Hello again!
What a wonderful day. We started off our morning with some Science for a change! Students have begin to examine wetlands ecosystems. Yesterday we discussed some of the plant life that might be found in a pond. Today we added some animals! Wetlands are unique ecosystems filled with producers, consumers, and decomposers. Producers are green plants that are creating their own food, consumers need to consume plants and other animals for food, and decomposers are recycling organic material. That means they eat dead animals/plants, and the nutrients is added back into the ecosystem! Some examples of wetlands producers are waterlilies, water-weeds, duck-weeds, etc. Some examples of consumers are kingfishers, ducks, frogs, dragonflies, etc. Finally, we might find some worms, beetles, and bacteria, also known as the decomposers. Ecosystems are very complex, but also very fragile. We can examine the food chains of an ecosystem to study this further.
Eg.
Marigold <— Butterfly <— Frog <— Snake <— Hawk <— Maggots
Food chains are only a small part of an ecosystem, because most consumers are able to consume a variety of plants or animals! In fact, there are 5 categories of consumers:
- Herbivores
- Carnivores
- Omnivores
- Scavengers
- Decomposers
This creates a complex web of relationships between the creatures in an ecosystem, and if one part of the web is damaged or destroyed, all the other parts of the web are affected. This is why ecosystems are so fragile. Students demonstrated this by creating a giant web of their own! We each got to be a wetlands animal or plant, and had to use some yarn to track or connections in the ecosystem! It was hard and very complex! Lots of us were holding a lots more than one string!
Check out our current topics at the below link:
http://prezi.com/ehzxrklo8it2/wetland-interactions/
In Social we have moved away from discussing French contributions to Canadian culture. We are discussing the migration of other cultural groups throughout Canada. We have started with the expulsion of the Acadians, and will finish discussing the Loyalists tomorrow.
The Gr. 5 students are writing a small quiz tomorrow on Transformations! Don’t forget to review your reflections, translations, and rotations tonight! The Gr. 4 worked on multiplying 3-digit by 1-digit numbers today. We utilized the same strategies as yesterday: modelling, expanding, break-apart, and traditional short multiplication. Tomorrow we are moving on to division!
In D.P.A. today we all learned a new Dance. Special thanks to the student who taught it to the class! You were a great teacher! Want to do the Sid Shuffle at home? Check out the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMuJxd2Gpxo
Finally, 2 permission forms went home today. One is for our planned field trip to Heritage Park. We were scheduled to go to Heritage Park on June 20th. As many of you know, Heritage Park has been greatly affected by the downtown flooding. As a result this field trip is pending until further notice. Please sign and return the permission slip just in case we are able to go ahead or reschedule the trip! We had also planned to walk to the Brett Dr. storm pond on Friday this week. Due to the large amounts of rain, we will also be postponing this trip until further notice. Please sign and return this form. The next available dry and SAFE day, we will go further with this activity.
Homework: Spelling Quiz – Friday
Read 20 minutes
Math: Gr. 4 – pgs. 297-298 #1-9
Gr. 5 – Show What You Know
– Unit Test (tomorrow!)
Yearbook Orders – June 24th ($20)
Jump Rope for Heart – June 14th! (Friday)
Jump Day – June 18th