Wednesday, May 6

 Hi parents,

We had an awesome day today. In the morning, the students took a bunch more jot notes for their animal research project. Tomorrow we're going to start the writing portion from scratch, using only the jot notes, to prevent any plagarism, and hopefully reduce students making up information on the fly.

We talked about Mental Health, and six big factors that can play a big part in it: water, sun, food, movement, sleep, and love (positive relationships of any kind). The students did pages in their sketchbooks to show they're personal favourite ways of meeting each of these goals.

The afternoon was my favourite part of the day. We started working on Canadian History comics, and they're turning out so well, better than I'd even hoped. Students were given six choices for topic that included various explorers, the voyageurs, and the War of 1812. They watched educational videos and created comics to retell historical events.

Tomorrow is the Spring Event!

Have a nice night,

Zac

Tuesday, May 5

 Hi parents,

We had a bit of a tough day today, although the math quiz went pretty well!

The struggle today came when the students attempted to turn their (very limited) jot notes about their chosen animal into short paragraphs. Many students were taking phrases directly from the books, or making information up completely, in order to 'fill out' their paragraphs. Tomorrow we may have to have an emergency 'jot note' lesson to ensure students have enough information to work with.

I am about halfway through marking the math quizzes and so far they've been going pretty well. The quizzes have shown me which students still need extra practice, and I'll make sure to work with those kids each morning until they're on track. We'll have a re-do quiz later in the month.

We learned about the War of 1812 in Social Studies today. We talked about howeven though the war was essentially a 'tie', it helped build Canada as a nation and showcased its fighting spirit.

Have a nice night, and remember to remind your child to wear a hat tomorrow! I will try my best to remember mine.

Zac

Hats on for Mental Health Day - Tomorrow!

 

Monday, May 4

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today.

In the morning, the students had time to plan for their animal research writing, which is due on Friday. Despite having all of last week to gather information and take notes, and an hour today to plan, many students only wrote about five words on their planning sheets. I'm hoping for 3 paragraphs of 3-5 sentences each so I'm a little nervous about how this one will turn out...

We went over this week's spelling words, and talked about suffixes. We also had Music.

In the afternoon, we did Daily LA, and then revisited the Skip-Counting Challenge. This time the students only had 60 seconds, instead of 90. I was really happy with how this one went! Most students are able to count fairly high by all numbers partially by memory, and to efficiently use their fingers (this is actually a great and totally valid strategy) for unknown numbers. Accuracy is more important than speed.

Multiplication & Division Quiz - Tomorrow! 

This quiz features:

-8 basic fact problems, multiplication and division

-6 "fill in the blank" basic facts (for example, 3 x ___ = 12) (Grade 3 only)

-4 long multiplication problems (e.g. '342 x 4 = _____') (Grade 4 only)

-2 word problems involving basic facts

-4 long division problems (Grade 4 only)

-A 'factor tree' problem (Grade 3 only)

-A picture problem in which students must write an equation to describe a situation

Have a nice night,

Zac

When the teacher says they need a volunteer but doesn't say what you're volunteering for:

Happy May 4th :)

Spelling Words (Week of May 3)

 Spelling List A (May 1 – 8)

joyful	useful	lawful	helpful	playful
endless	useless	jobless	helpless	careless

 

Spelling List B (May 1 – 8)

hurtful	painful	hopeful	peaceful	truthful
reckless	harmless	fearless	flawless	worthless

 

Spelling List C (May 1 – 8)

grateful	doubtful	youthful	dutiful	resentful
merciless	shameless	priceless	pointless	flightless

We're looking at two suffixes this week: -ful and -less. This is a great opportunity to experiment with building new words, to build a strronger understanding of how suffixes affect meaning. -ful and-less are cool because you can use them to create opposites too, for example, 'useful' vs. 'useless'.

Good luck!

Spring Event and Volunteer Tea

 

Friday, May 1

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today, most of which was spent on work period.

The students used their time really well and finished tons of things from earlier in the week.

I am just realizing now we completely forgot to do the skip-counting challenge. That'll be on Monday I guess.

We also had Daily LA and played some great dodgeball games in gym.

Remember our math quiz is on May 5th! There's a detailed description of what to expect from it in a previous blog post.

Have a nice weekend,

Zac

Thursday, April 30

 Hi parents,

We had an awesome day today, with a lot of new work.

In the morning we learned about Food Chains. Students created food chains to show how their research animal fits into a larger food chain. We talked about how a food chain is meant to represent the typical predator / prey relationships that occur in nature, not weird hypotheticals (for example, an alligator is not a predator of a coyote, even though they probably could eat them in very unusual circumstances).

In math, the students worked on some very challenging division word problems. In French, we learned about 'la maison'' (the house), and various words pertaining to it. In Cursive we learned how to write the capital letters K, L, and M.

Tomorrow is our spelling quiz, and we are also doing another skip-counting check-in.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Wednesday, April 29

 Hi parents,

Today we finished watching a video on Voyageurs. The students wrote in their journals as if they themselves were voyageurs, describing their adventures and hardships, and trying to use as much historically accurate information as possible. Some kids decided to build a trading post and river scene in their spare time. I'm always pretty excited when a social studies topic sparks games like this (it does not happen often....)

We learned about citing sources and creating a reference list, as part of the animal research project. We talked a bit about reliable vs. unreliable sources. The students created basic reference lists to keep track of the sources they've used so far in their research. When I say 'basic', I mean just listing the book titles, article names, and authors. We're not expected to worry about proper APA or MLA formatting just yet, thankfully. 

Multiplication & Division Quiz - May 5th

This quiz will feature:

-8 basic fact problems, multiplication and division

-6 "fill in the blank" basic facts (for example, 3 x ___ = 12) (Grade 3 only)

-4 long multiplication problems (e.g. '342 x 4 = _____') (Grade 4 only)

-2 word problems involving basic facts

-4 long division problems (Grade 4 only)

-A 'factor tree' problem (Grade 3 only)

-A picture problem in which students must write an equation to describe a situation

Have a nice night!

Zac

Monday, April 27

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today. In the morning, we started our animal research project. Students chose an animal from a variety of options, and were given a book to use for researching that animal. They read through their books and took some notes, categorizing the notes into sub-topics. Tomorrow we're going to use other sources for research to fill in some gaps, and learn about citing sources.

We went over this week's spelling words, and had music and gym in the morning.

In the afternoon we did Daily LA, and learned about voyageurs in social studies. We also started to learn about line graphs in math.

Have a nice night,

Zac

Spelling Words (Week of April 26)

 Spelling List A (Apr. 24 – May 1)

quit	quiz	aqua	quad	quick
quite	quiet	equal	queen	quest

 

Spelling List B (Apr. 24 – May 1)

quote	squid	quill	liquid	sequel
quiver	quirk	quack	squad	quilt

 

Spelling List C (Apr. 24 – May 1)

square	quality	quarter	request	banquet
require	antique	quickly	question	frequent

The theme this week is 'qu', and these words are quite difficult. Although this is a letter blend the students probably learned in Grade 2, they likely haven't had to write many words beyond the ones on List A.

Study hard! Good luck! :)