues that would tell us about the setting. Students responded as a group to the video using Padlet. An electronic post it wall! 

We also worked with inferring during reading, as a group and individually. Students read passages describing a character and were to infer the setting or emotions of characters involved. 

For Predicting, it is a little different - predicting you are making an educated guess as to what will HAPPEN NEXT. 

Once again, we started this strategy with a video - For the Birds by Pixar. 

I paused the movie at certain points to ask students to predict - what will happen next? 

Using our background knowledge + experiences students made educated guesses as to what would happen next in the video. When we make predictions, as we carry on in the student they usually can be confirmed. This makes them a bit different from 

As a guided practice, we read through another book by our much loved author Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back. Pausing throughout the book, I modeled with the students how we make predictions. It is important to be able to back up our predictions with evidence or clues from the text. Once you have finished reading the book you need to check - was your prediction correct? We have read other titles from this author - This is Not My Hat with previous strategies, which helped when we made our predictions. 

As independent practice, students read through the book Dr. De Soto's on Epic! and recorded predictions they had while reading, clues that lead them to make the predictions, and then confirmed whether or not their predictions were correct or not. 

Math 
Students have been working with numbers before starting our addition and subtraction unit. First we looked at numbers and how we can sort them based on their attributes:

• Greater than a number 
• Less than a number 
• Amount of digits 
• Odd or Even 

As a group we worked on sorting various numbers into different circle diagrams.

Next we worked on rounding numbers to nearest tens, hundreds, and thousands. Students were very good at rounding numbers to the nearest tens, hundreds and thousand - if it was the same amount of digits. However, there seemed to be a common struggle to round a 4 digit number to nearest hundred or ten. You may notice, we have a daily rounding problem in our agendas now for students to get a better grasp on this skill. 

Rounding has led us into estimating sums! As a class, using double and triple die, we rolled numbers, rounded them to nearest ten or hundred and then estimated answers. We discussed terms like over estimate, and under estimate. 

Next week we will start addition with regrouping! 

Science 
Bennett Center 
This was an awesome day! The Bennett Center came to teach use all about wheels and levers! Students learned about wheels, pulleys, levers, gears and got to put them into action!

We have sorted all our trash! We collected all of our waste in the class over a week, and sorted it into categories created by the students: plastic waste, organic waste, school waste, liquid waste, foil waste and paper waste. 

We weighed each category to see what we had the most waste in! By weight the hands down winner was organic waste! We toss so much food! Out of all the organic waste (6.8 lbs) only 1.8 lbs was completely used, finished non-compostable food! This really made us look at how much we throw out!

The category we had the most in volume in was... plastic waste! We realized so much of our lunch is wrapped in plastic, ziploc bags, etc. You may have noticed - we started a lunch waste challenge! We looked at the different between Mrs. D's lunch and QB's lunch. And how things that have disposable packages can packed differently. Everyone did AMAZING! I was so proud.. I baked them a loaf of banana bread and we all had a snack on Friday!

We also looked into the various packaging of products and their waste. Our experiment revolved around ketchup chips! We looked at 1 product that is packaged multiple ways. Each package has different post consumer waste and we analyzed if the packaging was necessary and how it affects the consumer.

Then of course we got to eat the product, which is always the best part!!! 

Social 

In Social, we looked deeper into the Canadian Shield as a region. Students read from reading passages, textbooks and websites to learn about the different landforms, climate, animals, natural resources, jobs and daily life in the Canadian Shield region. 

We also spent some time on Quizlet! I love this site! It is an interactive site where students work with vocabulary. After looking through flashcards and recording vocab we will be using all year into their duptangs, they were able to play some games! If you would like to see the site, students can access it through google classroom. 

In Art we created some star art! Using our line reference pages, students filled stars with lines, as well as, creating borders. 

Nov 13 - 16

A Few Reminders:

Thanks Mrs. Horrocks for making these graphics!

Christmas Season is coming up Quick!

ELA

Writing

To build on our Parts of Speech discussion last week, surrounding nouns, verbs and adjectives. We're working on building strong sentences that use adjectives to add detail. We are also working through the 5W's - who, what, where, when and why to extend and stretch their sentences. Next week we will work on varying sentence starters by putting question words at the beginning of their sentencces. 

Math 

 This week we have been working on comparing numbers to 10 000 using base ten blocks, expanded form and numerals (standard form). 

Students also spent time playing some review games, working with die and place value. 

We will have a quiz on Monday. 

SCIENCE 

We checked in on our experiments from last week! I think our leaf of lettuce has seen some better days. What we could find left of it showed us how organic waste can decompose in just a week! 

Kirkland toilet paper happened to be the brand that breaks down the best! Well done Costco! 

Next week, we will be collecting all our garbage over the course of the week to see how much waste we create. On Friday we spent sometime thinking of our waste we might create and how we can pre-sort it. Students came up with their own categories of who we will label and collect waste next week.

SOCIAL

Students were so lucky to have Mr. Maltais come in this week and work on a special tech project with them! Using Google MyMaps, students created the 6 natural regions of Alberta. They also added major cities in Alberta, and can see which region they are in. 

We will add images to these maps throughout the unit.

ART

This week we talked about the Elements of Art; these are the tools used to create art. 

We focused on different types of lines, as throughout the year we will do different line art projects. Students opened their sketchbooks and dedicated a page to different lines. Using google they looked up different lines. 

Nov. 5 - 8

A Few Reminders:

• Nov. 12 - No school for Remembrance Day.
• Nov. 22 - Bennett Center Visit 

Our Christmas Concert performance will be on Dec. 3rd. If you and your family be away, please let us know as soon as possible.

Our Grade 4's did an amazing job reciting the poem In Flander's Field at this years Remembrance Day Ceremony. If you missed it, watch the video below!

ELA

Reading

This week our reading strategy focus has been Determining Importance: I can understand the main idea of a text, the authors message and the difference between important and interesting details. 

To introduce the strategy we discussed the difference between important details and interesting details. important details. Important details are the things we need to know when reading and relate to the author's message, or our purpose for reading. Interesting details are things that make the reading or text more interesting, but are not super important. 

We did a hands on activity that was quite fun! I told the students I was going to the grocery store (this is my purpose) and then we had to rummage through my bag to see what items were important or interesting. 

Then students had a turn and went through their bags in pairs, with the purpose of getting through a day at school. I have to say, there are a lot of kids who have quite a few interesting details in their bag! 

 

When reading fiction the important information relates to the elements of the story; characters, setting, problem and solution. Although when we're reading, there can also be interesting details to these elements. I read aloud Dog Breath by Dave Pilkey and recorded the interesting vs. important details into a graphic organizer. 

As independent practice, students read I Need My Monster by Ann Noll on Epic! Students read or listened to the book and used their reading strategy to determine the important characters, setting, problem and solution. Independently, they completed the same organizer on the second book.

We had another Book Tasting on Friday! Each month we will be having a new book tasting, to have students explore different genres of books. This month our genre is: Historical Fiction. To get in the spirit of historical, we turned the classroom into the First Class Dining Saloon of the Titanic! It was perfect, as everyone was dressed up for the Remembrance Day ceremony!


Historical Fiction books are based around big moments in history, or are set in the past. They may be based on a true event, but have a fictional plot.

Magic Tree House is a very good example of this genre. I also put a lot of picture books out from this genre.

The goal is to have students read at least one book from this genre in their personal reading time. 

Word Work 

Students were re-introduced to Parts of Speech: Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives. I wanted to judge how much they remembered from previous years, by getting them to sort words out! In groups of 3, students were given 18 words and asked to sort them any way they could think of. I love doing this because the categories they create, and the way they sort their words is so interesting! Everyone's minds have such different ways of working.

I then gave them clues (sort them into only three categories) and eventually I gave them their final instruction -  sort them into these three categories: 

1. People, Places, Things

2. Describing Words 

3. Action Words 

Then the gears started to turn! These are nouns, adjectives and verbs! Students recorded them into the categories they belonged in and we will use these to write some super sentences next week!! 

MATH

We are hard working away at place value! These kiddos are nailing it! Students have been working to represent numbers to 10 000 in multiple ways. 

They have use base ten blocks to represent numbers physically, using manipulatives. We even did some fun challenge problems involving regrouping of ones, tens and hundreds. 

 

This lead into students representing numbers in expanded form as well. Breaking larger numbers down into their place value, using numerals and number words. 

SCIENCE

What do we do with our waste?

We did a waste sort as a class, looking at the different ways we deal with waste and where certain items will go. Each student had an item and as a group we determined where we think it would go! This lead into a discussion of what biodegradable items are. Biodegradable items can be decomposed - not all items are biodegradable. 

We started up 2 different experiments to test biodegradability of certain items! 

Lettuce and Toilet Paper! 

We buried lettuce, which is organic waste, in our worm compost! We want to see what will happen in a weeks time. Students made hypothesis about what they think the lettuce will look like in seven days. Stay tuned to see what it looks like when we dig it up on Tuesday! 

We also started an experiment with TP! We are comparing various brands of toilet paper to see how it biodegrades in water!

We discussed the importance of biodegradable toilet paper in the world, and how it affects our sewer systems and waste management. In a week we will check back in and see how our samples are - MAY THE BEST TOILET PAPER WIN!

SOCIAL

Hello Alberta! We are learning all about Alberta's climate, cities, and regions! Alberta has 6 natural regions, which have various vegetation, climate and landforms.

We took a little in school field trip down to the first floor Alberta map! This map is awesome because it is a tactile map that shows all the various landforms in Alberta. Looking at the map we reviewed the different weather across Alberta and how the landforms surrounding that area may affect the climate. We also looked at the location of a city and its affect on climate - for example, the more north a city was the colder the temperatures seemed to be.

We will apply this knowledge as we look at each individual region.