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).

Interviews and Summarizing!

Thank you to everyone who had time to come down to interviews this week! It was great to touch base with everyone and let you know the inner workings of our classroom and discuss goals!

This week we have been working with Summarizing; I can find, organize and retell important facts or story elements from the text. To introduce this strategy, we had a couple students come up and talk for 2 whole minutes about an activity they had done over the weekend. Then, turning to the class, one student had to retell their classmates story in 3 sentences. Using our Determining Importance strategy, we were able to figure out what the important parts were and highlight them.


To summarize a story, I read the students a personal favourite - "Mom, Can I Have a Stegasaurus, Can I Please?". Once we read this story we discussed the format of retelling using, "Somebody...Wanted...But...So...Then...". This helps us remember the story elements and provides us with the language for retelling orally and sentence starters when writing. We can use this to summarize the end of a chapter as well, to review what has happened.

To practice this skill, students worked in small groups to read books and summarize them first orally and then into a graphic organizer.

 
 

We have also spent some time talking about complete sentences and how they need both a subject and predicate. The subject is the WHO or WHAT the sentence is about and the predicate is WHAT the subject is doing. Predicates will usually contain the action and uses verbs.

Using visuals, we had one student pick a subject and a second decide what that subject is doing. When we listen to just one students our sentence is not complete and doesn't make sense (i.e. A small blue bird) and they need their fellow students with the action(i.e. is eating raw pumpkin seeds) to complete  them so they may be pronounced "Sentence". Students went on to create their own sentences and identify the simple(bird; eating) and complete(A blue bird; eating raw pumpkin seeds)subject and predicates.

In Math, we worked on review in patterns and then completed our patterns test! Every did a pretty good job and I will be going over them with the class Monday and sending them home to be signed and with corrections.

In Social, we introduced the Alberta Regions project the students will be completing in groups for this unit. Each group will be responsible for creating their own slideshow about their region and teaching it to the class. We are continuing to work through our reading and chapters as a class.

We also had some time to make some pretty and SPOOKY art! Students worked with tempura paint and added white to tint their base colour and create a beautiful back drop for a haunted house!

This afternoon they will take some times writing FOR SALE ads for their spooky houses!

Making Connections!

This week our reading focus has been Making Connections: I can connect what I have read to other text, to myself and the world. When making connections, we relate a piece of the story or entire story to an experience we have felt, read or heard about in the world. We use worlds like "This reminds me of..." or "I can relate to this because.."

We started out with finding connections, text to self. I read the class Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. A book where everything just seems to go wrong. Then the students completed a double journal entry, choosing a section from the book that they had experienced or could relate to.
Next we connected text to text, by reading Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. This book reminded us of a couple other stories, but mainly, the original Goldilocks. As a class, we chose an example from the book that we could relate to the original story.

Finally, we read Something Beautiful- a story of a girl who is from a low income area and is looking for something beautiful. As she goes around her neighbourhood she learns what every person finds beautiful and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We could relate this to other ideas we know in our world and how not everyone has the same living situation.


In Math, we are almost done patterns! We will be having our unit test on Monday and doing some review activities at the end of this week.
We are now able to identify if a pattern is increasing or decreasing, describe attributes, identify pattern rules, extend a pattern with a rule and translate patterns into T tables.

In Social, we have begun to read about the 6 Natural Regions of Alberta. Students read descriptions of the regions, compared them and located them on a map of Alberta. Using visualization, in small groups students read about the regions and drew pictures of what they imagined they might look like. We also used Quizlet this week to practice our social terms! Quizlet is an interactive vocab stusying guide where students can work off vocabulary lists I have made or create their own list and play games.

In Science we have been working with pulleys and demonstrating how they work! Using the monkey bars on our playground, we used a simple pulley to lift a chair off the ground. Depending where we attached the pulley really made a difference in our effort needed!
When we attach the pulley to a fixed location (like the monkey bar) and try to lift the chair it felt about the same in effort. However, when we moved the pulley to be attached to the load and anchored our rope on the other side our effort was reduced by half! Then we used a pulley to send a bucket from side to side.