Day 20: Orange Shirt Day and Terry Fox Run

 Hi Everyone,

Today we had two special days to celebrate, Orange Shirt Day and The Terry Fox Run!

Highlights of Our Day:

• For eye opener today we did scrabble. Our mystery word today was "vegetation"
• We had the computers this morning to do another round of research on the natural regions of Alberta. We went back on Zooming in Alberta to finish off finding information for each region
• In writing we continued with our Autumn paragraph of the week. Today we learned about topic sentences and closing sentences. We learned that the topic sentence of a paragraph is a sentence that expresses the main idea of the paragraph without giving away all the details of the paragraph. A closing sentence summarizes what your paragraph is about. It can be similar to your topic sentence but not the exact same. We watched the video below to help us understand the different parts of a paragraph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeCv0ifsURA
• Throughout this week we have been listening a variety of books around the theme of Orange Shirt Day and Indigenous children going to residential schools. We listened to "Shi Shi etko", "Shin Chi's Canoe", "When I was Eight" and "When we were Alone". Today we had a discussion around why we wear orange shirts and the meaning of Orange Shirt Day. We also talked about belonging and how Indigenous children did not feel that they belonged.  We then discussed and wrote about where we feel we belong and how it feels to belong somewhere. We also watched a video that explained the meaning behind the Acknowledgment of the Land. If you would like to check out the books we read I have put the links at the end of the blog.
• In PE today we did the Terry Fox Run! Everyone did a great job running in Terry's memory!
• In math we today we played Place Value Yahtzee

Reminders:

• Students were sent home on Monday with a small homework assignment to help us start our science unit on "Waste in Our World". We are asking you to keep track of your trash, composte and recycling over the next week. We will then use the information to make a graph. This home work is due back on Monday October 5th. 
• We will be moving away from the blog and started to put updates from the day onto the stream in our Google Classroom. This week I will be posted in both the blog and classroom, starting next week all updates about what we do in class will be in our Google Classroom so that all information is in one place .
• Friday October 9th-PD Day. No school
• Monday October 12th- Thanksgiving. No school 

"Shi Shi etko"-https://video.link/w/yTKJ

"Shin Chi's Canoe"- https://video.link/w/dSzeb

"When I was Eight"- https://video.link/w/gqMJ

"When we were Alone"-https://video.link/w/IGKJ

Acknowledgment of the Land Video-https://video.link/w/TdEK

Day 19: Addition Practice

Hi Everyone,

Highlights of our Day:

• For eye opener today we were given two writing prompts. We had to choose one and then respond to our chosen prompt
• In guided reading today, Ms. Hill read with two groups again, while the rest of us worked on finishing word work and Think Tank from yesterday
• In writing, we continued to work on our Paragraph of the Week. Today we worked on writing the body of our paragraph. We had to choose 3 details from our brainstorm yesterday then add more detail in our explanation. 
• In math today we worked on addition and regrouping. We were given 10 addition questions. For the first five questions we used our place value blocks to find the answers and for the second set of 5 questions we used the stacking method, where we stacked the numbers to add. We reviewed regrouping and were reminded to always remember to add the number you have carried over 
• We continued our read aloud of "SuperFudge"
• In PE we continued to work on our running skills, we will be running the Terry Fox Run tomorrow!
• In social studies we took a closer look at the Grasslands and started working on creating a visual journal page representing the landforms, bodies of water, vegetation and animals in the Grasslands. 

Reminders:

• Students were sent home yesterday with a small homework assignment to help us start our science unit on "Waste in Our World". We are asking you to keep track of your trash, composte and recycling over the next week. We will then use the information to make a graph. This home work is due back on Monday October 5th. 
• Tomorrow is Terry Fox Run and Orange Shirt Day. Please make sure your child is dressed the weather and has proper shoes for running/walking. Students are also invited to wear an orange shirt, if they have one 
• We will be moving away from the blog and started to put updates from the day onto the stream in our Google Classroom. This week I will be posted in both the blog and classroom, starting next week all updates about what we do in class will be in our Google Classroom so that all information is in one place .
• Friday October 9th-PD Day. No school
• Monday October 12th- Thanksgiving. No school 

Day 18: Autumn Paragraph of the Week

Hi Everyone,

Highlights of Our Day:

• Our eye opener today was number of the day. Today our number was 3589. We had to write this number in different forms and add 10, 100 and 1000 to it.
• We started guided reading today. Ms. Hill read with two groups of students so we had two rounds. In the first round we all worked on word work. Today we were working on the long and short "i" sound. Then in the second round we did Think Tank with a new item in the classroom
• In music we continued our work with music notes. Today we learned the value of music notes. 
• In writing we started "Paragraph of the Week", where we break down paragraph writing into the different stages and we do one stage per day. This week we were given a picture of Autumn and by the end of the week we will be writing a descriptive paragraph about Autumn. Today we were given a picture of Autumn and we worked on the brainstorming stage, writing down all of our ideas around fall, using our fall walk from last week to help us
• In PE we continued to work on our running skills and played Rock Paper Scissors Duel. 
• We continued our read aloud of "SuperFudge"
• In social studies we continued with the regions of Alberta. Today we focused in on what we had discovered about the Rocky Mountain region and created a page in our visual journal which showed some of the landforms, vegetation, bodies of water and animals that are in this region.

Reminders:

• Students were sent home today with a small homework assignment to help us start our science unit on "Waste in Our World". We are asking you to keep track of your trash, composte and recycling over the next week. We will then use the information to make a graph. This home work is due back on Monday October 5th. 
• September 30th will be the Terry Fox Run and Orange Shirt Day. Please make sure your child is dressed the weather and has proper shoes for running/walking. Students are also invited to wear an orange shirt, if they have one 
• We will be moving away from the blog and started to put updates from the day onto the stream in our Google Classroom. This week I will be posted in both the blog and classroom, starting next week all updates about what we do in class will be in our Google Classroom so that all information is in one place .
• Friday October 9th-PD Day. No school
• Monday October 12th- Thanksgiving. No school 

Day 17: Six Box Autumn Poems

 Hi Everyone,

Highlights of Our Day:

• For eye opener we worked on cursive writing. Today we practiced writing the word Autumn
• In literacy today we took all our ideas and observations from our fall walk to create a six box poem about fall. We took one or two ideas from each box to create a line in our poem. We worked on creating a rough draft and some of us, after having our work edited for spelling, began our good copy on the background we created with our leaf rubbings. 
• In music today we continued to learn about music notes 
• In math today we continued to work on place value and regrouping using the base ten blocks. We played Race to 500 again where we rolled dice to get our starting number then continued to add to this number and regroup as we rolled the dice. 

Reminders:

• Early Dismissal today at 11:45 and no school tomorrow as we have parent teacher conferences today from 3:00pm-7:00pm and tomorrow from 8:15am-12:00pm. We are doing these meetings through Microsoft Teams. The links for the conferences were sent last week via email. At your interview time please click on the link and then I will let you in to the meeting at your scheduled time.  
• We are now eating snack at 10:15am because of changes to our lunch times. Often students are hungry before this so I am encouraging them to eat a big breakfast or maybe have a quick snack around 8:00am right before school begins. Next week our eating time will be 12:20pm as it is 11:55am right now. This will give each group the same amount of time outside and space between groups coming in and out to help avoid passing other groups
• We are now doing soft entry in the morning as students arrive at school. Students will be able to go into their classroom (thought their designated doors) when they arrive and teachers will be in the room. We are hoping this will alleviate some congestion and allow us to get our day started without waiting in so many lines. 
• September 30th will be the Terry Fox Run and Orange Shirt Day. Please make sure your child is dressed the weather and has proper shoes for running/walking. Students are also invited to wear an orange shirt, if they have one 

For those of you who couldn't make it to the class virtual tour on Tuesday on Google Meet, I have put the video in our Google Classroom. It was too large to attach to the blog.

Day 16: Great Horned Owl

 Hi Everyone,

Highlights of Our Day:

• For eye opener today we practiced addition with 3 digit numbers
• In literacy today we did Think Tank. We also discussed and shared the different things we saw, heard, smelled, touched, wondered and felt during our Autumn walk yesterday. We will be taking our ideas to create a six box Autumn poem tomorrow
• In math we continued to work on place value and adding. Today we were given blocks to play Race to 500. We were given dice to roll and each time we had to add to the number using the blocks. This helped us to practice regrouping when adding using the base ten blocks 
• In PE we continued to work on our running skills
• We continued our read aloud of "SuperFudge"
• In social studies today we did a guided drawing of a Great Horned Owl, which is another symbol of Alberta that we found when researching the symbols of Alberta

Reminders:

• We are now eating snack at 10:15am because of changes to our lunch times. Often students are hungry before this so I am encouraging them to eat a big breakfast or maybe have a quick snack around 8:00am right before school begins. Next week our eating time will be 12:20pm as it is 11:55am right now. This will give each group the same amount of time outside and space between groups coming in and out to help avoid passing other groups
• We are now doing soft entry in the morning as students arrive at school. Students will be able to go into their classroom (thought their designated doors) when they arrive and teachers will be in the room. We are hoping this will alleviate some congestion and allow us to get our day started without waiting in so many lines. 
• Meet the Teacher Conferences are this week on Thursday September 24th from 3pm-7pm and Friday September 25th from 8:15am-12:00pm.  Booking for conferences are now open. These meetings will look different this year, they will be over Microsoft Teams. If you would prefer a phone call please let me know.  An email was sent out on Friday with all the information regarding conferences. If you have any questions regarding this please contact me.

For those of you who couldn't make it to the class virtual tour on Tuesday on Google Meet, I have put the video in our Google Classroom. It was too large to attach to the blog.

Day 15: Autumn Walk

 Hi Everyone,

Happy First Day of Fall!

Highlights of Our Day:

• Our eye opener today was scrabble. The mystery word was research
• In social studies we continued to learn about the six natural regions of Alberta. Today we worked on the computers to research different parts of each region such as, vegetation, animals and landforms. We used Zooming in Alberta to help us with our research. We then recorded our findings in jot notes on a chart. Click on the link below if you would like to check out the website.  http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/sszi/en/index.html
• We also went on a fall walk today. We started by creating a chart of our senses (see, hear, smell, touch, wonder and how I feel in my heart), in our visual journals. Then we went on a walk around the pond where we used our senses to fill in the chart. We will be using this to help us write an autumn poem with our senses. We also sketched a tree and other things we saw on our walk
• We continued with our read aloud of "SuperFudge"
• We used the leaves we collected on our autumn walk to create a background for our autumn poems by using leaves and pencil crayons to create leaf rubbings

Reminders:

• Today at 4:00pm we will be doing our virtual class tour on Google Meet. The class code for our virtual class tour is HillGrade4 The meeting will be from 4:00-4:20 you can drop in anytime between those times. The video is only a couple minutes long.
• We are now eating snack at 10:15am because of changes to our lunch times. Often students are hungry before this so I am encouraging them to eat a big breakfast or maybe have a quick snack around 8:00am right before school begins. Next week our eating time will be 12:20pm as it is 11:55am right now. This will give each group the same amount of time outside and space between groups coming in and out to help avoid passing other groups
• We are now doing soft entry in the morning as students arrive at school. Students will be able to go into their classroom (thought their designated doors) when they arrive and teachers will be in the room. We are hoping this will alleviate some congestion and allow us to get our day started without waiting in so many lines. 
• Meet the Teacher Conferences are this week on Thursday September 24th from 3pm-7pm and Friday September 25th from 8:15am-12:00pm.  Booking for conferences are now open. These meetings will look different this year, they will be over Microsoft Teams. If you would prefer a phone call please let me know.  An email was sent out on Friday with all the information regarding conferences. If you have any questions regarding this please contact me.

For those of you who couldn't make it to the class virtual tour today on Google Meet, I have put the video in our Google Classroom. It was too large to attach to the blog.

Day 14: Regions of Alberta

Hi Everyone,

Highlights of Our Day:

• For eye opener today we did number of the day where we practiced writing the number 5934 in a variety of different forms, such as chart form and expanded form. We practiced adding 10, 100 and 1000 to this number
• In literacy we did word work. Today we learned about the long and short e sound
• In music we learned about music notes and wrote them down
• In math  we finished the last page of our place value booklet. Today we practiced writing numbers in expanded form 
• In PE today we continued to work on our running skills. 
• We started our new read aloud today. We are now reading the next book in the Fudge series called Superfudge by Judy Blume
• In social studies today we learned about the regions of Alberta. We learned that Alberta is made up of 6 different regions: Boreal Forest, Canadian Shield, Foothills, Grassland, Parkland and the Rocky Mountains. We were then given a map of Alberta that we had to create a legend for and colour each region in Alberta. Check out the pictures below for some of our work!

Reminders:

• Tomorrow we will be going on a fall walk to the pond. Please make sure students are dressed for the weather and have appropriate outside shoes for walking
• Tomorrow we will be doing our virtual class tour on Google Meet. The class code for our virtual class tour is HillGrade4. The meeting will be from 4:00-4:20
• We are now eating snack at 10:15am because of changes to our lunch times. Often students are hungry before this so I am encouraging them to eat a big breakfast or maybe have a quick snack around 8:00am right before school begins. Next week our eating time will be 12:20pm as it is 11:55am right now. This will give each group the same amount of time outside and space between groups coming in and out to help avoid passing other groups
• We are now doing soft entry in the morning as students arrive at school. Students will be able to go into their classroom (thought their designated doors) when they arrive and teachers will be in the room. We are hoping this will alleviate some congestion and allow us to get our day started without waiting in so many lines. 
• Meet the Teacher Conferences are this week on Thursday September 24th from 3pm-7pm and Friday September 25th from 8:15am-12:00pm.  Booking for conferences are now open. These meetings will look different this year, they will be over Microsoft Teams. If you would prefer a phone call please let me know.  An email was sent out on Friday with all the information regarding conferences. If you have any questions regarding this please contact me.