Lots of Learning Happening in Grade 3/4!!

The Buzz About Science

      We are doing 2 Science themes in our class right now using an "Inquiry" model of learning. The topic for Grade 4 is pulleys and gears and the Grade 3' s are learning about stable structures. I put these together because they both involve building things. What is "inquiry" ? Well we started off by having books in the classroom on the themes. Students wrote down what they already knew about the topic and then they wrote what they would like to learn. Ms. Colasante and I met together and took a close look at the students' questions. We lined them up with the curriculum, grouped similar questions together and came up with several big questions on each Science topic. The children chose a question to investigate. Why use an "inquiry" approach? The immediate enthusiasm of the students was noticeable. They were engaged right from the start. Students generated the questions and are coming up with ideas on how to share what they learn with the class. Today there was a beehive of activity as towers, bridges, pulleys, and buildings were constructed. Thank you Mrs. St. Pierre for being a second pair of adult hands to help with string, cardboard, popsicle sticks, glue and organized chaos! Pictures of today's activities to come but here are some from Tuesday, Oct. 29.

 Hmmm... what do we need to make the top part stay up?

                                                                  The spring scales will                                                                            help us find out how a                                                                    pulley helps lift a heavy load.

This structure has a pretty solid base.

Each group has made a plan about what they can do to show the class the answer to their inquiry question.

This group took what they saw on a video from youtube and applied it to a simple structure they made. Do you see the arches? Your child will be able to explain why an arch is strong. And what exactly is a buttress? (besides being a funny word!)

Here are some youtube videos that we watched and I promised the children that I could post them so they could show you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4DoyvJFM2Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYtIFM1ek_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4oj95E8J9M

Enjoying the Go Fish- Fruit of the Spirit. Is it Religion? Social Skills? Music? Dance? Phys Ed.?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyBmPOlPWNA

We do enjoy art in our class. Hope you have wall space to display these masterpieces. 

Having trouble getting your Grade 3 or 4 student to bed on time?? Remind them of the project on healthy sleep habits that they just finished or review      http://www.sleepforkids.org/

Math: What are we up to? and how can you help your child?

We have been working on addition and I can't stress enough, the benefits of knowing number facts. We worked on doubles ( 6+6) and near doubles (6+5 or 6+7). We will add facts that add up to 10. A small number of children have difficulty remembering number facts but most can learn them with a few minutes of daily practice. I am finding that many students still need to make the effort. Grade 4's will be adding X table practice to their efforts.

While we will informally continue adding and number facts, our new focus will be linear measurement. We cover cm (centimetre) mm (millimetre) m (metre) and Km (kilometre). Students need to measure, estimate what they think the length will be, choose the appropriate unit of measurement, ( a cm is the right unit to measure the length of  shoe) and compare units ( 1 m = 100 cm). Students can be given tape measures at home and set loose to measure all kinds of things! Common mistakes can be not lining the 0 up with the beginning of the the object, or just not realizing that there is a need to be accurate. 

From there we will begin to measure the perimeter of shapes. Sometimes students will measure with a ruler and other times with a grid.   Finally, we will be measuring the area of shapes and comparing it to perimeter. Often students understand perimeter and then become somewhat confused when area is added to the mix. Learning the difference and where each measurement is used in real life is important.  You can make these concepts more real by looking around your home and talking about what might need measuring and where you might need to find the area or perimeter.

Welcome to the new school year 2013-2014   Grade 3/4

Math

   Emily M wants you to know that we are working on place value and rounding in Math. Mikayla knows that the Yellow Group needs to round 2 digits to the nearest 10. Here is an example from Alexa.  65 --> 70. Matthew S knows the rule is to round up if it is 5 or above. The Blue Math group is rounding 3 and 4 digit numbers to the nearest 10's, 100's, 1 000's.

What we are working on now is trading 10 tens for a 100 or we can trade 10 ones for a ten.  When Emily H writes 346, she knows that the number can be shown by 3 hundreds, 4 tens and 6 ones. Madison can show the same number value in a different way by using 2 hundreds, 14 tens, and 6 ones. It means the same thing!

Max says that we can all be awesome at our addition facts if our parents practice with us starting with doubles (10 + 10) and doubles plus one facts ( 8 + 9).

In Language

  We have been reading an abridged version of Anne of Green Gables. Ema and Shane are enjoying the story because they find it interesting to read about what life was like on Prince Edward Island. 

We also did a shared reading of a story called Odd Velvet. We found it on the website for the Ottawa Public Library under Tumblebooks. Kaitlin says sometimes people are odd but we still should respect them and not make fun of them. Being odd can be fun and interesting says Matthew S.


 Matthew H enjoyed the shared reading of The Boy in the Drawer. He reminds us that these narratives have a problem, setting, characters, events, and a solution.

These books are all narratives. Your children can tell you the parts of a narrative: setting, characters, problem, events and solution.

Welcome to Victoria!

 Victoria is being helped by the whole class to learn English. She told us by using iTranslate that she enjoys the singing we do and that she likes working in the library. She also likes the friends she has at our school!

Bucket Filling is important!

Ms. Petrocco read our class the book Have you Filled a Bucket today? When you help someone or are kind you fill someone's bucket said Daniel. Being mean to someone by being rude or pushy will dip into someone's bucket added Caeden. Bucket filling is important because it gives you happy feelings. Fiona feels that if you fill someone else's bucket that will fill your own bucket too!

Health and Media

Students have been researching the importance of healthy sleeping habits. We used an inquiry method of learning. After reading from a great Internet site, students chose questions to research. They will be presenting what they learned to the class in the form of a poster. These experienced Grade 4's learned how to make slideshows last year and added this to their presentation. Grade 3's are anxious to have the Grade 4's help them learn this tool as well! Having trouble convincing your child to have healthy sleep habits? Remind them of what they have been teaching their classmates from http://www.sleepforkids.org

Art  

We recently made these beautiful designs using fresh leaves. Students were amazed at the impression made by a painted leaf where they could see all of the delicate veins. Autumn colours were added in between the leaves and a beautiful image was the result. Several teachers have admired their work!

We made these drawings to reflect the music we listened to. It was Vivaldi's Four Seasons Autumn. We listened for the mood of the music, the tempo, repeating patterns and instruments that were playing.

A really cool way to display words is with the program called Wordle. In this case, students made their name the focus. They added words that told what their name means, or words that are important to them. We are going to use Wordle to help us with Math vocabulary or spelling words or Science vocabulary. You can find it at http://www.wordle.net

Emily H  suggested we look at this website and her classmates LOVED it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyBmPOlPWNA