December 10, 2019

Happy December!

 Students in grade 3/4 have had a busy few weeks. We have DJD coming in every Wednesday to teach us different types of dance - last week we focused on swing dance and we learned moves like Shorty George and the Charleston. Ask your child their favourite dance move!



Students in Ms. Jaques's class are continuing to work on building strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems. We are developing our flexibility with numbers. Some of the strategies we've come up with are Expanded Notation (breaking down each number and adding one place value at a time - 458+391 = 400+300+50+90+1+8), and Friendly Numbers (rounding to the nearest friendly number, then adjusting - 298+155 = 300+155-2). Practice these at home with your child! A great game you can play is the "license plate game" - find 2 license plates with 3 or 4-digit numbers and practice adding them together in your head. You can also do this with addresses or building numbers.


We are beginning our study of quality of life, standard of living, and cultures in other countries. To do this, Ms. Jaques's class began by examining the laws, amenities, and services available in Calgary by going on a community walk and looking intentionally for aspects of our community that help us stay safe and happy. We found fire hydrants, street signs, emergency phones, snow plows, and all kinds of other things!

Each class is reading a shared novel right now. Ask your child what their class read aloud novel is, and what they think of it so far! Some great questions you could ask to help build their comprehension skills are...

  • Can you retell the story so far? What happened first, second third...
  • What character do you think you are most similar to? Why?
  • What do you think will happen next? Why?
  • What major problems have the characters encountered so far?
  • Where does the story take place? What place have you been to that is most similar to the story's setting?
  • What are some choices the main character has made? Were they good choices or bad choices? Why do you think the character made that choice?

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