Welcome to the 20th Week of Grade 4 at NCS! What another busy week! This week in humanities, students started their "Ms. Moneybags" project. In this project, "Ms. Moneybags" is a wealthy investor in Albertan museums. She wants to leave her fortune to a museum, but first, she had a list of questions that the "Board of Directors" (the students of 4A and 4C) that they have to answer first! This week, students had to research a variety of questions about fossils in Alberta, Joseph Tyrrell, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum. This project involves many humanities skills and outcomes, and students have been so engaged! Next week, we will be working on creating organized, clear and detailed answers to "Ms. Moneybags" questions (now that we've got all the research)! Students will create clear paragraphs, and then present their findings to the class, in a conference like setting. Students have all been working very hard to research their questions, have have been practicing a variety of skills and outcomes, including: research, inquiry, reading, writing, managing information, communicating in a persuasive manner and demonstrating identity and citizenship. Below you will see a few photos of students researching. As students completed their research, we also did multiple individual and group check-ins, to make sure that everyone was on task, and this gave several opportunities for students to seek clarification, guidance or feedback. As students completed their research, they also worked on a variety of other literacy skills, as students had multiple choices as to what they wanted to work on. Students could check the "work work" section of the grade 4 blog and practice spelling, grammar, writing, and more! It's a great resource for students to use at any time. Some students chose to continue to dive into inquiry and research. Below you will see a photo of some grade 4 dinosaur research (optional) projects. This week we continued reading daily (for 25 minutes today)! and we also worked at Literacy Centers a few times this week. We did pause on the centers later this week to allow students more research time for the "Ms. Moneybags" project. We will start up with Literacy Centers again soon.
Important Information: -This week was week 15 for RRJS. -Assessment Duotangs went home today - please sign and return -Report Cards go home February 9th. -If there is anyone else who would like to place a Scholastic Book order, please do so! I will put the order in Tomorrow (Friday, February 2nd). Have a great rest of your week! -Ms. Clark
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Please see the hand out you got in class for more information. Don't forget to organize your research carefully, using the strategies we talked about in class.
Websites Below you will find some key websites/links to help you complete your research. Question 1: To learn more about what paleontology is, click on the following links for information. Don’t forget to take jot notes and record key information for your presentation. http://www.kidsdinos.com/paleontology/ https://kids.britannica.com/kids/article/paleontology/353591 https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/paleontology/what-s-the-big-idea-about-paleontology2 Question 2: The links below will give you more information about the history of dinosaurs in Alberta and fossil discoveries that took place. https://www.dinosaurvalley.com/stories-from-the-past http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/exhibits/alberta_fossil_trail.htm http://www.kidsdinos.com/dinosaurs-for-kids/ - click on location, and find Alberta on the map (then click on it). http://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/best-dinosaur-fossil-ever-discovered-in-alberta Question 3: The films and links below will help you to learn about Joseph Tyrrell, the namesake for the Royal Tyrrell Museum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m_4Gc4AYaI http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/about/the_naming_of.htm http://engagingstudents.blackgold.ca/index.php/division-ii/soc-d2/social-4/4-2-the-stories-histories-and-the-people-of-alberta/let-s-bring-alberta-s-history-to-life/builders-of-alberta/tyrell/ Questions 4 & 5: Below you will find links giving you information about Royal Tyrrell Museum. These will help you to learn about the museum. http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/research/collections.htm http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/research/fossils_law.htm http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/programs.htm http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/royal-tyrrell-museum-of-palaeontology/ These are NOT the only resources that you can use. You can search up your own information to add to your questions for Ms. Moneybags. Welcome to the 19th week of school at NCS! This week flew by! We've been wrapping up our fossils unit this week with a few last activities. Students had a chance to do some research and inquiry this week, based on our fossil unit. Students had their choice of activities and topics to research, which were based on Joseph Tyrrell, the "Nodosaur" discovery of 2011, and learning about other interesting paleontology facts from the Philip J. Currie museum in Grande Prairie. We also checked out a cool website called "Kids Dinos" where students got to do a little bit of a deeper investigation into the dinosaurs found in Alberta (there are other sections for fossil discoveries all over the world). We wrapped up the week by doing some reading, reviewing and discussions based on fossils in Alberta. This week we continued to do 20 minutes of daily reading (today we even did 25 minutes)! Literacy centers also continued. We were on week 14 of Reading Response Journals this week. Today students got to see inquiry and research in action! Grade 4 students were invited to go to the Grade 6 & 7 Science Fair, where students have been working hard on their experiments and investigations for over a month now! Students really seemed to enjoy seeing all of the different projects, and it was great to see another example of inquiry, like the grade 4 students had worked on earlier this week. Important Notes:
-Scholastic book orders due by February 1st 2018 - you can now pay online, or send in the order/cheque and I will place your order. -There are lots of great websites that students can check out at home if they would like! A few are: Prodigy, Tumblebooks, kidsdinos.com, and hour of code! -Students should be reading and practicing math facts daily! -Don't forget to check for library books at home and return them! -No School tomorrow, January 26th 2018 Have a great long weekend, Ms. Clark Websites1/19/2018
0 Comments Websites for Inquiry -you can always copy and paste the links if needed! Activity 1 http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/about/the_naming_of.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m_4Gc4AYaI Activity 2 http://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/best-dinosaur-fossil-ever-discovered-in-alberta Activity 3 https://dinomuseum.ca/programs/kid-zone/ask-a-palaeo/ Welcome to the 18th week of school at NCS!
This week is another full week of school here in grade 4, with lots going on. We're still up to our same routine in Humanities Class, in which students read daily for 20 minutes at the beginning of class, and then we work at literacy centers for 15 minutes. After that, we use the rest of our time in class to work on other aspects of Humanities -- this week we've been able to work on a variety of things including: working on listening, sequencing and order of events in texts, reading comprehension tasks, working on point of view writing, as well as, continuing to learn about fossils in Alberta (both in the point of view writing, as well as, watching a clip from National Geographic about digging fossils in the badlands)! We'll also be using computers to do some inquiry and research tomorrow and into next week! Students will have a choice between a few different topics, and then have time to direct their own learning and start learning more about paleontology and Alberta's Fossil Heritage! Additionally, this week was week 13 for RRJs. Students have been so engaged with these topics, and we've been able to have a number of great discussions in class recently as well. I really encourage students to keep on participating and sharing their ideas in class! Important Notes: -Orders for Tim Hortons Fun Lunch (next Wednesday, January 24th) are due tomorrow, Friday January `19th. -Book Orders, for anyone interested will hopefully be sent home on Monday for you to take a look at/order from. There have been some changes made to how Scholastic does their online ordering, please let me know if you have any questions, or contact Scholastic for any troubleshooting (it seems to be working really well though)! -Next Friday, January 26th is a PD day. -Don't forget to check out "tumblebooks" - you can access it on the main Nose Creek School Page. I showed students in 4C this week -- please let me know if you have trouble accessing it! It's a great resource to explore. Hope everyone is having a great week, Ms. Clark Welcome to the 17th week of school at NCS!
I hope everyone had a wonderful winter break! This week we've gotten right back into the swing of things here at Nose Creek and in our humanities class. This week we've been continuing with 20 minutes of reading each day (today we actually did 23 minutes!) and working at our literacy centers! Students have been on task and focused this week at their centers, and done a great job working independently on their tasks. We've also been continuing our exploration of fossils in Alberta! This week we watched a movie about fossils, learned about where fossils have been found in Alberta, how fossils are protected, and some of the important people who've found fossils in Alberta (e.g., Joseph Tyrrell)! We also have talked about the fact that fossils have contributed to our heritage and identity as Albertans. On Wednesday, Students were involved in several small debates about the protection of fossils and who they thought should have ownership when a fossil is found. We learned about the laws put in place to protect fossils in Alberta. Currently, students are writing an opinion piece about Alberta's fossil heritage. I'm attaching a link to an interesting article about a recent(ish) fossil discovery in Alberta - we'll be talking about in in class more next week. Give the article a read if you wish! Fossil Article We will also be working on reading and presenting in small groups on Friday! This will help prepare students for some upcoming projects and presentations in the coming weeks/months. I am also including a link to the "word work" section of our blog - it's got some great links that students can check out this weekend! Word Work Page Important Notes: -This week we talked to students about how important it is to stay organized and be respectful of locker partners/the people around us. We've talked about a few common strategies that seem to be helping students! -The LC is back up and running for book sign out- both 4A and 4C had a chance to head to the Learning Commons this week to sign out new books! -Book orders will be sent home soon. -It's been quite cold this week and students have been dressing up quite warm, but are encouraged to remember to have indoor shoes, and stay warm! -Please make sure you are filling in reading logs each time a student reads! It helps us to address needs and find interests when reading. Have a great rest of your week and weekend! -Ms. Clark |
AuthorGrade four Humanities teacher. Archives
June 2018
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