Welcome to the 21st Week of school at NCS! This week sure was a busy (and snowy) one! Students in 4A and 4C spent the majority of their working on their "Ms. Moneybags" project. Ask your child about what the "Ms. Moneybags" project is all about - they should be able to describe our work with lots of detail! Last week (Week of Jan 29th), students researched their questions on the internet and from our textbooks. This week, we brainstormed what an informational paragraph should look like, and we talked about assessment. Students then worked to summarize all of their information into clear and concise paragraphs. Then, once they had written their 3 paragraphs, they had a chance to work through the editing process with a partner, and to practice their paragraphs for presentations that began on Thursday (and continued on Friday). With the snowy weather, several students were away on Thursday, but many students were luckily still able to present! We moved the desks around to look like a conference room, and students had fun presenting to Ms. Moneybags (Ms. Clark with a wig). Presentations will continue next week. Below you will see a few photos from their work this week! We continue to read for 20 minutes on a daily basis, and worked at Literacy Centers a couple of days as well. The majority of the time did go to our work with the "Ms. Moneybags" project. We also worked on different literacy activities too! Students also had an opportunity to work on "stamina writing" this week. This is similar to our 20 minutes of "stamina reading," but where students work to write, instead. We are able to work for approximately 8 minutes of uninterrupted, individual time spent writing, and this term, we will be working to increase our time spent writing each day. The writing tasks and formats will change, and students will often have choice in their writing. On Friday, we had an exciting "design challenge" in which students had to work together in groups of 3 or 4, to solve a problem. The problem, was a scenario in which someone was hurt on a mountain, and had to be transported down the mountain. Students were able to combine skills and understanding from a variety of subjects (including their new unit in science, as well as humanities) in order to collaborate and come up with a solution. Design challenges present an opportunity for students to use their problem solving, team work, presentation, building, and critical thinking skills all at once. During the process, students had to identify the problem, brainstorm solutions, work with others to decide on and build a solution, and then present their ideas to the rest of the class. It was a fun morning, and students worked so hard! Below you will see photos from the design process, as well as, the finished prototypes of each groups solution. Important Information:
-Report Cards went home Friday. Please sign the envelope and return to school with your child. -Teachers Convention is on Thursday, February 15th and Friday, February 16th - so, there will be no school on Thursday or Friday of this upcoming week! -Family Day is on Monday, February 19th - so there will be no school (which means a 5 day weekend for students!) -4C has been working hard in Flex time and learning all about community, and helping me prepare for my presentation at Teachers Convention this week. They have done a phenomenal job, and I am so impressed! -If you child wants to hand out valentines day cards this Wednesday, February 14th, there will be time to do so in the morning! Class lists went home last week for name spellings. -Forms/Payment due this week for the field trip to the Calgary Hitmen game. Please return to your homeroom teacher. Have a wonderful weekend, Ms. Clark
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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 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 Welcome to the 16th Week of school at NCS! I first and foremost wanted to say thank you to all families for their warm wishes and thoughtful gifts. I hope each and everyone of you has a restful winter break, and that you spend this holiday season with family and friends. Stay warm, it seems that winter is here to stay! This was a short and sweet week here in humanities. We started our new unit on Monday, FOSSILS! Students have been very excited to learn all about Alberta's history from this perspective. We started off the week with doing some brainstorming about what we already know about fossils (and other related topics), and asking questions that we had been wondering about! We then had a chance to learn about paleontologists and experience a little bit about what they do! We had "the great cookie dig" and students had to carefully take out as many chocolate chips as they could (just as if they were taking fossils from the ground). See below for pictures! Students really seemed to enjoy this lesson! Students also worked this week on writing a descriptive paragraph to describe what they would see if they were in a time period with dinosaurs! They used pictures of fossils as prompts. They had to describe the landscape and any animals that they would see! They then had to draw a picture to match their description! I snapped a photo of a few, see below! We continued to work on our 20 minutes of reading and our Literacy Centers! This week there were no RRJ's due, just catching up on anyone who had an overdue RRJ. The next week of RRJs will be week 12 and due on their days, the first week back. Our classes continued to have holiday visitors, Brownie Snowball and Oreo the Kindness Elf! Oreo got up to all kinds of things this week, including ziplining, making snow angels, and leaving candy canes for everyone! We also completed our acts of Kindness (Secret Kindness Project) and delivered our candy cane reindeer to all off the staff at school! Important Notes:
-Homework over the break - 15 minutes of reading daily, there is a reading log in students agendas for the to fill in! -Check out "tumblebooks" on the main NCS website - there are lots of great resources and activities for students to do over the break -Don't forget to check at home for any overdue library books over the break! -I sent a note home with 4C this week about bringing in any old/recyclable items for our class maker center, so please check that note out! -School starts back on January 8th 2018 Have a wonderful holiday season and see you all in 2018, Ms. Clark Welcome to the 15th week of school here at NCS! It's been a busy week here in Humanities with lots of things going on! We've been continuing to read in class for 20 minutes everyday. We have also been continuing with our Literacy Centers, and started our new center "Reading with Ms. Clark". Literacy Center groups also got switched up, so students have the opportunity to work with other classmates! This week, we mainly focused on the question "what makes Alberta unique?" This was a week long project that students worked towards with the end result was for students to create a detailed paragraph explaining 3 things that they thought made Alberta Unique. They also had to edit their paragraph and include 3 pictures that reflected their 3 things that made Alberta Unique. The "what makes Alberta unique" project was broken down into many smaller steps. As a class, we made mind maps about what we thought contributed to making Alberta unique. We then worked to create some example paragraphs as a class, and also worked on editing and giving feedback. Students also had a chance to do some research on the computers and get ideas for their 3 images. Then, once they had brainstormed and decided on their 3 reasons, they were able to organize their ideas into a detailed paragraph. They just handed in their project today! See below for some photos of the mind maps we created! This week Oreo (the Kindness Elf) visited our classroom! He Did lots of kind acts for us including sharpening pencils, writing in our kindness jar, decorating the classroom and reading books! He's been an exciting addition to our classroom!!
Other Information -Thank you SO very much for all of the donations for the stocking from Inn From the Cold! We are so appreciative and the families will be very grateful. -Secret Acts of Kindness are ongoing and we will hand them out or do their acts of kindness next week! -Next week there are several SPIRIT days happening! They are as follows: Monday: Hot chocolate ($1) and caroling in the gym at lunch – 12:25 Tuesday: Rice Krispies ($1) and caroling in the gym at lunch – 12:45 it's also hat day! Wednesday: Christmas Cookies ($1-2) and caroling in the gym at lunch - 12:45 it's also PJ day! Thursday: Stocking Probability in the main foyer ($1) its also Dance/Activities day! ** all proceeds go to the ChooseKind Project and Inn from the Cold. Have a happy weekend, Ms. Clark Welcome to the 14th week of school at NCS! This week was another exciting week in grade 4! The highlight of the week was our ski/snowboard trip, and students had a blast! So many students said they want to try skiing/snowboarding again and were really happy that they got to try a new skill (or to keep on practicing something they've tried before)! This week in humanities students continued to read daily for 20 minutes in class! We didn't work at our Literacy Centers as much this week, as students worked to catch up on any unfinished center activities from previous weeks, and we did a few small lessons about giving/receiving feedback and working on adding detail to our Reading Response Journals. We'll be back to working at centers daily next week and we'll be adding in a new center, "Reading with Ms. Clark" - this means that Literacy Center Groups will be slightly smaller, and students will also have a chance to read with me in a small group setting.
This week was week 10 for our RRJs! We also had our Alberta Natural Resources Quiz on Wednesday of this week and did some review in class on Monday. This quiz will be sent home late next week (there are still a few students who were absent and need to complete that quiz before I hand it back out). Students: please remember to bring back your Social Studies Duotangs if you haven't already! On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, we also had a chance to discuss and learn about some National/Provincial Parks in Alberta! Students were able to make many connections to this topic and were really engaged in class! We learned about why parks were created, where they are located (what natural regions), what animals that can be found there, why parks need to be protected and some interesting facts/features about these parks. We looked at maps, did some reading/writing, and overall had some really wonderful conversations this week. Great job grade 4's! Both 4A and 4C also learned about our "Secret Kindness" project that is taking place in December! A note went home with students on Monday, and there is more information posted on the main blog! In flex time this week, students worked on making a card for their secret friend, and we worked on community in the classroom and showed some Nose Creek Spirit! Important Information/Dates -The 3 secret kindness acts will be completed during the last week of school, starting on December 18th. Students are welcome to come into my room during lunch to work on any acts of kindness! -Our school is also working with Inn From The Cold to do the "Spirit of Giving" - where we will try to fill a stocking with items to give to a family in need. We brainstormed ideas in class and students were excited to spread even more kindness within our community! This is completely optional and is not required. -Winter Concert is on December 15th (4A is performing, 4C is watching). Thanks for your continued support and have a wonderful weekend, Ms. Clark |
AuthorGrade four Humanities teacher. Archives
June 2018
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