Week in Review: September 26 - 30

So here we are at the end of September already, hard to believe we've already got a month of school work under our belts!  In working with my class we very much have a give and take relationship where we are both constantly learning new things from each other.  With the students it is my hope that they are not only learning the mandated curricular concepts but also the value of friendship, team work, and appreciation for their own special talents and abilities.  This week we had the opportunity to take part in "Orange Shirt Day" which gave us the unique opportunity to have a really good discussion about culture and valuing each other as people.  Being able to accept people for who they are, and appreciating the special things that they do and represent is a great life lesson that makes everyone around them better.

Now on to some curricular stuff...

In Math we continued to work on our fluency and accuracy with multiple digit addition and subtraction up to tens of thousands involving trading and regrouping.  In working to further refine their number operation skills here are some links where the addition and subtraction concepts are reinforced within a game: 

• http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skill_builders/subtraction_math_fourth_4th_grade.htm

• http://www.mathplayground.com/addition_blocks.html

• http://www.mathplayground.com/logic_sum_links.html

Keeping practicing the skills and building your confidence with the concepts as we will be testing this concept during the second week of October.

In Language Arts we again worked with our large list of review words and continue working with them to identify different word features that could aid us in the deciphering of unknown words.  As a at home review have your child work to identify different nouns (persons, places or things) around the house, then have them list an adjective that could further build on that noun to add more description - i.e. dog becomes furry, brown dog or door becomes large, white basement door.  Just another way that these word features can be reinforced and tied into "real life" and then eventually into their writing.

This week in story writing the class began composing another creative story based using the following prompts: a strange pet, a magical forest, and something breaking.  In providing at least a starting point the kids are definitely gaining proficiency in generating their own ideas and working to scaffold their stories by building upon the initial information.  We have some very keen writers and the stories being composed are indeed inventive...it's always fun seeing where some of their ideas end up and how they have managed to tie in flying pigs, transforming robots, and sword welding goblins into a story that manages to still make sense.

Lastly congratulations goes out to Aiden who was September's Home Reading Laser City gift certificate winner.  Aiden had a fantastic 6 sheets worth of reading entered into the draw so he most definitely up'ed his chances of getting picked!

Science this week focused on the concept of the 4Rs, yes 4!  Through discussion, media, and hands-on activities we worked our way through the concepts of reducing, reusing, recycling and rethinking all in an effort to influence how we approach our disposal of waste.  It was interesting to hear some of the ideas everyone had for reducing the amount of waste individuals produce, ie. reducing their environmental footprint.

Our classroom worms continue to be a great source of information and our worms "chefs" have been doing a great job prepping the worms daily lunch.

Here are a few interesting facts about our new Red Wiggler Worms:

1) Red wigglers, or Eisenia foetida, are the best compost worms.

2) They live well in close, highly populated conditions and don't burrow; perfect for vermi-composters.

3)  Red wiggler worms can eat about half of their weight in food every day.

4)  Worms are similar to birds in their digestion as they have gizzards that require grit to aid in grinding up their food.

5) When feeding our worms they will eat just about anything that originally came out of the ground - i.e. most fruits, grain products, vegetables

6) There are however a few things that we can't feed our worms: don't feed them anything fatty or oily. Worms can't digest meat proteins or lactose, so no dairy products either, like milk or cheese. They also can not digest citrus and salts because these can actually harm the skin of the worms. 

In Social Studies we continued to examine the geography of Alberta and continued our comparisons of the six geographic regions within the province: the Canadian Shield region, the Boreal Forest region, the Parkland region (where Devon is located), the Grasslands region, the Foothills region, and lastly the Rocky Mountain region.  

This week our investigation of Alberta lead us to the Internet and the initial steps of developing our Alberta Regions Project.  This project will take advantage of our chrome book technology in allowing students to physically tie in the visual imagery and facts about each region into a presentation aimed at  creating meaningful connections between textbook facts and the real world.  In working on the project students will need to log into their Google Drive accounts which can be accessed as such:

• Go online to the Black Gold Engaging Students webpage - http://engagingstudents.blackgold.ca

• Click on the Google Drive icon (left side of the screen directly above the Gmail icon)

• Enter your child's email - the username in your child's agenda PLUS  @gshare.blackgold.ca

• Enter the student password - again listed in this week's agenda notes

• Once onto the Google Drive page click on "Shared with me" - the project instructions are listed here

• You will find the project which we had set up earlier this week in the "My drive" tab

In working on the project 80% will be completed at home with the remaining 20% being the fine tuning of information and formatting at school.  If you have any further questions please feel free to shoot me an email.

That about wraps up this week.

Thank you.

Mr. Henderson