This week and our short few days together last week we found ourselves challenging each other and learning how to persevere through tricky math questions!
We are continuing learning about our land in Alberta (Gr.4) and Canada (Gr. 5) and how the Science aspects and Social Studies aspects of this topic are much more intertwined than we had once expected! We have been continuing working on our research projects on the provinces and regions of Canada/Alberta respectively and have continued on our journey into discovering the CN rail, how it was built and the pros and cons of treaties. In math we are continuing to learn what the meaning of "mathematical reasoning" is and how we express our math work in words (explaining the HOW we got an answer and WHY we chose to use a certain strategy). We have begin working on multi-step word problems and figuring out what our first step, second step (sometimes a third step!)and final answers are in sequence. The class as a whole has found this topic very challenging, however I have seen such a vast improvement in their mathematical vocabulary and problem solving skills already that I cannot wait to see what more incredible discoveries our students make next! Remind your students of the DMSCB method for long division -- ask them about our mnemonic and what DMSCB stands for! This week we also completed research on medicinal and poisonous plants that can be found in Alberta (Gr.4) and Canada (Gr.5) and what the harms or medicinal factors of each are. We are going to use this information next week when we begin to build stands for our heat lamps and then start our planting process of a multitude of different vegetables and fruits. Our hope is that we will be able to grow enough fruits and vegetables to share a snack with our grade 1 buddy class! We will also be analyzing how a set of plants that will be growing in our homemade greenhouse grows in comparison to the donated commercially made greenhouse! We also were lucky enough to have a representative from the Calgary Humane Society come into our class and do a lovely 1 hour presentation on conservation and animal safety throughout our province. Ask your child about the wildlife bridges that go over and underground in Banff! :) Field trip forms for Nosehill Park went home yesterday and are expected back by next Friday. This is an entirely OUTDOORS trip which will have us in nature from 8:45am-1:00pm. We will be going on this trip unless the temperature is the designated -20 with the windchill as these are the rules the school follows as well for safety. This means each student MUST be dressed for the weather on this day (March 6th). If students do not come to school with snow pants, jackets, hats, mittens and boots then they will not be allowed to join us for safety reasons. Upcoming important dates for Feb/March: - Monday, February 26th - Artist in Residence Begins - Tuesday, February 27th - NLC reps coming in to talk with all 4/5's - Wednesday, February 28th - TREC Education in Room 18 - Tuesday, March 6th - Nosehill Park Field Study - Thursday, March 8th - Outdoor School Parent Meeting (Mandatory for all Grade 5 parents only. Letter to go home soon) - Monday, March 12th & Thursday, March 15th - Diversity Cup Soccer Tournament Tryouts after school (letter to go home soon) - Thursday, March 22nd - Last day of classes before break -Thursday, March 22nd-Friday, March 23rd - Parent Conferences (Details to follow) Have a wonderful weekend :) <3 Miss Paddon
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What we've been working on in Room 18:
Math: This week we dove into the world of division! We started our week discussing strategies for solving 1 digit divisors and 2 digit Dividends (ex: 25 divided by 5). Once we felt comfortable enough with that, we moved on to long division. We learned the mnemonic Do Monkeys Sell Crispy Bananas (Divide, multiply, subtract, check and bring down) to remind us of the steps we need to take in order to properly solve a long division question. We then learned how to check these answers using the inverse equation and we learned how to properly label our dividend, divisor and quotient. Once we mostly became comfortable with this, we discovered what a remainder is and how we represent them in a quotient. Ask your child to teach your our method and try and practice some questions at home! :) Science: Grade 5's completed some experiments independently in which they had to differentiate between homogeneous mixtures and heterogenous mixtures. Ask your child if they can tell you the difference between Heterogeneous mixtures and homogeneous mixtures and which experiments represented each one. Grade 4's were looking into flowering plant life cycles and the female and male parts of a flower and their purpose. Ask your child about the purpose of: Stamen, Anther, Pistol and Stigma. If your child is unsure about any of these bolded words, take this time to complete some research together and answer any questions you may have before we return next week! :) Social Studies/Language Arts: We are continuing to use our hamburger paragraphs to write about different aspects "flow" in their writing by using transition words such as Suddenly, Although, First, Second, Last, Despite the fact, In fact. We are also focusing on using apostrophes in the appropriate place and expanding our use of punctuation to involve more than just periods or exclamation points. (Continuing from last week!). We also completed research on Natural Resources in Alberta and Canada and discussed how they are used and how they benefit us! On Thursday, we used our Glenbow Museo-kit to learn about Canadian rights and freedoms for woman and how they have evolved over the years. The students learned about The Famous Five women who helped to shape future of women's rights in Canada. We completed 3 activities which had us observing artifacts, dressing up as one of the 5 women and learning about them individually and competing in a heated debate during our mock trial of the famous 5 and The Persons Case which saw the famous 5 challenge the Supreme Court of Canada. The students did a wonderful job and we had such a fun, hands-on day! Important Upcoming Dates: ASAP - All money ($2.50) for the museokit that we brought in from Glenbow Museum is due as soon as possible. Thank-you to everyone who has brought it in already! February: 20th - Calgary Humane Society (In School): All 3 classes 27th - Niitsitipi Learning Center Guests (In School): All 3 classes 28th - TREC Education in Room 18 all day (In School) Have a wonderful weekend! <3 Miss Paddon Highlights from last week in Room 18:
Math: This week we have continued to develop our multiplication skills and have become much more comfortable in multiplying 2-digit by 1-digit numbers. Next week, we will be discovering 3-digit by 1-digit multiplication as well as working through 1 step and 2 step word problems involving these multiplication equations. We will be making sure that we check our working using the inverse operations each time and then using our reasoning skills to orally explain how we solved this! Science: Grade 5's started learning about homogenous and heterogeneous mixtures and how they differ from solutions. They started completing research on examples of each mixture (along with lots of practice on how to pronounce each word :) ). Ask your child if they can tell you the difference between Heterogeneous mixtures, homogeneous mixtures and solutions. Grade 4's were looking into flowering plant life cycles and the female and male parts of a flower and their purpose. Ask your child about the purpose of: Stamen, Anther, Pistol and Stigma. If your child is unsure about any of these bolded words, take this time to complete some research together and answer any questions you may have before we return next week! :) Social Studies/Language Arts: We are continuing to use our hamburger paragraphs to write about different aspects "flow" in their writing by using transition words such as Suddenly, Although, First, Second, Last, Despite the fact, In fact. We are also focusing on using apostrophes in the appropriate place and expanding our use of punctuation to involve more than just periods or exclamation points. On Thursday we travelled to Studio Bell/The National Music Center for our 8th trip of the year. Here, we had a jam packed day of adventures through this incredible building! We discovered natural sounds and how they are created as well as creating our own instruments! Each student completed an interactive scavenger hunt through the building and learned so much about Canadian History. It was amazing to look at the instruments and discover the engineering that took place in order to create each one! Thank-you so much to our 4 wonderful volunteers and I so look forward to our future trips! Important Upcoming Dates: ASAP - All money ($2.50) for the museokit that we brought in from Glenbow Museum is due as soon as possible. Thank-you to everyone who has brought it in already! We will be exploring this kit in the next coming weeks. February: 20th - Calgary Humane Society (In School): All 3 classes 27th - Niitsitipi Learning Center Guests (In School): All 3 classes 28th - TREC Education in Room 18 all day (In School) Have a wonderful weekend! <3 Miss Paddon |