Hello again!
Spring is officially here, or at least it is at Timberlea school! Our playground and field are wet! Makes me glad that I wore boots today.
In Math, all the students are doing a fantastic job. Our current unit for both Gr. 4’s and Gr. 5’s has been fun and challenging, and it is great to see all the hard work that everyone has been putting into learning these new skills, and practicing them at home. The Gr. 4 students reviewed our lesson from yesterday before moving on today. It was a tricky one. Students are feeling more confident now. We also discussed comparing fractions of different wholes and sets. For example, 1/3 of 12 will be smaller than 1/3 of 21. We know this because 21 is the bigger whole or set! However, we can also check our estimate by using the skills we learned yesterday. 1/3 of 12 = 4 and 1/3 of 21 = 7. The Gr. 5 students have started discussing thousandths. This required a review of some of our place value concepts from earlier this year. We are practicing our expanded notation, as well as learning how this new place value place affects some of our modelling strategies.
Eg. 91.456 = 90 + 1 + 0.4 + 0.05 + 0.006
In Science today our Gr. 4’s completed their Unit Test. I saw lots of students reviewing their study guide this morning, and I hope that everyone felt prepared. Please don’t forget to bring in your green workbooks tomorrow. The Gr. 5 students are finishing their Electricity Unit. They will be writing their Unit Test next Thursday. Today we continued our discussion of measuring electrical usage.
In Language Arts today we worked with couplet poems. We reviewed our lesson on rhyming from last week, and students started to write their own couplet poems. They were inspired by Maya Angelou’s “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” and I heard some really great rhyming pairs being discussed today. I heard about: creatures with strange features, robbers in the night being a fright, a teacher getting mad at us and being late for the bus! That one made me laugh. I hope I don’t get mad too often! Stay tuned to hear more about our completed poems, which are due on Monday.
Homework: Read 20 minutes
Reading Journals/Readingo – tomorrow
Spelling Quiz – tomorrow
Multiplication Quiz – tomorrow
Language Arts: Couplet Poems (Mon.)
Math: Gr. 4 – pg. 187 #1-4
Gr. 5 – pg. 185-186 #1-13
Science: Gr. 5 – Unit Test (Thurs.)
Book Orders – April 26th
Stuff Swap – Monday, April 22nd (Bring 3 items!)
Spirit Week: Monday – Backward Day (canned goods)
Tuesday – PJ Day (pastas)
Wednesday – School Colours (coffee, teas)
Thursday – Multicultural Sports Day (hygiene)
Friday – Crazy Hair Day (cereal)
Spelling Words: communities, countries, commute, comment, commits, minutes, cousin, cities, insect, income
Special Note – Thanks for all the questions and concerns I received about my father this week. He is safe. He had finished his race before the explosions. The concern from students and parents definitely made a stressful week much easier for me, and I will be sure to pass on all your lovely messages to him.