Pajama Day - March 14

Spelling Words! (Week of March. 9)

 Spelling List A (March 7 – 14)

water	fault	talk	also	fall
vault	walk	haunt	auto	aunt

 

Spelling List B (March 7 – 14)

because	walked	audio	fraud	chalk
father	always	pause	talking	sauce

 

Spelling List C (March 7 – 14)

almost	August	although	author	autumn
sauna	waterfall	launch	default	laundry

 

This week's them is the 'aw' sound, in particular the ways it is created using a single 'a', or the vowel team 'au'.

Good luck!

Friday, March 7

 Hi parents,

We had a fun day today but also did some good work. It was "DJ Day" for last week's "table of the month", so they got to put in song requests all day. There was a lot of singing. I've somehow become really out of touch with pop music because I only knew about half the songs...

The spelling quiz went well, but unfortunately I didn't have a chance to mark them yet.

We spent a good chunk of the work period working on dinosaur paragraphs, and then the students used K-Nex to build their own levers. We learned how to position of a fulcrum affects the work needed to lift objects using a lever.

As you may have heard, it looks like conferences will be online again this year. Please stay tuned for details and book your conference as soon as you can!

Also stay tuned for next week's spelling words, and have a nice weekend!

Zac

Thursday, March 6

 Hi parents,

We had a good day today! The highlight was the work students did on their dinosaur paragraph good copies. 

For our first research-based informative writing task of the year, the quality of work greatly exceeds my expectations. I thought we'd have to spend a lot more time to get to where we're at now. I'm really happy!

We had the Geometry Test Re-Do, and I was a bit disappointed with this one because we've been explicitly practicing this stuff all week, and not to mention all the work we did on it before, but the results were pretty much the same. While we unfortunately can't spend any more class time on these concepts, students can still request another re-do if they like. I'll be pulling kids during the work period for small-group geometry lessons, but as a class, we will be moving on to division next week!

In the afternoon, we did Daily LA, Social Emotional Learning with Mr. Ripka, and Music - easy afternoon for me!

Tomorrow is our spelling quiz!

Have a nice day,

Zac

Wednesday, March 5

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today! In the morning,  the students made some tweaks to their dinosaur paragraphs. We learned some tricks for adding variety to sentence beginnings. Some students have started to write their good copies.

In math, we reviewed the three types of triangles. If you are in grade 4, this is going to be on your test tomorrow! For Grade 3's, it's still helpful to be able to identify equilateral triangles as 'regular polygons', while the other two types are not.

In the afternoon we did Daily LA, and then the students got to use our school's K-Nex Sets to create crank fans that use gear systems. The students got to experiment with different sizes of gears to see how these changes would affect the speed of the fan.

Remember that tomorrow is our Geometry Quiz! It will be basically the same as the last one, but with different polygons in each example. Students will need to know all the same stuff. Also - may be helpful to review 'rays', 'lines', and 'line segments', because we didn't get to those in class this week (we learned them a few weeks ago so its nothing new).

Have a nice night,

Zac

Tuesday, March 4

 Hi parents,

We had another pretty good day today. In the morning I gave a (fairly bad) lesson on writing 'conclusions' in paragraphs. It was a bad lesson because it's actually really hard to write a decent concluding sentence to wrap up a grade 3 / 4 level piece of writing - the purpose of a conclusion is to summarize, but it virtually always feels redundant to summarize a paragraph that was only 4 sentences long... anyway, we focused on the idea of at the very least, ending on a high note, with an engaging, interesting sentence that gives a feeling of closure. 

The students were somehow able to read between the lines of my confusing lesson and wrap their paragraphs up skillfully. I was quite proud. Now we just need to do a little editing, and then we'll be ready for good copies. 

From jot notes to paragraphs!

In math, we reviewed regular polygons, and learned about some of the more niche examples of them. For example, heptagons, nonagons, decagons.... While I don't expect students to have all these memorized, or to accurately draw them, I hope that seeing so many examples of regular polygons will help them easily recognize irregular polygons. 

In Science, we started learning about Simple Machines. This is a unit we did for quite a while last year, so we'll spend less time on it this time around, but its always a favourite. The plan is for students to design and build 'leprechaun traps' using simple machines. 

We ended our day with Music.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Monday, March 3

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today. In the morning, the students continued writing their dinosaur paragraphs. They added 'body' sentences, sometimes literally, to tell readers more about their chosen dinosaur. We talked about the importance of grouping similar pieces of information when writing a paragraph and making sure everything flows, with different sentence beginnings. 

In math, the students finally got their geometry quizzes back, and we went over them as a class. We're going to have a re-do on Thursday, because I think the students could use a little extra review on Regular vs. Irregular polygons, and triangles for Grade 4s.

In the afternoon, we did Daily LA, Architecture Sketching, and Spelling Practice. We went over this week's words and the 'ow' sound in general.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Spelling Words (Week of March 2)

 Spelling List A (March 2 – 7)

down	grow	flow	bowling	snowy
elbow	howling	towns	know	frown

 

Spelling List B (March 2 – 7)

clown	below	brown	towers	crowded
throw	rowdy	shown	lowest	allow

 

Spelling List C (March 2 – 7)

growth	follow	narrow	flowers	meadow
willow	mellow	drowsy	powdery	however

The theme this week is 'ow'. Students will learn that 'ow' has two main sounds - the sound it makes in 'down', and the sound makes in 'grow'.

Last week's quiz was one of our best yet - let's have a repeat of that performance this week!

Thursday, February 27

 Hi parents,

We had a good day today! 

The spelling quiz was exceptional - I think we had more A's than ever before!

In the morning, the students did some more work with telling time. It was kind of an unofficial pop quiz just to make sure everyone was getting it, and it looks like they are. Once students have the basics of clock-reading, they inevitably start practicing it throughout their days, and I'm confident that at the very least, everyone knows it well enough to start doing that.

In writing, the students came up with different topic sentences for their upcoming informative Dinosaur Writing project. We talked about how a topic sentence should be broad and clear, but also engaging. Generally, ultra specific details and 'fun facts' are avoided in Topic Sentences. The students wrote three different sentences for their paragraphs, and chose their favourite of the three.

In the afternoon, we did Social Emotional Learning with Mr. Ripka, Daily LA, and Music.

Have a nice weekend,

Zac

Wednesday, February 26

 Hi parents,

We had an awesome time at the Hitmen Game today!

The students learned about friendship, bullying, and how to stop it. But we mostly just got to share a really fun experience together that brought us all closer.

There is no school on Friday, so the spelling quiz will be tomorrow. Please practice at home if you can! We've only practiced twice in class this week!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Tuesday, February 25

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today! In the morning, the students started doing research on a dinosaur of their choosing. We used kid-friendly books on Epic! to take notes, and organize information by sub-topics. Thanks to our lessons last week, students had a much better idea of what these sub-topics should be. Things like Diet, Habitat, Appearance, and Adaptions were all good ones.

Thanks to Ms. Bouchard and Ms. Cooper's classes for hosting a fantastic assembly about the FinS (Fish in Schools) Program, and how it helps the environment by combatting over-fishing of Rainbow Trout.

We did Daily LA in the afternoon, and then reviewed the Telling Time concepts we've learned. The students seem to have a much better handle on it. We even talked about common 'clock slang' terms (or 'fraction time'), such as "half past ____", "quarter to ___", etc.

Blog Homework: Draw a Clock to Show Each Time (+1 table point)

a) 8:40pm

b) 2:25pm

c) Half Past 6

d) Quarter to 10

Remember that tomorrow is the Be Brave Field Trip! I sent a message out with some details you may want to know.

Have a nice night,

Zac