Week 14

Dear parents and students,

First of all, thank you to all parents for your contributions and participation in our Thanksgiving lunch. It was great to see the children enjoying time with parents, and for those of you who were unable to attend, we all appreciated the delicious food you provided for our feast. Many photos were taken throughout the lunch. Please check back to this blog early next week, when I will have had time to select and post pictures of Grade 4.

It was another short week in the classroom, but as always, we were very busy. We have been spending some time each morning revising and proofreading our narrative stories. Next week, we will be publishing the final products, and presenting them on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In Maths, we have been focusing on division, and spending time familiarising ourselves with the 'long division' technique. This will become very handy when we move on to dividing larger numbers and decimal fractions in the future. We will continue our study of division throughout next week, culminating in a test next Friday.

In Social Studies, we examined some of the events that formed the landscape of the Northeast States of the USA, paying special attention to glaciers. Glaciers are responsible for many landforms around the world. We will also be studying glaciers when we resume our Science studies in a few weeks. Next week, we will be looking at how people and places change over time.

When we have found time, we have rehearsed our Christmas performance. We will be spending some more time rehearsing next week. We will also be organising our costumes. Parents, I hope that you are able to assist in our costume design. We want to look good on stage, but we also want to keep things as simple as possible, so as not to burden ourselves during such a busy time of the year.

I look forward to seeing all parents again when we present our show on December 12.

I hope you enjoy the weekend. See you Monday!

Dates to Remember:

• Tue & Wed, Dec 2-3 – Narrative Story Presentations
  
• Fri, December 5 – Math Test: Topic 8
  
• Thu, December 11 – Christmas Concert Rehearsal
  
• Fri, December 12 – Christmas Concert Performance
  
• Wed, December 17 – Half Day of School
  
• Dec 18 – Jan 4 – Christmas Vacation
  

Students of the Month - November

Ayden, Gorden, Shunta, Abigail (Performing Arts), Momoko (ESL), Maria, Shin

Student of the Week, Week 14

Congratulations to Shunta!

Shunta always works steadily and puts in his best efforts. This week, he was able to continue with his diligent work, despite all of the distractions and excitement of Thanksgiving. Well done, Shunta, and keep up the steady work!

Homework, Friday, 28th November

Maths: Practice 8-6 Dividing 3-Digit by 1-Digit Numbers; Enrichment 8-6 Up and Up!
R&W Workshop: Finish proofreading. You may begin typing if you wish, but make sure you can access your work from the Computer Room on Monday. (Email or Google Docs)
Social Studies: Finish answering the questions from Wednesday.
Reading: Raz Kids, or a book of your choice. 20 mins minimum each day.

Homework, Thursday, 27th November

Maths:Practice 8-5 Dividing 2-Digit by 1-Digit Numbers; Enrichment 8-5 Will They Reach the Top?
R&W Workshop: Finish redrafting your narrative.

Homework, Wednesday, 26th November

Maths: Practice 8-4; Enrichment 8-4
Social Studies: Complete U2.4.1 Questions (see below) Due Monday
BrainPOP Movie - Glaciers

Review:

• 1.     What is a glacier?
• 2.     What are two different ways that glaciers affected the northeast?

Climate:

• 3.     What is climate?
• 4.     What is a blizzard?
• 5.     What effects can blizzards sometimes cause?
• 6.     Do you know of another part of the world that is affected by blizzards? Where?

Natural Resources:

• 7.     What are natural resources?
• 8.     What are some of the natural resources found in the Northeast states?

economy: look it up - page R58

Questions 1-5 on page 114

All due Monday. No excuses. See me if you are having difficulties.

See you all at Thanksgiving tomorrow!

Homework, Tuesday, 25th November

Maths: Practice 8-3 Dividing with Remainders; Enrichment 8-3 Order Lunch
R&W Workshop: Finish summarizing your story.
You should have each event numbered.

Example:

1. Introduce Little Red Riding Hood and the setting (the forest).
2. (Introduce main problem or journey) Little Red Riding Hood is walking through the forest to her Grandma's house.
3. Along her way, she meets the big, bad wolf. She tells him where she is going.
4. Wolf rushes to Grandma's house, eats her, puts on her clothes and gets in bed.
5. Little Red Riding Hood arrives and meets "Grandma".
6. Dialogue: "What big ears..." etc.
7. Wolf jumps out of bed, chases Little Red Riding Hood.
8. A woodsman sees LRRH running, and catches and kills the wolf.
9. The woodsman cuts open the wolf, Grandma jumps out - miraculously, she has survived being eaten.
10. Closing. Moral - don't talk to strangers.

Tomorrow, we will rewrite our stories, and each event should have its own paragraph.
Make sure you are ready to do this.

Week 13

Dear parents and students,

We were once again very lucky with the weather on Wednesday. Thank you to all parents who were able to join us for Fun Day. The afternoon was a great success, and it was good to see so many parents present to enjoy the time and support your children.

In the classroom, we have been continued with our work on our narrative writing assignment. We have been learning how to critique one another’s work, and more importantly, accept constructive criticism from our peers. The three-day weekend will allow some time for each student to make some final revisions to our stories before we work on formatting when we return on Tuesday.

We finished yet another topic in Maths on Wednesday. Thursday brought us the first lesson of Topic 8, dedicated to division. We will spend the next two weeks studying this topic, so we should all expect to feel confident in our division skills by the time we finish.

We have also finished our Life Science unit, and have returned our attention to Social Studies. We began this week by looking at the Northeastern states of the USA. We will be observing geographical features, climate, resources and population, and comparing our findings with other parts of the world.

As I mentioned last week, the students of Grade 4 have taken it upon themselves to write and perform a skit for the Christmas concert. I am pleased to say that the draft of the script is completed, and we have completed our first dry run. We will continue to work on our production next week. We are all very excited to present our skit to you on the 12^th December.

Of course, before Christmas comes Thanksgiving. We are also very excited to share that time with parents next Thursday, 27^th November. I look forward to seeing you there!

Dates to Remember:

·       Mon, November 24    – Professional Development Day – No students at school!

·       Tue, November 25      – Spelling Test: List 12

·       Thu, November 27      – Thanksgiving Lunch at HIS

·       Fri, November 28        – Monthly Assembly – All parents welcome

·       Fri, December 12        – Christmas Concert

Photos from Fun Day!

Student of the Week, Week 13

Congratulations to Maria!

Awarded for hard work and high performance.
Maria has been working extra hard this past week, including writing a large amount of our upcoming Christmas skit. She has also been achieving some very high grades in recent tests and assignments. Well done, Maria, and keep up the excellent work!

Homework, Friday, 21st November

Maths: Practice 8-2 Estimating Quotients; Enrichment 8-2 Franny's To-Do List

Reading and Writing Workshop: Final Revisions -
Read your Peer-to-Peer feedback. (3 Stars and a Wish)
Read your story.
Does it have a beginning, middle and end?
Is it in sequence? (Does everything happen in a logical order?)
Do you have a problem and solution, or a journey?
Have you included dialogue? (talking)
Are you happy with your story?

On Tuesday, we will be formatting our work. This means that we will be making sure that each new idea or part of the story has its own paragraph.  Make sure you are ready to begin this stage of writing.

Spelling: Review List 12  Click here for list and Spelling City link

Enjoy the long weekend, but remember to read for at least 20 minutes each day.

Homework, Thursday, 20th November

Maths: Practice 8-1 Using Mental Math to Divide; Enrichment 8-1 Barry's Best Sellers
Reading:  Read pp.230-239 o f Boss of the Plains
Optional Vocabulary practice - eWord Game: Boss of the Plains

Bonus Points!  

Social Studies -  Research to find the following:

Which word is a synonym for harbor?

ranch              beach              port

In which category does blizzard belong?

weather          landform        pollution

Which resource might you find in a quarry?

marble            wheat             oil

How do glaciers affect water levels?

Homework, Wednesday, 19th November

Reading: Read pp.219-229 of Boss of the Plains
Summarizing - Questions to think about:
Why does everyone in the West need a hat? pp.220-221
Where does John Stetson live? Where would he like to go? pp.222-223
What things happened to make John decide to go to Pikes Peak? p.224
What opportunity arose for John to use his talent? pp226-229



Writing: Revise your narrative

Art: Think about a design you can use as your black line master for our Andy Warhol project.

Here are some famous Warhol Paintings:

...and here are some impressionists' works:

What would yo like to do?  Keep your picture simple enough so that you can draw it four times!