Fourth graders were busy this week- wrapping up our inquiry into Alberta's communities and artifacts. Students shared their findings with other fourth grade classes as they took notes. The classes then swapped from presenters to recorders. We are excited to move on to our final Humanities unit for the year with our upcoming folk song unit. Please enjoy the student video blog below:
Welcome back! It was so great to see all the grade 4 smiling faces after a well deserved break. This week we explored multiples and the patterns we see in both the 100's chart and the multiplication table. A lot of exciting discoveries were made. "The multiples of 2's make a checker board!" "Some numbers are only used in multiplication if multiplied by 1" "Look! This number is used a lot!" "Multiples of 10 make a target!" In recognizing the patterns within these charts, has allowed the students to discover new strategies of solving the times tables. We also read the book "Mulitplying Menace - The Revenge of Rumpelstiltskin" by Pam Calvert. The students recognized that when multiplying by a whole number the outcome is large which differs from multiplying by a fraction. "Times a whole will make you many; Times a fraction leaves hardly any. Times a zero will leave no one; Multiplying menace is on the run." The grade 4's downloaded a new app onto their I-Pads this week called 2048. This deals with the concept of doubling. We are all excited to play this game and attempt to reach 2048. Welcome back! We hope that everyone had a restful and relaxing Spring Break. This week, fourth graders dove right into new projects and school work. In Social Studies, students co-constructed questions (using our previously developed categories that make up "identity") that they are now using to research one of Alberta's communities. From The Crowsnest Pass to Slave Lake students have been tasked with finding out more about our provinces communities, both past and present. For the third and final time this term, students have been asked to research until they can aptly choose an artifact that they feel best illustrates their community's identity. These will be shared in a museum format before moving onto our final Social Studies unit for the year. For our final unit, fourth grade students will develop folk songs that focus on Alberta's rich and diverse history. Our field trip to the Glenbow museum this Friday served as an introduction into the people and events in Alberta's history. Students will be given the opportunity to focus on an event from our history that peeked their interest while visiting the museum. We are excited to have two local professional folk song artists join us to help compose these songs. Hello 4.3 and 4.4 parents! This week the students were working on completing their dialogue scripts using the characters they had made for the "voice" lesson. They were all engaged and willing to share their scripts! After sharing, we discussed the proper use of dialogue conventions and how to effectively implement them into their writing. As you may have heard, this was my final week with the 4.4s and 4.3s and I just wanted to express my gratitude to all the grade four students and teachers who made this experience amazing for me!
Thank you and best wishes to all. Mr. Pollard Thank you Mr. Pollard for all of your hard work in developing engaging lessons for our students. We learned so much from you and enjoyed having you as part of our learning community! We will miss you! This week was an exciting one at Connect Charter school. We had our annual, "Spirit Week" over the past 4 days which saw many of our grade fours dressing up in celebration. Our students also had the opportunity to see the schools performance of "Alice In Wonderland" on Tuesday afternoon.Humanities classrooms were buzzing with the excitement of Spring Break being just around the corner. We continued our inquiry into identity and built upon our previous conversations with Mr. Petronech, about the history of our school. Grade fours were paired with group members form other classrooms and then tasked with finding an artifact that represents part of Connect's identity. In addition to our ongoing efforts surrounding identity and community, fourth graders wrapped up some Writers and Readers Workshop projects before the break. When we return in April, we will focus on Alberta's communities and their identity before shifting into a new unit all together.
We hope that you will have a restful and wonderful Spring Break and look forward to seeing students on Monday, April 7th! This week in Humanities, fourth graders spent some time crafting Kidblog! projects, in addition to Readers and Writers Workshops. In the coming week before Spring Break, we will be focusing heavily on Social Studies and our inquiry into community identity. Students spent their time on Friday exploring our school and categorizing our daily, weekly, monthly and yearly happenings into the same co-constructed categories that were used for our own personal identities. In small groups, they will be deciding on an artifact that best exemplifies one aspect of Connect Charter School's identity and presenting their thoughts on why their artifact was chosen. Students have also been able to play a variety of spelling games in the past few weeks. Paired with the classic games of "Bananagrams" and "Scrabble" are some iPad apps that have been extremely useful. One game, (Spelling City), can be set up for students to be able to put their own list of words into game format. In order to do so, students need to input an older age (14). With parent consent, fourth graders are free to agree to terms and conditions and set up their own accounts. This is not mandatory, but may be useful for this students who have been struggling more with spelling this year. Grade Fours also went on their first Phys Ed. centred field trip this week. Students loved their time in the water at the Southland Leisure Centre and were very well behaved. An informed consent form has also gone home with fourth graders, for our Glenbow Museum visit after Spring Break. We are hopeful that forms will be completed and returned as soon as possible, ensuring that our ducks are in a row for after the break. The parent letter and form can be found under our "Links and Important Docs" page. Spirit Week at ConnectThe Fans Family Group is excited to be hosting our Second Annual Spirit Week! Monday March 17 will be backwards day, Tuesday the 18th is jersey day, Wednesday the 19th is Twin Day, and Thursday the 20th is everyone's favourite: pyjama and stuffy day! Show your school spirit and remember, we are all connected! Writing with Mr. Pollard (4.4 and 4.3)Hello parents! As you may have heard at home, the students have been hard at work all week developing their understanding of the "voice" trait of writing. Last week the students created and developed individual characters outlining the personality traits, physical characteristics, and their point of view on the theme of "rainstorm". After having created those characters, the students wrote stories outlining their character's voice on the rainstorm. They created great stories and as they should be completed by the end of the week, ask your child if you can take a look! I also introduced a dialogue lesson for the 4.4s (the 4.3s will be introduced to this lesson on Monday) and the students created their own scripts using their voice characters. They were all very engaged and willing to share their scripts to the class! Lots of great work!
Popcorn in Math? A school wide math problem was undertaken this week and students explored how to build a container that would hold the most popcorn, from an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. Grade 4's took this up in table groups and came up with a container that would hold the most popcorn and a way to decide how that would be measured. Some of the materials that were used were: measuring cups, beakers, scales and counting! They did a great job on this assignment! Math and Olympics wrapped up with our Keynote Presentations. Students shared their knowledge of how numbers played a role in sports and how their country performed. They learned a lot through this inquiry and many were able to see connections between numbers, rankings, times, and how numbers lived so naturally in any sport. Other events that happened this week were Mathematical Bingo, nightly Alice & Wonderland rehearsals, a full day field trip to Southland Leisure Center (which made for some exhausted children), Energy Diet Challenges continued, and Broom-Ball started in PE. Students will no longer need to bring their skates and sticks to school, just those helmets - and maybe their rubber boots now! Broom-Ball will be continuing until our Spring Break. Here's to hoping that our next week is a bit slower... or not! This week, fourth grade students were asked to bring in an artifact that helps to describe their identity. Artifacts were first shared in small groups with fellow classmates detailing what they notice about each object and making guesses as to the type of person that student is. For example, one student brought in a Ukrainian family cookbook and classmates made suggestions such as , "He is Ukrainian. He comes from a large family that likes to cook. He loves his family. This cookbook is special to him. etc." Fourth graders then submitted a paragraph alongside a picture of their artifact to Edmodo. Their paragraphs answered questions surrounding the importance of the object and what category of their identity it fit in to. These categories were developed last week in a co-constructed brainstorm. Later in the week, we explored a "Muse-o-kit" borrowed from the Glenbow Museum. This particular kit focused around the "Famous Five" in Calgary and the time period of 1800-1900. The artifacts that the kit includes are items such as clothing, a teachers strap, garden hoe, boot, bedpan and newspapers. Grade four students successfully identified some major themes and commonalities for this time frame. They were keen to describe a woman's identity during this time and we began to discuss the identity of a community in this era. Our focus in the coming weeks will be on the community of Connect Charter School and the discovery of school artifacts. We will then make the transition to an inquiry into Alberta's communities and their very own culture and identity. Student Led ConferencesIn addition to their efforts in Humanities this week, fourth graders have crafted keynote presentations to assist in guiding them through Student Led Conferences this Thursday and Friday. Students have been asked to focus on the "What We Do" section of our exemplary framework (Inquiry, Technology, Curriculum, Assessment and Environmental/ outdoor Ed). Swimming Permission Forms and Electives! We are still missing a few Permission Forms for our Phys Ed field trips this week. These documents are posted below. There will also be Term 3 elective sign up on Monday night @ 6:00pm. All descriptions of elective courses offered for grade 4/5, as well as the sign up process is attached below.
This week students explored the works of Greg Tang and dove into his book, The Best of Times. New strategies and ways to take up multiplication were on the forefront for us this week. A copy of these strategies from Tang's book were handed out during Student-Leds and placed on Edmodo. Please feel free to let us know if you have any questions around how we are looking at multiplication! Examples: Three Sum (x3), Four Eyes (x4), Nine Ball (x9) We encourage them all to share these findings with their parents over the weekend. If you can teach a concept you solidify your own knowledge of the area of study. Energy Diet Challenge is fast underway this week and students in grade 4 and 7 are working hard at completing their tasks prior to Spring Break. The challenges come to a close while we are on Spring Break so all submissions need to be in before March 22nd! Feel free to ask your son/daughter what challenge they are working on and lend a hand if they need help finding materials! Some of the groups have chosen the same challenge so they have merged to strive towards the 15 point lesson. The students have shared a Google Doc with their partner to enable communication outside of the Energy Diet class time. Thank you to all the parents and students for taking part in the Student Led Conferences. It is a wonderful opportunity for our students to be able to share their work with their families. It was nice to see so many parents and the excitement your children exhibited when leading you through the various spaces in the school. SIDE NOTE: The Southland Leisure Centre permission forms are posted under Important Docs for anyone who requires another copy. Forms need to be returned by Monday!
4.2/4.4 are participating on Tuesday, March 11 4.1/4.3 are participating on Wednesday, March 12 |