January 26, 2023

Hello Families, 

It was an exciting week for hands-on learning! We pulled apart the main ideas, supporting details, and themes for the stories we have been creating and acted everything out using loose parts! If you want to check them out from home they exist within an app called FlipGrid on Google Classroom. We also worked to finalize all of our story planning and put all of the puzzle pieces together into a "One Page Master Plan" which will support us with writing our stories. We have been encouraging students to think carefully about the process of writing, which includes planning, revising, editing, and feedback, and valuing the process over the finished product. 

Here's the feedback list we completed today after writing the beginning of our stories and considering the following elements:

Within the story work, we have also been looking closely at various different kinds of cartooning and developing our own skills as cartoon illustrators. This work will come in handy when we are ready to finalize our stories. The ideas have been excellent, for example, the cute cheerio, the grouchy brownie (inspired by a teacher you may know...), the silly strawberry, the cheesy pizza, etc. 

We looked at an assessment task within math to gauge students understanding of multiplication strategies. The work for grade 3's and 4's is below for you to check out:

We have also been looking at the relationship between the following concepts within Social Studies in relation to Alberta (grade 4) and India (grade 3). We are creating maps with cardboard and modelling clay to create realistic landscapes and identify the natural resources of the regions. Students should be familiar with all of the following terms:

- natural resources

- physical geography/landforms

- import

- export

- goods

- services

Also, please remember tomorrow (Friday, January 27) is Family Literacy Day. The link below has several easy literacy games you can play at home - also the videos feature our class members! Please be sure to check it out, here's the link https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dzbmTocQfj0Tzf2yAKiCeWXZrFtjUAui8fqbijCJmU4/edit?usp=sharing

We are looking for volunteers to support with our Artist in Residence. Please email me if you are available to help during the following times:

Tuesday, Jan. 31 from 12:30-1:30PM

Monday, Feb. 6 from 9:00-10:00AM

Tuesday, Feb 7 from 12:30-1:30PM

Thursday, Feb 9 from 9:00-10:00AM

Upcoming 

• January 30 – Report Cards available to families 

• Feb 3 – Professional Learning Day – no school for students 

Take care, 

Ms. Brown

Family Literacy Day

 

January 12, 2023

Hello Families, 

We are all happy to return to school and routines this week! It sounds like the holiday season was exciting for all.  

In Math, we took the week to review what we had learned before the break, including addition and subtraction with regrouping, decimals, and multiplication. 

In Language Arts and Literacy, we started our inquiry about story writing, we will be using the guiding question, What makes a story engaging? We took the time to read and dissect The Bad Seed book series. Students got the opportunity to identify and act out different components of the stories such as the hook, problem, solution, setting, etc. We will be building on story writing over the next couple weeks using these books as our anchor texts. 

Here's the video we watched about Theme: https://youtu.be/xwkKBIzpRXE

Here's the video we watched about Main Idea: https://youtu.be/xJGQIYU_xhs

Link to Dustin Short Film

We used the reference videos above to fill out the information about the Dustin short film, and deduce the theme based on the main idea. 

In Social Studies, we are learning about physical geography of specific places. Grade 3's are looking at India and Grade 4's are looking at Alberta. 

In Science, we started to explore light and shadow. Looking at the different forms of light as well as beginning to understand energy. 

Class Pet 

Our class pets have finally arrived! We got two vampire crabs, one male and one female. The students have been super excited to observe them throughout the day. They are still getting used to their new enclosure and are timid but they do pop out from time to time. 

Reminder: We go outside each day, students should bring appropriate clothing and footwear for the day.

Friendly Reminders: 

• Monday, January 30 - Report Cards (online) 

• Friday, February 3 - No School - Non-Instructional Day

• Thursday, February 16 & Friday, February 17 - No School - Teachers Convention 

• Monday, February 20 - No School - Family Day 

Take care and wishing you all the best in 2023!

Ms. Brown