Did You Know…? The largest wasp in the world is the Asian giant hornet. It’s 2 inches long with a 3 inch wingspan.

Good evening,

The Grade 4 students and I worked on a final unit problem today in Math. While we have studied pictographs and bar graphs throughout the unit, we have not practiced creating a pictograph or bar graph from data that we have collected. Today I asked the students to come up with a question, sample their classmates, and then use the data to create a pictograph and a bar graph. My examples are below:

Tomorrow we will begin our new unit on Patterns and Equations!

In Language Arts today, we reviewed our lessons from last week on topic sentences. To begin, students were challenged to find the topic sentence in the following paragraph:

It took some discussion and some debate, but we finally all agreed that even though it occurred later in the paragraph, we felt that “Eric Carle is a successful artist whose style in known all over the world” was the best topic sentence. Why? A topic sentence clearly states the main idea of a paragraph, and we felt that this sentence summarized the main idea best. The rest of the sentences were the details that supported it. Our next topic of discussion will be on the main details of paragraphs.

In French today, we first reviewed our “Est-ce que je peux…” sentences from last week. Then, to have the students practicing speaking these sentences, they played charades. One student would act out the action of the sentence, while the others would guess. Students had to guess in French. Afterwards, we began to discuss “La Politesse” or politeness (Politeness – Powerpoint). Students were introduced to some new words and phrases that they would use to politely interact in French. We learned:

• Merci (Thank You)
• S’il Vous Plaît (Please)
• Excusez-moi (Excuse me)
• Au Revoir (Goodbye)
• À Bientôt (See You Soon)
• À Demain (See You Tomorrow)
• Beinvenue (You’re Welcome)

Students can now use these expressions with our previous sentences, in order to be polite. For example, students could say:

“Excusez-moi, est-ce que je peux aller aux toilettes, s’il vous plaît?”

This would be more polite. It would also be more correct in a way. French, for the most part, is a more formal language. Individuals rarely address others as casually as we do in English. So, when not speaking to family or close friends, being polite is very important when speaking in French. Finally, we watched the following video as a fun way to review some of the sentences and expressions we have learned so far this year:

We had our classroom reward today and watched “Wayside School: The Movie.” We thought this would be a good choice because we have just finished reading “Sideways Stories From Wayside School” by Louis Sachar as our read aloud book. Thank you for helping to clean up soo quickly this afternoon everyone. Even with all the blankets, pillows, popcorn, and juice, the classroom looked great at the end of the day.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Practice spelling words (student Agenda, SpellingCity)

Math:

• Statistics and Probability Unit Test (Oct. 5nd – Grade 5)
• Worksheet #1-8 (Grade 5)

Social:

• Provinces/Capitals Quiz (Thursday – Grade 4 and 5)

Did You Know…? Four-leafed clovers gain their extra leaves as a result of stress.

Good evening!

We had a very busy day today. It started with our first Virtue Assembly of the year. Together we listened to the Grade 6 classes share a little about this month’s virtue, humility. Then students were reminded of our school’s commitment to anti-bullying and to the anti-bullying pledge that students are asked to take every year. Finally, we discussed our Terry Fox fundraising. The school met it’s goal of $5,000 which meant that Mr. D lost his hair today! As someone in our class today said, “It’s kind of sad. But also kind of funny.” Congratulations to our award winners for the month of September: Risolat, Kylie, Rylan, Chloe, and Ashton (Star Student, Classroom Citizen, Apple Student, Timberlea Spirit, and Reader of the Month), and to our two howler lunch winners: Kylie and Alex H.

In Science today, the Grade 4 students started to discuss decomposers. Using the IPads, the students discovered the following decomposers: worms, slugs, earthworms, flies, beetles, bacteria, fungi, termites, ants, snails, mites, nematodes, leeches, mushrooms, mildew, yeast, houseflies, maggots, mold, cockroaches, centipedes, etc. and shared their findings with one another. We are going to be taking a closer look at two of those decomposers in upcoming classes: mold and nematodes. We started to discuss mold today. We are conducting an experiment to see how long it takes for different foods to mold or decompose. Students each chose an item from their lunch, sealed it in a bag, and will be recording observations of their bag for the next few classes. The apples have already started to change!

The Grade 5 students took a closer look at precipitation. Last week we learned about humidity and about water vapour in the air. This week, we will be looking at the water cycle and precipitation that results from water vapour. Today we discussed rain, snow, sleet, and hail. We also watched an episode of “Magic School Bus” that demonstrates the differences between the four. When warm air rises in the atmosphere, it cools, becoming less able to hold moisture. When the air can no longer hold any moisture, it has become saturated and little water droplets begin to form. We see these droplets as clouds. If it gets colder, the droplets will join together, forming raindrops. If the air is below freezing (0ºC), snow will form. If the droplets freeze when the hit cold surfaces (that are below freezing – 0ºC), we call this sleet or freezing rain. Finally, hail forms when strong updrafts push the raindrops back up into the atmosphere. These drops begin to freeze. As the fall back to earth, they melt, only to be pushed back up by strong updrafts once again. This continues until the layers of ice around that first raindrop are so heavy that they fall to earth as hail. This is why you usually only see hail on stormy, windy days!

Finally, we had a great time enjoying the warm weather as part of our Terry Fox Walk today. We watched the following video to remind ourselves of the significance of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope. This video was created by a young man, Jamie McDonald, who ran across Canada collecting money for SickKids 2-3 years ago. You can view more of his videos through his website (http://jamiemcdonald.org/).

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Practice spelling words (student Agenda, SpellingCity)

Math:

• Statistics and Probability Unit Test (Oct. 5nd – Grade 5)
• Worksheet #1-8 (Grade 5)

Social:

• Provinces/Capitals Quiz (Wednesday – Grade 4 and 5)

Picture Day – tomorrow!

Class Movie Day – Wednesday (don’t wear Pajamas, bring them – it’s also picture day!)

Did You Know…? An Ancient Japanese legend says that earthquakes are actually caused by a giant restless underground catfish.

Good afternoon,

The Grade 4 students completed their Data Analysis unit test today. I will be sending home the marked copies, as well as students updated data sheets for the unit once I have all the tests graded – hopefully late this week or early next week. Tomorrow we will be completed a small unit project before moving on to Patterns and Equations.

This morning we were fortunate enough to attend a presentation by Earth Rangers. We saw some amazing (and cute) animal ambassadors. My personal favourite was the 4-month old skunk! Earth Rangers is a kids’ conversation organization that is meant to inspire youth to become directly involved in protecting animals and their habitats. Students who are interested can sign up for a membership at www.earthrangers.com. Students can also become involved in the “Bring Back the Wild” campagin, which has students work on different fundraising projects to protect 4 endangered Canadian species. The species this year are: Little Brown Bat, Peregrine Falcon, Wolverine, and Cold-Water Coral.

In Language Arts today, we continued to look at free verse poetry. Students were reminded of our lesson last week, in which we learned that a free verse poem does not have a rhyme or rhythm pattern. However, poets use punctuation like commas and periods to give the reader clues as to how they should be read and how they should sound. Today we added to this. Students practiced reading their found poem aloud, adding expression to the poem. Almost like a performance, rather than just reading the poem. We will continue to explore these concepts in upcoming classes.

Students also had their first quiz on the provinces today. Many students struggled. Please review the provinces with your student at home, as we have another quiz on Wednesday, and we are adding capitals. Students can practice using the map in the student agenda or by visiting some of the links on the Social page (side links).

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Practice spelling words (student Agenda, SpellingCity)

Math:

• Statistics and Probability Unit Test (Oct. 5nd – Grade 5)
• Worksheet #1-8 (Grade 5)

Social:

• Provinces/Capitals Quiz (Wednesday – Grade 4 and 5)

Terry Fox Walk Permission Forms/Donations – tomorrow! (Safiya, Brady, Mohammad, Amira missing)

Picture Day – September 30th

Class Movie Day – Wednesday (don’t wear Pajamas, bring them – it’s also picture day!)

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Math:

• Data Analysis Unit Test (Mon. – Grade 4)
• pgs. 272-273 #1-4 (Grade 4)
• Statistics and Probability Unit Test (Oct. 2nd – Grade 5)
• Unit Problem (Grade 5)

Social:

• Provinces Quiz (Monday – Grade 4 and 5)

Terry Fox Walk Permission Forms/Donations – September 29th

Picture Day – September 30th

Did You Know…? There are, on average, 2.4 billion ants to the square mile in the jungle.

Good evening,

The Grade 4 students worked on reviewing and practicing for their upcoming unit test today in Math. We were allowed to work in small groups (2-3 students). In Math, we have a rule that helps us to work together as a class. The rule is, “Ask 3 Before Me.” This means that students are encouraged to seek assistance from one another. Students who are having trouble with a question ask 3 classmates first. If they still don’t understand then they ask me for further assistance, and together we do some lesson review. We also utilize our “Math Experts” to help with this. When a student has completed the assigned work, their name gets written under “Math Experts” on the board. That way other students can quickly see their name and know who to ask for help for “3 Before Me.” Students who did not complete their practice questions today in class, will be bringing it home for homework.

In Language Arts today, we worked on the next topic for the Ideas writing trait. Today we began to discuss topic sentences. A topic sentence clearly states the main idea of a paragraph. Together we read through some paragraphs and discussed which topic sentence better encapsulated the main idea. See an example below:

We will continue to discuss topic sentences next week, and then we will be practicing writing our own in our paragraphing book!

In Social Studies today, students were challenged to draw what they think Canada looks like. They had to include the provinces/territories, capital cities, and major bodies of water. We had some great drawings for students who are just beginning this next topic! We will return to these maps at the end of this topic so that we can compare what we know now with what we will know at the end. It’s going to be really fun to be able to see how much we have learned. We are going to begin by learning our provinces/territories. Students listened to and sang the following song to get us started:

Then we practiced labeling our provinces with a game from Sheppard Software (All About Canada). Students should be practicing their provinces every night for the next little while. Try using the Agenda to quiz students or letting them listen to the above song and play the above games at home. Our first quiz will be on the provinces on Monday.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Practice Spelling Words (test tomorrow)

Math:

• Data Analysis Unit Test (Mon. – Grade 4)
• pgs. 268-269 #2, 3, 5 (Grade 4)
• Statistics and Probability Unit Test (Oct. 2nd – Grade 5)
• finish graph (Grade 5)

Science:

• Left-handed notebook pages (Grs. 4 and 5 – Fri.)
• Temperature Quiz (Fri. – Grade 5)

Social:

• Provinces Quiz (Monday – Grade 4 and 5)

Terry Fox Walk Permission Forms/Donations – September 29th

Book Orders – Sept. 25th

Picture Day – September 30th

Library Tomorrow (Day 2)

Did You Know…? If left alone in a tank for too long, a lobster will eat itself.

Good afternoon,

Today in Math, the Grade 4’s completed their 3rd and final quiz for this unit. Students are bringing home a copy of the mid-unit evaluation they completed earlier this week. I’ve asked the students to review the sheet tonight and to correct any of their mistakes. They make need to do this on a separate piece of paper. This way, students who have any questions before their unit test on Monday, will be able to come and speak to me and get some extra help. Students also have new assigned review in the mathletics that they can be using to begin practicing for the test.

In Health today, we discussed body image for the second day. Earlier this week, we brainstormed some of the qualities that a “perfect” person would have. We wrote down things like: tall, athletic, nice clothing, clean, young, nice belongings, etc. However, some students started to think a little deeper about the question. They began adding qualities like: kind, friendly, supportive, clever, etc. We then looked at some images from magazines. Students were asked to consider if the people in the pictures were “beautiful.” After a class discussion we decided that it takes more than makeup and nice clothes to be beautiful. We decided that personality is really important. We also discussed whether people we see in magazine, or on tv and movies are realistic. Finally, we decided that no one is perfect, but that there was something about everyone that could make them beautiful. Today we continued this with a yoga/guided meditation activity. Students were asked to give positive affirmations to themselves throughout. Students can access this video anytime, through GoNoodle. It is called “Be Kind to Yourself” and it is under Empower Tools. To sign up for GoNoodle at home, click on the Health page (side links) for more information.

In Science today, the Grade 5 students discussed the effects that the sun’s energy has on daily temperature. We did a small demonstration with a flashlight. We found that the suns’ rays covered the most land at 12:00 pm (noon), and the least land at 6:00 am (sunrise) and 6:00 pm (sunset). Then we discussed the temperatures that one could expect to find at these times of day. It will be coolest just before sunrise, because the land has been without light all night and has been cooling down. It will actually be the warmest around 3:00 pm (mid-afternoon). Why? Well, even though the land gets more light at 12:00 pm, the land hasn’t been heating up for as long. The land at 3:00 pm has been absorbing heat all day. Finally, it will not be as cool out at 6:00 pm as it is at 6:00 am, because the land has been heating up for most of the day, and has only begun to cool down. We took the following notes in our interactive notebooks:

The Grade 4 students watched the following video on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to begin their lesson:

We discussed how the materials we use have changed. At one time, humans used mostly natural materials. As time passed, our needs changed and we began to develop new materials. There are positive attributes to these materials: they are more durable, they are weather resistant, etc. An example would be leathers for clothing vs. polyesters for clothing. However, as we learned last class, these materials degrade very slowly, causing some challenges as to how to deal with waste management. Students were asked to consider and share some of the things that we can do to reduce the amount of waste that we produce.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Practice Spelling Words

Math:

• Data Analysis Unit Test (Mon. – Grade 4)
• Review Mid-Unit Assessment (Grade 4)
• Pgs. 290-191 – at least half (Grade 5)

Science:

• Left-handed notebook pages (Grs. 4 and 5 – Fri.)
• Temperature Quiz (Fri. – Grade 5)

Terry Fox Walk Permission Forms/Donations – September 29th

Book Orders – Sept. 25th

Picture Day – September 30th

Did You Know…? The term ‘geek’ originally referred to circus performers who bit the heads off live chickens.

Good evening,

The Grade 4 students have now completed their current Math unit – Data Analysis. They will be reviewing in class over the next 3 days and will be bring home review work. Students should also be reviewing by using their Mathletics accounts (see student Agendas for passwords). Finally, click on the Math page (side links) to download extra workbooks for this unit, for those who are interested. Our unit test will be on Monday, September 28th.

In Language Arts today, we reviewed proper nouns. To do this, we did a quick Café activity. Each table was given a topic. Together, they had to come up with as many proper nouns as they could for that topic. Then, after two minutes, they switched tables. Students continued to rotate until they had completed all of the topics. Finally, each group was given back one of the topic sheets. Together they had to edit the sheet; looking for missing capitalize or eliminating words that didn’t belong or were not specific enough to be proper nouns.

In Social Studies, we reviewed longitude and latitude. Students rewatched the following video (which I promised to post):

We also played Battleship once again, in order to get more practice giving directions on a grid and using our cardinal directions. We will be moving on to the provinces, territories, and capitals next!

In Computers today, students were asked to utilize their Mathletics accounts. Each grade was assigned 2 activities from their current unit. I will be assigning activities periodically each week for the remainder of the school year. It is a good idea for students to use their Mathletics at home a minimum of 2-3 times per week. Mathletics is directly linked to our curriculum and is a great way to provide students with extra review, support, as well as extensions to their current knowledge/learning.

In French today we learned a new sentence starter… “Est-ce que je peux…” which means “Can I?” in English. To practice, we learned some common sentences that begin with “Est-ce que”:

The powerpoint (with voice clips) that we used today, as well as a summary page have been posted on the French page (side links).

Finally, today students were given their first set of spelling words for the year. To begin the year, students will be receiving 10 spelling words per week. As we progress, this will increase. Students are asked to review their spelling words at home each night. We will be having in-class spelling tests each Friday that we have school. This means that sometimes students will have 2 weeks instead of 1 to work with a particular list. Another great place to practice is Spelling City (https://www.spellingcity.com/missbtimberlea/). Students can search my name or Timberlea School in order to get access to our weekly spelling words. This week we are focusing on words that end with -er, -re, and -est. The words are: adventures, dentures, nearest, dearest, venture, nature, tender, enter, tuner, and tune.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Practice Spelling Words

Math: Data Analysis Unit Test (Mon. – Grade 4), Review Math (Grade 5)

Terry Fox Walk/Donations – September 29th

Book Orders – Sept. 25th

Did You Know…? Many early lawnmowers were horse-drawn – the horses wore leather boots to avoid leaving hoof marks on the lawn.

Today in Math, the Grade 4 students and I completed their mid-unit assessment. We will actually be having our unit test for Data Analysis either this coming Friday or Monday. Students will be bringing home their data sheet at the front of their duotang tonight. Please look over this sheet, as well as any quizzes or assessments that are brought home. I would also appreciate having parents sign this form, so that I know who has viewed it. Thank you.

In Science today, the Grade 5 students moved on from convection currents to wind. We discussed devices that you can use to measure wind speed and wind direction. An anemometer measures wind speed. We looked at a commercial anemometer today, but we also watched this video on how to make our own:

The wind pushes the ping-pong ball forward. Looking at how far it traveled (the movement of the string on the protractor) you can estimate the speed of the wind. The next device we discussed was a weather vane. A weather vane is used to measure the direction the wind is coming from. We actually made our own weather vanes today and went outside to test them. We found that the wind was blowing from the North-West.

The Grade 4 students began to discuss biodegradable and non-biodegradable today. Now we now that:

Then we moved on to the rate at which something degrades (breaks down). Students predicted when they thought a disposable diaper would break down. After we shared our predictions, we found that we predicted that it would take between 1-11 years for a disposable diaper to degrade. The real answer? 500-600 years! Just look at the chart students completed below:

After looking how long it takes these items to degrade, students had a much better understanding of the importance of reducing the amount of waste we create, reusing items when we can, and recycling items. In fact, that is our next topic! We also watched the following video for some inspiration:

There IS a contest similar to this in Fort McMurray – The Amazing Waste Race. Stay tuned for more information, as it takes place later in our school year.

Don’t forget that book orders are due on September 25th. Cheque is preferred if possible:

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts: Predictions (due tomorrow)

Math: pg. 267 #1 (Grade 4), pg. 278 #1-4 (Grade 5)

Terry Fox Walk/Donations – September 25th

Book Orders – Sept. 25th

Did You Know…? The official city bird of Madison, Wisconsin is the plastic pink flamingo.

Good evening,

Today the Grade 4 students and I worked in our Math Journals to continue to practice constructing our own bar graphs. Afterwards we discussed our unit thus far. We are actually almost finished this unit. Students will have 1-2 more lessons next week before we begin chapter review. We will announce their unit test next week, but it will be either Friday, September 25th, or Monday, September 28th, depending on how our review is going. This Monday, students will be bringing home their “Data Sheet” for the unit, which outlines how they have been doing on quizzes and other assessments. Parents are asked to sign this sheet so that I can verify who has seen it and who hasn’t. Looking for extra Math practice? Students all have a Mathletics account which they are welcome to use at any time. The usernames and passwords are the same as last years, however, if your student has forgotten they are the same usernames and passwords as their Tynker accounts. All students have their Tynker usernames and passwords in the front of the student agenda. You can also visit the Math page (see side links). There I have posted permanent copies of the Mathletics workbooks for this unit. Parents are welcome to print and use these workbooks at home with their students. I’ve also included the link below:

Grade 4 – Chance and Data – Student Workbook

Grade 5 – Chance and Probability – Student Workbook

Grade 5 – Data Representation – Student Workbook

In Language Arts today, students spent time learning about our first grammar topic – nouns. Many students remembered from previous years that nouns are generally people, places, and things. However, this year we have expanded upon that. We will be looking at proper, concrete, abstract, singular and abstract nouns. A proper noun is a SPECIFIC person, place, or thing (eg. Charlie, Washington, Brett Drive, etc.), and as a result begins with a capital letter. A concrete noun is something that you can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch (eg. dog, pizza, book), while an abstract noun is something that you CAN’T see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Abstract nouns are generally feelings or ideas (eg. happiness, love, etc.). Finally a singular noun is one person, place, or thing (eg. cow), while a plural noun is more than one person, place, or thing (eg. cows). Students added a foldable on nouns to their Interactive Notebooks, and then we read a book called “The Noun Hound.”

In Social today students finished looking at Scale. We used a map of Egypt and a scale to measure the distance between different locations. Then we moved on to our next two map features: latitude and longitude. In order to begin our study, we watched the following videos:

Then to practice using cardinal and intermediate directions to give directions on a grid we played an oldie but a goody… Battleship. We’ll be playing again next week to get some more practice. Want to play at home? You can click on the link to print the template. You could also further explore latitude and longitude with this online game:

Latitude and Longitude Battleship

KidsGeo Online Game – http://www.kidsgeo.com/geography-games/latitude-longitude-map-game.php

Today we sent home the Terry Fox Donations forms. Students are not required to make a donation. Our school walk will be on September 25th. An incentive to donate is this – if we raise $5000 as a school, we get to shave Mr. Dykstra’s head!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Math: unfinished work (Grade 5)

Terry Fox Walk/Donations – September 25th

Book Orders – Sept. 25th

Did You Know…? Carotenemia is an illness caused by the consumption of too many carrots. Its most obvious symptom is orange skin.

Good afternoon,

Today in Math, the Grade 4 students and I reviewed their lessons on bar graphs, as many students had questions about the homework this morning. To review, we worked on question 3 and 4 together as a class. Question 3 asked students to construct a double bar graph using the data below:

Looking at the data, the students and I then began to construct our bar graph. We know that a bar graph contains the title, horizontal axis, vertical axis, and a scale, so that is where we began. We decided to construct our scale using the number of children. We noticed that the numbers started at 10 and went up to 45. Since these are both multiples of 5, we counted up by 5. We created a vertical bar graph, so our scale went on the vertical axis, and we labelled it “Number of Children.” That means that our horizontal axis needed to be labelled “Time in Minutes” and we had to put each of the numbers from 5-45 on that axis as well, also counting by 5’s. Finally, we filled in the data. For example, we can see that 11 students took 5 minutes to get to school. So, we drew a vertical bar from the 5, up to 11 on the scale. Because we don’t have 11 on the scale, we estimated and drew it a little higher than 10. Finally, we titled the bar graph. Since the table we used already had a title, we decided to also title it “How Long it Takes to Get to School.” You can see our completed bar graph below:

To finish the question, we had to complete b) and c). In b) we were asked to compare our graph to another classmates. I reminded students that if they are working on a question at home, that it would be okay to skip a question like this, as they don’t have a classmate to check their work with. Moving on to c) we were asked “How many children take the greatest time?” Looking at the bar graph, I can see that 45 minutes is the longest time it takes students to get to school. As this line is between 10-15, I would estimate about 12 children take 45 minutes to get to school. I can confirm this using the data in the chart. Finally, d) asked us to consider whether we thought the students who only needed 5 minutes lived close or far from the school. As a class, we decided that they likely lived close to school, which is why they had a quicker trip to school.

You can also see the bar graph that we constructed for question 4 below, as another exemplar for students:

I asked students to take questions #1-4 back home tonight and to try their best to complete them now that we had some review as a class.

In Science today, the Grade 5 students learned about convection currents. A convection current is the direction that air moves due to different temperatures between air masses. So that we could see a convection current in motion, we completed an experiment together. We used a strip of paper at both the top and the bottom of a door to see the direction the air moved. When looking at the air in our classroom and the air in the hallway, we noticed that the papers did not move as much. This is likely because both are around room temperature and that there was not a large difference between the temperatures of these two air masses. However, we did note that the paper at the top of the door appeared to move outwards (from our classroom into the hallway) and that the paper at the bottom of the door appeared to move inwards (from the hallway into the room). Then we moved to the hallway and the outside door. We hoped that this would be easier to observe, because there would be a larger difference in the temperatures. Again, we noted that the paper at the top of the door appeared to move outwards, while the paper at the bottom of the door appeared to move inwards. Finally, we reviewed our results as a class. Cool air moves towards warm air in a convection current. Since the cool air falls, the cool air from outside (where it was cooler) came rushing in at the bottom of the door. To equalize the air pressure, warm air at the top of the door moves out. Think of it as the warm air making room for the cold air. The students recorded their results in our notebooks, and began a reflection on their previous learning.

The Grade 4 students continued to discuss waste and whether or not something is biodegradable or non-biodegradable. The worked together to complete the following chart:

Then we discussed items that we could avoid using, to reduce the amount of waste we produce. We came up with plastic utensils, diapers, styrofoam, food wrap, and plastic bottles. All of these have alternatives that we could use instead, such as dishes, metal utensils, glass/metal (reusable) water bottles, or even cloth diapers. Next class, we will be discussing some decomposition rates.

Students also had Art with Mr. Dhooma for the first time today. We were interrupted by our first fire drill of the year, but it went very well everyone. When we returned to class, students continued to work on their “Hot Sun, Cool Moon” projects from last week. Check out some completed projects below.

In Language Arts today, we reviewed what we had been learning about making predictions. We have practiced using the information from the text and our own knowledge (schema) to make predictions before, during, and then reflecting after reading. Today we added something new – inference. An inference is a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and strong reasoning. Sometimes we have enough information from the text or enough previous learning in our schema to KNOW what will happen next. We watched the following video clip as an example:

We all knew what was going to happen once the larger bird fell off. Using our schema, we could easily see that it was like a slingshot and that the birds were going to end up flying up in the air. This is an inference that we could make. However, we didn’t all know what would happen to the birds after. We could have predicted, but we didn’t know they would lose their feathers.

Finally, here is the link for the website we used during Computers yesterday:

https://www.tynker.com/

I’ve also added it to our quicklinks. You can find it under “Frequently Used” when you click on the search button, or under STEM under our other subjects. Have fun tynkering at home everyone!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Math: pgs. 263-264 #1-4 (Grade 4)

Science: Climate/Weather Foldables (tomorrow!)

Book Orders – Sept. 25th