November 18-21

Grade 4 Weekly Blog

We want to say a huge thank you to all the parents and guardians that came to see us for conferences. Discussing your child's learning face to face gives us the chance to celebrate all the hard work they are doing. It also allows us the time to explain thoroughly what challenges they face and provide strategies to help them overcome them.

Upcoming events
-Teachers Pet Tuesday at 1pm: Volunteers still needed
-Fun lunch Wednesday -Pita Basket

- Grade 4 Assembly Thursday, November 28 at 3:00pm

Homework

*We will not be having a spelling test for the next few weeks as we are focusing on our "Writer's Workshop"
Social: Finish your My Alberta Interview
French: Finish your french comic
Art: Finish your Rocky Mountain Pastel

Literacy

Dress up as your favorite Story Book Character

This week we began our "Writers's Workshop!" After discussing the various reasons why writer's write, we always came back to the fact that writer's write for a reader. We are going to be learning how to write interested stories by focusing on the following:

- Character development

- Creating a setting that creates a vivid image for the reader

- A problem that engages the reader and then wants to read on

- Various attempts and fails to solve the problem

- A solution that satisfies the reader

- A conclusion where the characters learn a lesson from their experience

They are using folders for this unit so if they need to take home some writing to keep up with the class pace they will be bringing home their "Writer's Workshop" folder.

Students created a "Heart Map" which contains all things they are passionate about and would like to write a story about. This is a brainstorming technique to avoid "Writer's Block".

  

Students used ideas from their brainstorming sheet to create 4 story ideas with a problem.

 

Students chose one of these story ideas to write for 20 minutes of uninterrupted speed writing.

     

Math

Can you estimate numbers to the nearest 10 or 100 or 1000? Looking at the number 351- when rounding to the nearest hundred do you round up or down? Explain to someone in your family the rule for rounding numbers.

HINT- 5 is the most important number.

Using a number line can help with estimating. Knowing your number facts is also important. Activity: Continue to play these games to develop your number sense.

Make Ten (or ?)

16 Boxes

Social Studies

Students have now written their interview questions for "MY ALBERTA" which can be found in their google docs account. This can be logged in and accessed at home for them to conduct their interview with the person they chose. Our focus is to find out as much as we can about your families and how you have been and are connected to Alberta. Some sample questions include:

1. Where did our ancestors come from? What culture/traditions did we bring?
2.How long have you lived in Alberta?

3. How far back does our ancestry connect to Alberta?

4. What cities and places have you visited?

5. Do you have a favourite or special place in Alberta that has become a family tradition?
6. What stories do we have to share about our family history?

Homework- please make sure you have finished your interview so you can start your google slides presentation this week. If you already started did you think of other questions that you would like to include in your presentation?

We learned to use features of our textbook to look up Geography. 

Question: How does this exercise help us with our study of Alberta and learning in general?

French

This week we expanded our repertoire of answers to Comment Ca va?

Question: Comment Ca va?

We created a comic strip which will be turned into a stop motion cartoon. The comic has to include at least one emotion expression and at least one subject we have covered in french For example: numbers (les nombres), colors (les couleurs), food (Je mange)..., Fall-(en automne), weather-(Quel temp fait-itl?), playing games(les jou), birthdays(bon anniversaire), Halloween (C'est Haloween), What do you do? (Que-ce que tu fait?)

Question: What is your comic about?