Week in Review: October 11 - 14

It was a tad shorter week this week but we still managed to somehow pack in a week's worth of fun and activity.  We shook off the turkey hangover quickly and covered new concepts in Social Studies, Science and Health, while continuing to build and increase fluency and comprehension with existing concepts in Math and Language Arts.  As you may have noticed the snow is definitely falling as with the temperatures (guess Mother Nature decided to skip Fall) so please ensure your child is dressing for the weather.  With winter clothing there is always a bundle of items that somehow make their way into the lost and found.  Reuniting these items with their rightful owners is always easier if names are written on the items - so please grab a marker and scribble in your child's name.  Writing on names is a way cheaper option than having to hike out to the mall and re-buying 18 pairs of gloves, 7 toques, and 4 pairs of ski pants!

and now on to the curricular stuff...

In Math we continued to work with number operations and gaining further fluency and accuracy with the regrouping of  numbers featuring 10s of thousands.  The unit test for both the addition and subtraction sections will be this coming Thursday, October 20th.

Students will be bringing home their class workbooks on Monday to give them some extra at-home practice questions to go over in preparation for the exam.  These question booklets do not need to be returned to the class as they have been reviewed and checked over prior to being sent home.  
Our next unit of study will be the topic of repeated addition aka multiplication!

In Language Arts this past week we focused on again on story writing and examined the effective use of story features such as main and supporting characters, setting development, story problems and solutions - as well as further vocabulary development involving the use of adjectives as a way of adding detail and interest to writing.  Next week we will be starting our first novel study, James and the Giant Peach.  With the novel study we will be able to continue our story work and be able to tie it directly to a story and think about what the author was doing when he wrote it.


In Science the thrill of our Red Wiggler worms and our vermi-composter has really helped highlight how we as a class could cut down on our environmental footprint by reducing the amount of food waste that is directed to the landfill daily.

To help us further highlight how people's direct actions can increase or help reduce waste we will be starting a one week Science project to run in conjunction with the Alberta Recycling Councils Waste Reduction Week, which runs from October 17th through to the 21st.  During the following week our class will be collecting the daily waste from four different classrooms.  Each bag of waste is dumped, sorted into specific categories of waste (paper, plastic, glass, metal, food waste (organics) and other); and then weighed and recorded.  This collected data is tallied up for each of the classes.  Using this "garbage" data we as class will undoubtedly be able to recognize what materials contributed the most to the grand total of waste as well as identifying materials that were potentially recycled better than others in each individual room.  

Ultimately as a final unit project each team of garbage researchers will be responsible for then using Google Draw software to create posters for their respective classrooms which will highlight areas of strength as well as areas in need of improvement with regards to waste management.

In Social Studies we continued our study of geographic features within Alberta and worked to further highlight similarities and differences within each region based upon individual region profiles related to land forms, weather, and other individual features.  This week we were also able to check in on everyone's progress with the at-home Alberta Regions Project and offer some in-class time to fine tune (or get started) everyone's projects.  Reminder that the due date for the project is October 24th and student presentations will commence that day.  

Upcoming Important Dates

Thursday, October 20 - Math Unit Exam: Number Operations (+/-)

Friday, October 21 - WHPS Grand Opening Ceremony @ 10:00AM.  Everyone welcome!

Thursday, October 27 - Science Unit Exam: Waste and our World

Monday, October 31 - Halloween Party (PM)...more info to follow next week.