This has been a very busy week. We continue to demonstrate a great amount of rigor! Students are very dedicated to doing their best work every, single day. I continue to be very proud of the growth that has already happened in our classroom.
Firstly, thank you to all those who were able to donate a Toonie to Terry Fox!! We did amazing and raised $55 in just our class alone. Well done Grade 4! We began our day with an introduction to handwriting. Some students have already begun to master this skill. However, we will practice throughout the year. We focused specifically on the formation of the letter a. Our science experiment is really coming along. Some of our beans are already 12cm tall after only one short week. However, others have still not grown. We had a very interesting discussion about why this would occur considering all of the plants needs are met. Ask me how tall my bean was today. We completed a Cinquain poem today. They tell the reader about various kinds of trees and the leaves that grow on them. It also had us use adjectives and verbs to describe these leaves. See if I can remember what adjectives or verbs I used in my poem. Guided reading builds our vocabulary, comprehension and fluency. Mrs. Otterson will work with students once or twice a week to help them build these skills. In art we used story strips to tell about our life or our individual stories using pictures and drawings that represented us. Reminders: October 6 & 7 - Book your parent-teacher conference (using the My CBE Account button on the New Brighton homepage). October 10 - Thanksgiving (No School)
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Today we got to visit the library. Mrs. Hammond has let us take two books home to read. These will need to be returned each week before your child is able to take another two books out from the library.
We learned about Terry Fox and his journey across Canada. The students discussed how he overcame challenges, how Terry raised money for cancer research and how he was an inspiration to millions of people. We will be participating in a school wide run tomorrow to show our support for his mission! If you would like to donate a Toonie for cancer research, please send in a plastic bag with your child's name on it tomorrow. Our writing today centered around "What is a hero?". We created brain bubbles that discussed all the characteristics of a hero. Then we were to take those words and apply them in our own writing about who is inspirational to us or who our hero is. In math we continue at patterns and use counting on strategies. We also need to focus on reading for meaning when completing word problems. Guided reading was awesome! The students all did wonderful work and were focused on the task at hand. Ask your child which Literacy Station they visited today. Science - WOW! Some of our beans have really grown. One student had a bean that was 9cm tall!! We also read the story "We Planted a Tree" by Diane Muldrow and illustrated by Bob Staake. The book focused on photosythensis, how plants make clorophyll and different types plants around the world! Reminder: Terry Fox Tomorrow Choir Tomorrow Happy Tuesday everyone! We began our morning with a great new game that Miss N taught us in the gym called Ace Master. Two people were ace masters and they had to try and find each other. The rest of the students were divided into teams. Students had playing cards and if they were tagged they had to show their card with the higher card winning.
Writing was a wonderful opportunity to share the work we have done around researching plants and creating informational pieces of writing. Students offered lots of positive feedback. As well, we began learning about cinquain poems. We worked together to brainstorm a list of adjectives and verbs that described leaves in Autumn. Our basic recall of simple mathematical facts is coming along. Students have learned they are much more efficient when solving word problems if they have a good understanding of mathematical operations and strategies for adding. We attempted to listen to reading and conduct research on the computers for our study of the six regions of Alberta but, technology was really not cooperating. We will have to conduct research the "old fashion" way - using books! Science continues to be an exciting time of exploration :) We have observed the changes in our bean seeds and measured their growth. We also decided as a class to plant a second bean seed to see what would happen if a plant did not have all its needs met. Some very interesting predictions are being made. Reminders: September 28 - Dance Club September 29 - This week we will be collecting Toonies for Terry. Our Terry Fox run is this Thursday starting at 9:30am in the gym. On Thursday each child will be given a label where they can put the name of the person they are running for. Please talk to your child about who they could dedicate their run to. Today was super fun and went by super fast! Lots of learning was happening in room 145 today :)
In the gym we played a game called Smuggler. Miss N chose 3 or 5 police and some students had "gold". You had to try to sneak across the gym without being caught/tagged by the police. We continued our practice of counting on using word problems. Tomorrow we will review them as a class. Today was also our first fire drill. The students were amazing at lining up quickly and quietly to make their way onto the field. Well done grade 4. During writing we have wrapped up our paragraphs about plants. Tomorrow we will have the opportunity to share with our classmates all the interesting research we conducted about plants. As we go along this year we will also be working on self editing. In music we had a guest teacher and continued our work with boomwackers. Guided Reading was a blast. We have been introduced to Literacy Stations. Ask me if I remember about all the stations. We have completed our beautiful art project about leaves. We focused on using vibrant colours and blended water colours to make the leaves pop out. This will tie in with the writing we will be doing about the story of a leaf. Science was spectacular! Some amazing things happened over the weekend. Our beans have SPROUTED and grown roots. We have placed them in the Learning Commons because they will get natural sunlight and other students can observe our experiment. Reminders: Dance forms have been returned. Students that are chosen will know tomorrow. Terry Fox Run - September 29th (bring a Toonie for Terry) Choir begins tomorrow for those students that signed up. In science we furthered our study of plants by planting beans! We learned that a bean seed has a seed coat, a cotyledon (the nutrients for the bean), and an embryo (where the sprout comes from). In our visual journals we sketched a diagram that represented the story of a plant. Photosynthesis is when a plant makes its own food using carbon dioxide and sunlight and water. As our beans grow we will be observing the changes in the plant and measuring the plant growth on day 7 and day 14.
Our focus in math was word problems. Students had to solve a variety of 2-digit problems. Some worked independently, others with a friend and some with Mrs. Otterson. For physical education we played a good old fashioned game of kick ball outside! It was super fun and lots of running. Great teamwork by all students. We also had the opportunity to meet with Mrs. Hammond in the Learning Commons. She told us about how to sign out books. Students are welcome to sign out two books for a week at a time. If they wish they can renew them to finish reading. Students can take the books home as long as they are careful with them and promise to return them on time :) Today we were lucky and had the opportunity to read with a partner in guided reading. Students will also be working with Mrs. Otterson and Mrs. H on a daily basis to improve their reading skills. Lastly, we learned that Alberta has six different regions. We watched a short video that talked about the different wildlife, the landscaped, the weather, etc. We realized that some of the information we already knew about Alberta was correct. C is for Chinook by Dawn Welykochy was wonderful introduction into our study of this province. Dance forms were sent home for those that were interested. Reminders: School Council - September 22 PD Day (No School) - September 23 Terry Fox Run - September 29 Today most of us finished our All About Me Poem on the computer. It went much smoother logging on and finding the right file. Students also had the chance to practice developing their keyboarding skills when they were finished their work. They visited the site www.typingclub.com.
In the gym we played yet another new game! Secret Agent Tag had students pretending to be in a village. Students went to "sleep" and their hand was touched if they were a secret agent. A doctor had to save the people the agents tagged. It was awesome! We continue to develop our number sense in math. Please continue to practice basic addition and subtraction at home with your child. We will be beginning to use this skill as we learn about word problems. Mrs. Otterson began a new book in Read Aloud. The Secret Garden is a story that takes place in 1910 and is a story about a little girl that is orphaned by her parents and is very selfish and spoiled. It is very intriguing. Most of us are finished our visual journal cover so there is no longer a need to send in magazines or flyers. Thank you to all that were able to help contribute to this art project. Social studies had us brainstorming all the things we thought we knew about Alberta. Your challenge is to find one interesting fact about Alberta and to make a comment on the blog. In science we read the picture book "Living Sunlight" by Molly Bang and Penny Chishom. This book explores concepts like photosynthesis and how plants are responsible for all life on earth. Tomorrow we will begin our experiment where we will plant beans to see what things plants need to survive. Important Dates: September 22 - School Council Meeting September 23 - PD Day (No School) September 29 - Terry Fox Run Today in grade 4 we gained a new friend! Her name is Lily. She is our resident frog. We took a vote to decide on her name. She is our classroom guardian, looking out for us. Students will be helping to care for her throughout the year.
We had the opportunity to use technology as well - horray! Students have written poems about themselves and had the chance to type them in word. It is a learning curve to log in and learn to use Microsoft word. We will get much better as time goes on. We also continued learning about when to use capitals and punctuation in our writing. It will be part of the self and peer editing process this year. In science, we discovered that the flowers absorbed water more quickly than celery. Our conclusion was that perhaps they have more capillaries or are more effective at using water. Counting on both forward and backward continues to be an important skill in math. Please continue to practice basic facts with your child every day. Miss N taught us yet another new game! The game was called "Tails". Each student had two pinnies in their pockets. Students tried to take the pinnies away from each other until there was an ultimate winner. Ask your child for more details. We continue to be kind friends to each other. We had one small accident in the gym but worked together to make sure everyone was safe and that the person who was hurt was okay. We're all alright :) In music we are learning the Star Wars song with boomwackers! Reminder: Don't forget your choir forms. Today was a fabulous Friday! Thank you to all the families that had the opportunity to come to the Meet the Teacher last night. For those of you that did not get a chance to come, formal interviews will be held in October. More information will follow about how to a book a conference.
Today another student had a birthday in our classroom! We are really growing up in here :) In science, we observed the changes to our celery and flowers that occurred over night. Here's what we noticed:
As a way to grow to know each other, we wrote All About Me poems using descriptive words like those in our acrostic poems. Addition war really brought out the competition in our room! Students had to take two cards and find the sum. The bigger sum was the winner. We are also creating beautiful art for our visual journals. Please send in magazines. Have a lovely weekend. |
Mrs. OttersonTeacher at New Brighton School and lover of the great outdoors! Archives
June 2017
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