Carnaval Tomorrow!!! - Jan 31, 2019

Excitement is building for Carnaval :).  We are all looking forward to an amazing day tomorrow. 

Here's the schedule for our field trip tomorrow:

10:45am – Bus will take us to Great West Productions Sugar Shack near Calaway Park for arrival at 11:30am.

11:30 – 2pm – programming and lunch is provided by the Great West team.

Return to school by 3pm.

An email has been sent with more details.  Please make sure to read it.
...
In the meantime we continued working hard.  In Math, we continued with our multiplications and today we incorporated it with art once more after our math quiz.  We created beautiful multiplication flowers that not only helped us practice our facts one more time but also helped us learn a few art skills (i.e. folding paper in such a way as to be able to cut a flower with six petals, changing a rectangle to a square, and working with patterns.)  Here's what the classroom looked like during recess and here's the finished product.

In Music we became composers this week.  We not only learned real well how to play two different versions of Hot Cross Buns, but we also learned how to write our very own version.  Through doing this we learned about beat, rhythm, and sound.  We also learned about repeated patterns and what makes a song nice to listen to.  We even sampled a little bit of Mozart to help inspire us.  Here's a good link for many of his masterpieces.

In French we used an online tool to learn the basics about verbs.  We also played a game where we had to find the verb among many other words.  Finally, we worked in small teams to identify and sort a large selection of words into nouns (common and proper), adjectives and verbs.  As we continue to dive into using all these different types of words in our sentences, we are also working on our conjugations and on building our vocabulary.    

We also continued to work on Zero Heroes and have now sent home our first mission.  Please help us complete these missions.  The teams also created drawings of the things that bring them joy other than objects or products you can buy. Here's a sampling of the things that bring us joys.

Hard to believe but that's a wrap not only for this week but for January already.  February, we are ready for you. :)

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 28 - Feb 1) - due Feb. 4 

- Math homework - semaine 17 - all due Feb. 4

Upcoming Important Dates:
Friday, Feb. 1 - Carnaval - Field Trip (All day @ Great West Productions Sugar Shack near Calaway Park)

LOOKING AHEAD:

- February 14-15 - PD Days 
- February 18 - Family Day 

Have a "sweet" evening!

An exciting week ahead - Jan 28, 2019

We started this week with lots of excitement as Friday we are off on a field trip to celebrate the Carnaval de Québec (or du Bonhomme de Neige).  Field trip forms have been sent home, please sign and return ASAP as the field trip is taking place on Friday Feb 1.

Today in Math, we continued with our multiplications and looking at strategies to help us do the math in our heads.  Today we explored breaking apart one of the factors to simpler factors and then adding back the results in the end.  It takes some practice to get these right but once these become engraved we will use them again and again as they truly help make life easier.

In French we did our journal entries today on our favourite movies.  We have also established new firm ground rules about only talking in French in class or to Madame unless she is teaching English or Religion.  Madame is no longer able to translate :) and now everyone must do that themselves.  We also use make good use of our dictionaries this way to help us when we are stuck.  

Today we also continued our work on Zero Heroes and have played a Game Show.  We now have a scoreboard set up and are learning a great deal, while also doing a good review, on the topic of waste and waste management.  We also got to continue reading Wonder.  Congrats to Stephen and Max for the great reading they did today.  We have recreated our readers' list and will hopefully wrap up the book real soon.

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 28 - Feb 1) - due Feb. 4 

- Math homework - semaine 17 - all due Feb. 4 (WILL BE HANDED OUT TOMORROW)

- RETURN FIELD TRIP FORMS!

- Check out spelling words: French, English, French Sentences

Upcoming Important Dates:
Tuesday, January 29 (Jour 5)

Wednesday, January 30 (Jour 6)
- Beading club @ lunch

Thursday, January 31 (Jour 1)
- Math Quiz / Spelling tests

Friday, Feb. 1 - Carnaval - Field Trip (All day @ Great West Productions Sugar Shack near Calaway Park)

LOOKING AHEAD:

- February 14-15 - PD Days 
- February 18 - Family Day 

Have a beautiful evening!

A short but engaging week - Jan 24, 2019

Presentations, presentations, presentations... oh and... PD DAY TOMORROW!!!

Math:
This week in math we continued working on multiplication and we continued looking at different ways of noticing the patterns and even incorporating a bit of art into it.  We used some Waldorf inspired multiplication clock circles and created some unique looking patterns that should help us remember our multiplication table better.  Now that we have created them, we will start using them in our future lessons.

French:
In French we worked on finishing our "signes orthographiques", did partner reading and individual reading using Raz-kids.  For some reason two of the books I assigned did not show up this week so the students only had three books.  I will be fixing the glitch for next week so we can continue to make good progress.  I am also planning on starting a new book study with the students shortly.

English:
In English we also did some reading but we most importantly started a new program that not only will allow us to use our English skills but also refocus our attention on the Waste and our World subject we started the year with.  Each of the students has been assigned to a group and they will be working on completing missions to become Zero Heroes as Zero Hero Super Agents. 
Ask your child what's a Zero Hero.

We did not get much chance to read Wonder this week but we will pick it up again next week.  I am also using the book "Mr. Browne's Precepts" as daily inspiration but also as a Bonus on our English spelling tests now.  I do not post these on the blog, but I do write them on the whiteboard in class.

Art / Music:
We continued practicing our music this week and we can now play two different versions of Hot Cross Buns.  We are now getting ready to write our own versions.  Super excited!

Social Studies
All the groups presented their presentations on each region of Alberta and we will now be moving onto learning a little bit more about Alberta's population including its Indigenous history. 

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 21 - 25) - due Jan. 28

- Math homework - semaine 16 - all due Jan. 28

Upcoming Important Dates:

Monday, January 28 (Jour 4)
- Homework due
- Learning Commons
- Healthy Hunger 
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 29 (Jour 5)

Wednesday, January 30 (Jour 6)
- Beading club @ lunch

Thursday, January 31 (Jour 1)
- Math Quiz / Spelling tests

Friday, Feb. 1 - Carnaval - Field Trip (All day @ Great West Productions Sugar Shack near Calaway Park)

LOOKING AHEAD:

- February 14-15 - PD Days 
- February 18 - Family Day 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Wrapping up another week - January 18, 2019

A busy week with a great deal of work... and little extra time to spare :).  But that is how we like it, as that is how we know we are learning a lot.

Math:
In math we worked on multiplication, we played games using cards to help reinforce our basic skills, and practiced doubling using dice.  We also did some Mathletics.  Some have attempted looking at the many ways multiplication can be represented including arrays.

French:
In French we talked about adjectives, tried a little online tool  / game to spot adjectives, and we also did a bit of a review on signes orthographiques (accents).  These seem to cause a bit of grief so a quick review seemed like a good place to start :).  We also did Raz-kids reading this week where they now have 5 books to read.  These books are due Monday Jan 21, 2019.

English:
We continued reading Wonder in English and continued working on our worksheets.  We will be starting journal writing in English as well and we will very soons tart our program on the connection between Language Arts and the Environment.

Art / Music:
We continued practicing our music this week and we can now play one version of Hot Cross Buns.  We will be learning another version of it soon and we will then try to write our own version.  It will be an interesting experiment for sure.
For art the students did drawings of superheroes for a little boy through Make a Wish Foundation.  The results were amazing... and the amount of superfruits and vegetables was awesome to see.  I guess being allowed to snack on these during the day has influenced our work :).

Social Studies
We have now completed (with some final tweaks being added on Monday) our presentations of the Alberta regions.  We will start presentations on Tuesday.  Each day 2 groups will present and we will use this opportunity to learn not only about the regions of Alberta but also about what makes a great presentation.

Science:
We have been focused quite a bit on the Social Studies project so we did a little less science this week.  We did a review of simple machines and looked into wheels and axles.  In the next few weeks we will be doing some hands on activities to help us build some more simple machines.

On Thursday we also had the pleasure of welcoming a guest with whom we were able to perform a Smudging Ceremony.  Although we learned about this a little from our book (The Sharing Circle) most of us have never taken part in such a ceremony.  It was a very unique experience and we are truly grateful for having been able to take part.

NOTE ON BEYBLADES:
Today we have spoken to the students about the beyblades they bring to school and have come to an agreement over the following:
1 - If the students bring beyblades to school, it is at their own risk.  They understand that there is a risk of their beyblades becoming lost, broken or damaged and as such they take the risk when they do bring these to school.
2 - Students are not allowed to use these within the school building.  These remain in backpacks, coats, or in our case, baskets until recess (morning and afternoon recesses only when the beyblading can take place on the swings at school.)
3 - Students have been asked to not do any kind of trading of beyblades at school.  Trading them has caused grief for many as most at this age do not truly understand the expense associated with or the value of some of the blades. Therefore, we feel it is best that they don't do any kind of trading at school at all.

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 14 - 18) - due Jan. 21

- Math homework - Monday - semaine 15 - all due Jan. 21

- French Page (Alphabet, Nom/Adjectifs) - both due Jan. 21 (if not handed in yet)

Upcoming Important Dates:

Monday, January 21 (Jour 6)
- Homework due
- Healthy Hunger 
- BFG @ 10:45 AM
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 22 (Jour 1)

Wednesday, January 23 (Jour 2)
- Beading club @ lunch
- Hymn Sing

Thursday, January 24 (Jour 3)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz / Spelling tests

Friday, January 25 - PD DAY

LOOKING AHEAD:

- February 1 - Carnaval (Field Trip - whole school)
- February 14-15 - PD Days 
- February 18 - Family Day 

Have a wonderful weekend!

What a beautiful day - Jan 14, 2019

Well, today was a beautiful start to the week.  The sun was out the entire time and we also did loads of great work in class.

We started the week with our sharing circle, followed by Math (started multiplication with doubling), and finally did some art.  We will continue our art pieces and I will share some pictures of the finished products tomorrow.

We did some Journal writing in French about things we plan on doing differently this year, looked at the updated spelling lists and listened to our song of the week.  Finally, we talked about the sacraments after being introduced to them by Father Rob Galea.  This is a great video, check it out.

The afternoon was filled with buddy reading and polishing our Google Slides on the Alberta regions.  The presentations are beginning to look great and we will start presenting them next week on Monday.  

A new rule has been introduced this week as well.  Students are allowed to snack during the day at any time as long as the snack is a fruit or a vegetable.  Healthy eating is a topic we will be discussing in health and eating fruits and vegetables will also help us with our focus and attention. :)  We will test how this works this week and we will then decide if we will continue on for the remainder of the year.

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 14 - 18) - due Jan. 21

- Math homework - Monday - semaine 15 - all due Jan. 21

- French Page (Alphabet) - due Wednesday Jan. 16 

- Spelling Words are up on the blog:

• French
• English
• French Phrases

- New problem of the week has also been posted.  Solutions should be provided on paper. :)

Upcoming Important Dates:

Tuesday, January 15 (Jour 2)
- Hymn Sing

Wednesday, January 16 (Jour 3)
- Beading club @ lunch

Thursday, January 17 (Jour 4)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz (doubling)

Friday, January 18 (Jour 5)
- Spelling tests (English, French)
----------------------------------------------
Monday, January 21 (Jour 6)
- Healthy Hunger
- Homework due 
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 22 (Jour 1)

Wednesday, January 23 (Jour 2)
- Beading club @ lunch
- Hymn Sing

Thursday, January 24 (Jour 3)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz

Friday, January 25 - PD DAY

LOOKING AHEAD:

- February 1 - Carnaval (Field Trip - whole school)
- February 14-15 - PD Days 
- February 18 - Family Day 

Have a beautiful evening!

One week into 2019 - Jan 12, 2019

Unbelievably, one week has already passed.  It was a particularly busy one too.

We did a lot of work, finished quite a few of the tasks we started in 2018 and continued to read Wonder together. 

The best part of the week was that a new student, but really an old friend, joined our busy class.  He had a few busy days himself but by Friday he fit in as if he had always been with us.

Math:
In math we have now wrapped up the second unit.  This unit focused on addition and subtraction using numbers up to 10,000.  Our next step is Multiplication and Division.  We already started using our multiplication fact cards while waiting in line :).

French:
We finished lots of work including our dictionary search activities and a writing piece about our vacations.  This upcoming week we will start our spelling words and sentences (2), we will be writing in our journals again and we will be back to learning lots of grammar to help improve our writing skills.

Music/Art:
In music we progressed quite a bit this week.  We even got to play a song: "Au claire de la lune".  We will continue to learn more songs (as some already know and shared with us) and we will also keep practicing reading sheet music.  

English:
In English, we did lots of Stamina Reading.  On Friday we made it to 9 minutes without losing our focus.  We also read quite a few chapters in Wonder and answered many questions.  We will continue to work on Wonder and will be adding back in grammar as well as a new project on being Zero Heroes (planet protectors).  This will touch on other curriculum elements as well including health and social studies.

Social Studies:
We continued to work on our Region project this past week with many groups getting real close to being finished.  We will be wrapping these up this upcoming week and will start with the presentations towards the end of this week or early next week. 

This week we also cleaned our desks, made some new name tags, read with our grade 1 buddies, got loads of exercise and restarted our recycling work.  Thank you to Mme Annie and Mme Melendy for once again reading with us in the mornings. 

Chanson for next week:

Our Chanson for next week is a song to inspire all of us to work hard and become "giants" :).  The video was created by a school in Montreal and I thought the entire video is worth watching. 

The song is by Pierre-Luc Lessard.  The title:  Soyons Géants!

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 7 - 11) - due Jan. 14

- Math homework - Tuesday - semaine 14 - all due Jan. 14 

Upcoming Important Dates:

Monday, January 14 (Jour 1)
- Healthy Hunger
- Homework due (Math, Raz-kids)
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 15 (Jour 2)
- Hymn Sing

Wednesday, January 16 (Jour 3)
- Beading club @ lunch

Thursday, January 17 (Jour 4)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz

Friday, January 18 (Jour 5)
- Spelling tests (English, French)
----------------------------------------------
Monday, January 21 (Jour 6)
- Healthy Hunger
- Homework due 
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 22 (Jour 1)

Wednesday, January 23 (Jour 2)
- Beading club @ lunch
- Hymn Sing

Thursday, January 24 (Jour 3)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz

Friday, January 25 - PD DAY

LOOKING AHEAD:

- February 1 - Carnaval (Field Trip - whole school)
- February 14-15 - PD Days 
- February 18 - Family Day

Have a Wonderful Weekend!

Another busy day - Jan 8, 2019

Today we started the day with reading.  We also did Stamina Reading where we read for nearly 7 minutes straight without losing our focus.  After this we did some math review sheets (addition and subtraction), continued to make notes on our vacation in French, did some dictionary search activities and continued to work on our Alberta Region slides.  Lots of great work was accomplished today.  We even pulled out our dusty recorders and started playing three notes in a row (Si, La, Sol).  We are super close now to learning some songs.  😃 I am totally looking forward to it. 

We wrapped up the day by continuing to read Wonder.  Today's readers were Addison, William, Anika and Mia.  They did a wonderful job!  The list of readers is growing and now includes almost everyone in the class.  Wohoo!!! 😃

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 7 - 11) - due Jan. 14

- Math homework - Tuesday - semaine 14 - all due Jan. 14 

Upcoming Important Dates:
Wednesday, January 9 (Jour 4)
- Beading club @ lunch
- Learning Commons

Thursday, January 10 (Jour 5)

Friday, January 11 (Jour 6)
- Choir @ lunch
----------------------------------------------
Monday, January 14 (Jour 1)
- Healthy Hunger
- Homework due (Math, Raz-kids)
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 15 (Jour 2)
- Hymn Sing

Wednesday, January 16 (Jour 3)
- Beading club @ lunch

Thursday, January 17 (Jour 4)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz

Friday, January 18 (Jour 5)
- Choir @ lunch
- Spelling tests (English, French)
----------------------------------------------
Monday, January 21 (Jour 6)
- Healthy Hunger
- Homework due 
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 22 (Jour 1)

Wednesday, January 23 (Jour 2)
- Beading club @ lunch
- Hymn Sing

Thursday, January 24 (Jour 3)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz

Friday, January 25 - PD DAY

Have a great evening!

2019, here we go - Jan 7, 2019

And we are off again... 2019 has come faster than I expected, but we are ready.

Today we started things off a bit slower.  Before we did our sharing circle this morning, we had Sonia (Stephen's mom) visit us and talk to us about La Befana (an Italian tradition).  I have added a song about La Befana to the Chansons page.  Check it out.  She also brought some delicious cookies and oranges from her.  Thank you so much for sharing this tradition with us.

Following our sharing circle, which understandably took a tad longer than usual, we read a book for math.  The book is called the Math Curse and it was a really fun way of reminding us all how math is all around us.  We will be doing a bit of subtraction and addition review this week and will also start embarking into multiplication, division and the most loved topic of all, fractions :).

Just before recess we had the delicious cookies and oranges.  Thank you to those who helped handing them out.  We then did some on the spot multiplication knowledge check while waiting to go outside :).

After recess we had Hymn Sing, took some time to write about our vacation in a questionnaire and finally went to read with our Grade 1 buddies.  This time we used books and the students did really well.  Our grade 4 students are really wonderful at helping our little ones read.

After lunch we continued working on our Google Slides for Social studies.  The goal is to finish these soon so we have enough time for the presentations.

We also had Class Representative elections in our class today.  The elections were held by secret nomination and Addison won the confidence of the class to represent Grade 4 in the school council.  Congratulations Addison!  Many other students were selected as well (making the count very close) demonstrating what a great versatile and hard-working group our Grade 4 students are.

We wrapped up our first day back with Gym.  Merci Mr. Lurol pour votre patience!

Homework: 

- Raz-kids French books (Assignment Jan 7 - 11) - due Jan. 14

- Math homework - Monday - semaine 14 - all due Jan. 14 

Upcoming Important Dates:

Tuesday, January 8 (Jour 3)

Wednesday, January 9 (Jour 4)
- Beading club @ lunch
- Learning Commons

Thursday, January 10 (Jour 5)

Friday, January 11 (Jour 6)
- Choir @ lunch
----------------------------------------------
Monday, January 14 (Jour 1)
- Healthy Hunger
- Homework due (Math, Raz-kids)
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 15 (Jour 2)
- Hymn Sing

Wednesday, January 16 (Jour 3)
- Beading club @ lunch

Thursday, January 17 (Jour 4)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz

Friday, January 18 (Jour 5)
- Choir @ lunch
- Spelling tests (English, French)
----------------------------------------------
Monday, January 21 (Jour 6)
- Healthy Hunger
- Homework due 
- Knitting club @ lunch

Tuesday, January 22 (Jour 1)

Wednesday, January 23 (Jour 2)
- Beading club @ lunch
- Hymn Sing

Thursday, January 24 (Jour 3)
- Learning Commons
- Math Quiz

Friday, January 25 - PD DAY

Bonne nouvelle année!

Welcome 2019!

Hello 2019!  

Welcome back Grade 4 :)

(Source: https://funinfirst.com/a-new-years-flip-book-freebie-word-work/)

Looking forward to seeing everyone again and to embarking on new adventures together.  

Welcome back!