Did You Know…? Giant camels existed around 100,000 bc. They were twice the size of modern camels – twelve feet tall.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Club Reading (schedules on Reading page)
• Read Booktalk Book (due MONDAY!)
• Words in Motion Poetry Contest (due Feb. 4th)

Math:

• Gr. 4 – pg. 71-72 #1, 3, 4, 6
• Gr. 5 – Assignment (due Monday)
• Gr. 5 – Test (Monday)
• 7x Tables Quiz – Tuesday

Science:

• Variables Check-In – Tuesday
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th

French:

• Colours Scramble – Wednesday

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Timberlea Spirit Week – February 1st-5th

Winter Walk – February 3rd, 1:00 pm

National Cupcake Day – February 29th (Details TBD)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Did You Know…? Giraffe’s tongues are 24 inches long and bluey-black to help avoid sunburn.

Good afternoon,

Today the Gr. 4 students worked at subtracting 4-digit numbers. We reviewed using friendlier numbers, which is a strategy that we have been working on throughout this unit.

With using friendlier numbers, students change one or both of the numbers to something “friendlier” to work with. However, don’t forget to include what you changed in your final answer. In the examples above, the first student changed 2031 to the friendlier 2000 by subtracting 31. Since they subtracted 31 from 2031, they also had to subtract it from 856. You want to keep your numbers the same difference apart! Now they were left with 2000-825. However, the student realized that this wasn’t much friendlier. It would be better if we changed 825 to a friendlier number and had some zeros on the bottom. So, they added 75 to get to 900. Because we added 75 to 825, we have to add 75 to 2000 as well. Now they are left with 2075-900 which is easier to solve! 2075-900 = 1175.

The second student changes only the second number. They change 856 to 900 right away by adding 44. The student solves 2031-900 which is easier to solve. 2031-900 = 1131. Since we added 44 earlier, we have to remember to account for it now! We need to solve 1131+44 to find the final answer. 1131+44 = 1175.

Finally, we also learned to subtract using a right-to-left strategy. To help us we used the following video:

We will continue to practice subtracting 4-digit numbers tomorrow. We are actually almost finished this unit and will be having a Unit Test next Friday! Remember to practice at home using your Mathletics.

In Language Arts today we held a Book Raffle. Students were allowed to “bid” to read one of the Booktalk Books from our presentation yesterday. Students all need to read their new book tonight so that we can use them in class tomorrow.

In French we began to learn about French colours. This is a review for some of our Grade 5 students, but they will need to remember their colours from last year for some of our upcoming topics of study, so it was a good time to review. Students learned 11 colour words today:

Students also reviewed what we had learned with this Word Scramble:

Colours Word Scramble

Finally, we were able to check out this cute video that can be used to help review colour words:

Don’t forget that all of our notes, videos, and activities are posted on the French page!

In Social Studies today we took a small break from researching our regions. Today we focused just on the Canadian Shield region – as this is a region in both Alberta and the rest of Canada. As a class we explored some artwork from members of the Group of Seven that featured the Canadian Shield. Then we read a poem by another Grade 5 student. You can view the artwork or poem yourself below:

Students were then asked to work on their own or in pairs to come up with their own poems about the Canadian Shield. I am really looking forward to seeing what students come up with!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Club Reading (schedules on Reading page)
• Read Booktalk Book (due tomorrow!)
• Words in Motion Poetry Contest (due Feb. 4th)

Math:

• Gr. 4 – pg. 71 #2
• Gr. 5 – Assignment (due Monday)
• Gr. 5 – Test (Monday)
• 7x Tables Quiz – Tuesday

Science:

• Hypothesis Check-In – Thursday
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th

French:

• Colours Scramble – Wednesday

Book Orders – due Thursday

Secret Project Ideas – Thursday

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Timberlea Spirit Week – February 1st-5th

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Literacy Night – TODAY, 6:00-7:00 pm, School Gym

Did You Know…? Houdini bought Edgar Allen Poe’s writing desk.

Good afternoon,

Today we began with our multiplication review quiz for this week. This week students had been working on their 1x and 2x tables. After our quiz, we began to learn our new fact family for the week – the 7x tables! Students watched one of the Multiplication Toons available through Mathletics. This encourages us to sing along and to practice counting up by 7’s. Next, the Gr. 5 students moved to the Division 2 Learning Lounge to continue practicing multiplication with Mr. Dykstra. The Gr. 4 students and I continued to practice our 7’s by playing the Spiral Game in small groups. Remember, if you want to try the Spiral Game at home, you can find the instructions through the “Multiplication Review” page in the side links.

In Science today, the Gr. 5 students began to explore the difference between open and closed circuits. To do this we added some materials to their bin today. Today students were able to use battery holders and light bulb holders. With these there to help us, we can begin to build larger and larger circuits! The students today first constructed a closed circuit with two wires, a light bulb, and a battery. Next they had to find as many ways as they could to open the circuit. How do you know when the circuit is closed? The light bulb will light up because the electrons are able to freely flow from the negative terminal of the battery to the positive terminally of the battery. How do you know when the circuit is open? Electricity is not flowing when the circuit is open. This is because the negative terminal is not connected to the positive terminal with conductive materials. As a result, the light bulb will not light up.

The Gr. 4 students made a pop-can roller today. We used a pop can, paperclips, cardboard, a bead, and an elastic to make a roller that would roll without us having to push or move it. The elastic was the key to making this happen. A twisted elastic is filled with potential energy… it wants to unwind to it’s original form. So… when we let go the elastic is filled with kinetic energy and quickly unwinds. It took us a little while to assemble all of our rollers today and even longer to work out some of the kinks, but now that they are working, we will be using them on and off again throughout the unit to help us to continue to study wheels and levers.

We also had our first Booktalk today! Thank you so much to everyone who practiced and prepared your Booktalk at home. They were wonderful! I am definitely interested in learning more about your books and authors after your presentations. Stay tuned for what we will be working on next in reading!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Club Reading (schedules on Reading page)

Math:

• Gr. 5 – Assignment (due Monday)
• 7x Tables Quiz – Tuesday

Science:

• Hypothesis Check-In – Thursday
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th

Book Orders – due Thursday

Secret Project Ideas – Thursday

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Timberlea Spirit Week – February 1st-5th (see schedule below)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Literacy Night – January 27th, 6:00-7:00 pm, School Gym

Did You Know…? Many penguins spend 75% of their lives at sea.

Good afternoon,

Today our Gr. 5 students were lucky enough to participate in a Drumming Workshop. Our class was split into two groups. One group joined 5L at 9:00 am and the other group joined 5K at 10:00 am. I heard it was a lot of fun!

The Gr. 4 students and I worked on using some of the mental math strategies that we learned earlier in our unit to help us with subtraction. Today we worked on using friendly number and a counting on strategy. With friendly numbers, there are two methods you can use:

With the first method, we changed both of the numbers that we were trying to find the difference between. We saw that 299 could easily be changed to 300. We added 1 to 299, so we added 1 to 516 as well, so that are numbers would still be the same difference apart. This changed 516 to 517. Now we had to solve 517-300, which is much friendlier than 516-299. The difference was 217. However, this method can be difficult to use, as it isn’t always easy to make friendly numbers that will work (see the second example). Our second method of using friendly numbers has us change just one of the numbers that we are trying to find the difference between. Take for example 347-195. We can change 195 to the friendlier 200 by adding 5. Then we can solve 347-200 = 147. However, this is not the final answer, as we added 5 while we were solving the problem. We still need to add 5 to the answer! 147+5 = 152. So, the difference between 347-195 = 152. Many students preferred this method and found that if you made the second number (the smaller number) friendlier, it was quite easy to do. Finally, we also worked on a counting on strategy:

This strategy has you count up from the lower number until you reach the higher number. For example, if we want to solve 432-220. We can start at 220 and count up by 100’s until we reach 400. We would count up by 100 twice which is equal to 200. Next we can count on by 10’s until we reach 30. We would count up by 10 once which is equal to 210. Finally, we can count on by 1’s until we reach 2. We would count up by 1 twice which is equal 212. Since it took us 212 to count up from 220 to 432, then 432-220 = 212. Just make sure you keep track of what you count up (or down) by if you are using this strategy!

In Science today the Gr. 5 students added information to their Interactive Notebooks on what we have covered so far in their Electricity unit. We added notes on Electrical Safety, Batteries, Light bulbs, and Circuit Diagram Symbols. You can actually see all the right-hand pages in our Science books by clicking on the side links and visiting the Electricity page. I will continue to update this document throughout the unit. Then the students worked together to draw some circuit diagrams (with the correct symbols) of some example circuits we may encounter throughout this unit.

The Gr. 4 students completed another experiment about rollers. Today the students were asked to predict if it would be easier or harder to roll out Plasticine by hand or with a roller. Then, in groups of 3, students worked to complete the task and to record their observations. Most found that the rollers did significantly reduce the work required to flatten the Plasticine. Then, our Gr. 4 students also added information to their Interactive Notebooks. Just like Gr. 5, I have added our notebook right-hand pages to the “Gr. 4 – Wheels and Levers “Science page on the side links. Be sure to keep checking this document throughout the unit so that you can make sure you have and understand all of our notes.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Talk – due January 26th
• Book Club Reading (Schedules on Reading page)

Math:

• 1, 2x Tables Quiz – Tuesday

Science:

• Essential Question Check-In – Tuesday
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th
• Trifold Board Orders – due Monday ($5.25/Board)

Secret Project Ideas – Thursday

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Movie Night – January 22nd, 6:00 pm, School Gym, Minions

Family Literacy Night – January 27th, 6:00-7:00 pm, School Gym

Did You Know…? Approximately 80% of salt on chips is not sensed by the tongue before being swallowed.

Good evening,

Today we had our Virtue of the Month Assembly for January. This month’s virtue is creativity! Congratulations to our monthly award winners: Rylan, Alyssa, Rukaya, Lucas, and Amira. Keep up the good work everyone! At the assembly, we unfortunately had to wish goodbye to Mr. Thorne. For those of you who do not know, Mr. Thorne will not be returning to his post as principal in February as previously planned. He will be taking the principal position at Christina Gordon School. For those of you planning on making the move to Christina Gordon, how lucky you will be to have such an amazing principal waiting for you. Mrs. Shackleford has done a wonderful job as acting principal in Mr. Thorne’s absence, but she will be returning to her role as vice-principal in February as previously planned. Our new principal will be Mr. Najmeddine! We had the chance to meet him at the assembly today and I know we are all looking forward to getting to know him when he makes the move from Beacon Hill School to join us in February.

In Language Arts today we started something new… Book Clubs. Students have been put into groups of 2-4 students and each group has been assigned a book. Today we got to look over our books and groups were asked to plan their own daily/nightly reading schedule for their book. We will be finished with these books on February 19th, but students were able to plan how they would read the book within that time period. I’ll post a copy of our schedules below, on our Reading page, and we’ll also be sending a copy home in the Agendas home. Make sure that you are staying on top of your reading so that you are being a responsible group member! Stay tuned for more information on the fun discussions and conversations we will be having about our books throughout the month. Also, don’t forget that Book Talks are next week! If you haven’t begun to prepare and practice yours, please start! Don’t leave it until Monday night!

We are also planning another secret project… see the side links for more information, and don’t forget to bring in your ideas by next Thursday!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Talk – due January 26th
• Topic/Concluding Sentences – due tomorrow
• Book Club Reading (Schedules on Reading page)

Math:

• 1, 2x Tables Quiz – Tuesday

Science:

• Research/Essential Question Check-In – will continue tomorrow
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th
• Trifold Board Orders – due Monday

Secret Project Ideas – Thursday

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Movie Night – January 22nd, 6:00 pm, School Gym, Minions

Family Literacy Night – January 27th, 6:00-7:00 pm, School Gym

Did You Know…? All the batteries on Earth store just ten minutes of the world’s electricity needs.

Good evening,

Today the Gr. 4 and Gr. 5 students started our day with our Multiplication Quiz for this week. We have been working on our 9x tables. After our quiz, we got our new fact family for the week… the 1x tables! I realize that this is a pretty easy fact to be practicing, so we are going to be reviewing our 2x tables as well. After our quiz, we all watched the 2x Multiplication Toon on Mathletics. Then our Gr. 5 students went with Mr. Dykstra and used Kahoot! to review their 2x, 4x, and 8x tables. The Gr. 4 students and I reviewed our 2x tables by playing a new Math game: the Spiral Game. A copy of the game is included below for any families that are interested in playing at home. All you need is some playing cards and a dice:

Spiral Multiplication Game

In Science today, the Gr. 5 students had a few activities that they were completing. First, students were completing some review sheets on electrical safety that we started on Monday. Students who finished this activity moved on to complete their “Hot Stuff!” experiment. In this experiment, students were connecting the negative and positive terminals of a 1.5V battery with an aluminum or copper wire. Students were asked to record their observations about what would occur. The electrons move from the negative terminal to the positive terminal. As the electrons move, they rub against one another and against the sides of the wire, etc. creating friction. In a circuit like the one we have created above, the electrons move VERY quickly, as their is no “work” for them to do. As a result, a lot of friction occurs, causing the wires to heat up. All students were able to feel how quickly the wires get hot. We started this experiment on Monday, students were finishing recording their observations today. Next, they began an experiment called, “Will it Light?” In this experiment, students connected an aluminum/copper wire, a 1.5V battery, and a small light bulb in various ways. Students were asked to predict which arrangements would light up and which would not and then to record their observations. The students found that if you connect the negative terminal to the positive terminal with materials that electricity will flow through, and if you connect the metal thread AND the lead tip of the light bulb within the circuit, the light bulb will light up. If the both parts of the bulb are not connected or if the circuit is complete without the light bulb, the light bulb will not light up. It will also not light up if the circuit is broken by materials that do not conduct electricity like the plastic casing on the battery or the glass of the light bulb. We will continue to explore these concepts in further classes.

The Gr. 4 students have been learning about friction as well! We have been learning about how friction can make our work harder. Take for example a heavy bin. Pulling or dragging the bin across the floor can be difficult. This is because the bin rubs along the floor and the force created (friction) causes the work to be more difficult. To make the work easier, we can use a simple machine to reduce the amount of friction. We used rollers as our simple machine. Students put pencils underneath their supply bins and found that with the bin off the floor on top of the rollers, the friction was reduced and the work was easier. We also tried this experiment with heavy books and pencils, and even using a large bin holding a student! It was hard to pull our classmates across the floor, but once we put the bin on rollers, it was much easier! Gr. 4 students recorded their observations during these experiments and then worked together as a group to brainstorm different ways that they have observed rollers being used to make work easier, such as: rolling pins, roller blades, conveyor belts, etc. We will continue to explore these concepts in upcoming classes.

We also had an electricity demonstration today that I let the Grade 4 class observe as well. I wanted to show our Grade 5 class how little electricity you need in order to start an electrical fire. In our “Hot Stuff!” experiment, we were using only 1.5V batteries and aluminum/copper wires. The wires heated up, but they are built to withstand a certain amount of heat. Today, I demonstrated to students how changing the materials can make a big difference. We used a 9V battery and some steel wool. Quickly after I connected the steel wool to the circuit, the friction created by the flow of electrons was too much for the steel wool and it sparked and caught on fire. This was a great demonstration and a good review of the concepts we have covered, however, I spoke to students about the safety of this experiment. I have conducted this experiment many times and know how to properly prepare and use the materials. I told students to NOT attempt this experiment at home without parental consent or supervision.

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Talk – due January 26th
• Topic/Concluding Sentences – due tomorrow

Math:

• 1, 2x Tables Quiz – Tuesday

French:

• Quiz – Ma Classe, Numbers 0-31, Les Operations Mathematiques (Thursday)

Science:

• Research/Essential Question Check-In – will continue tomorrow
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th
• Trifold Board Orders – due Monday

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 21st, 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Movie Night – January 22nd, 6:00 pm, School Gym, Minions

Family Literacy Night – January 27th, 6:00-7:00 pm, School Gym

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Talk – due January 26th
• Topic/Concluding Sentences – due tomorrow

Math:

• Grade 4 – pg. 60 #4, 7-10
• 9x Tables Quiz – Wednesday

French:

• Quiz – Ma Classe, Numbers 0-31, Les Operations Mathematiques (Thursday)

Science:

• Research/Essential Question Check-In – tomorrow
• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 21st, 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Tuesdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Movie Night – January 22nd, 6:00 pm, School Gym, Minions

Family Literacy Night – January 27th, 6:00-7:00 pm, School Gym

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Computers tomorrow – bring headphones

Language Arts:

• Book Talk – due January 26th
• Body Sentences – due tomorrow

Math:

• Grade 4 – pg. 60 #2, 3
• Grade 5 – pg. 102 #1, 2, 4
• 9x Tables Quiz – Wednesday

French:

• Quiz – Ma Classe, Numbers 0-31, Les Operations Mathematiques (Thursday)

Science:

• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th

Toque Tuesday Assembly – February 2nd ($2 donations encouraged)

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 14th, 21st, 28th

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Thursdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Family Movie Night – January 22nd, 6:00 pm, School Gym, Minions

Did You Know…? The IMAX 3D projector is the size of a small car.

Good afternoon,

The Grade 4 students have begun to work on subtraction. Today we started working on subtracting 3-digit numbers. Similar to addition, we are beginning this unit with estimation strategies. Actually, we are using the same three strategies that we used for addition: friendly numbers, front-end estimation, and rounding. Check out our examples below:

Students will continue to work on estimation and subtraction next week. Don’t forget to be practicing your 9x tables every night!

In French today, we reviewed some of the concepts that we have been working on. We reviewed our vocabulary for “Ma Class,” Numbers 0-31, and “Les Operations Mathematiques.” Students will be having a quiz on these topics next week. A study sheet went home with students today so that they did not have rely solely on their written notes. We also worked in small groups today to complete the following crossword problem, so that students could practice writing out their numbers from 0-20:

Numbers Crossword (0-20)

Please help your student to review at home over the weekend. Remember, all of our slideshows, notes, activities, and videos are available to be used at home. Just click on the “French” page on the sidebar. Notes for this current unit will be under “My Classroom/Elementary School.”

In Language Arts today we started a new paragraph in our booklets. This week’s topic is, “What season do you wish lasted the entire year?” Check out my brainstorming below:

Any unfinished work from today was sent home for homework. If students did not complete their paragraphs from last week, they have been asked to complete them at home. They can type, email, or write them by hand, but they should all be handed in by Monday. Remember, last week’s topic was, “My favourite subject is…”

We also got to taste test some daikon radish sprouts from our fish tank today! They tasted like a mild radish, a little bit spicy!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

• Book Talk – due January 26th
• Library – Monday
• Brainstorming – due Monday
• Unfinished Subject Paragraphs – due Monday

Math:

• Grade 4 – pg. 60 #1
• Grade 5 – pg. 102 #1, 2, 4
• 9x Tables Quiz – Wednesday

French:

• Quiz – Ma Classe, Numbers 0-31, Les Operations Mathematiques (Thursday)

Science:

• Classroom Science Fair – March 7th

Grade 5/6 Floor Hockey – Wednesday, 3:00-4:00 pm

STEM Club – Monday, 3:00-4:00 pm

Cross-Country Ski Club – January 14th, 21st, 28th (forms due ASAP)

Grade 5/6 Basketball – Thursdays, 3:00-4:00 pm

Toque Tuesday Forms – due January 18th

Family Movie Night – January 22nd, 6:00 pm, School Gym, Minions