Connaught School's Grade 3/4 Classroom Blog

Hi families, Grade 3/4 students are continuing to build their understanding of place value. This year, grade 3s are learning about numbers up to 1,000 and grade 4s are learning about numbers up to 10,000. When looking at large numbers, students are encouraged to think about the following questions: what value does this digit represent? How can I show this number? Can I show this number in many different ways? The grade 3/4 team has almost completed a full cycle of Power Hour modalities. This means that your student has almost completed all of the modalities and will have an opportunity to explore two modalities in more depth. They will combine 2 new modalities from Power Hour to complete a final project. Our class is continuing to read our novel, "Inkling" by Kenneth Oppel. In the novel, we learned what Inkling eats and how he eats! We also learned more about Ethan's mom, dad and sister. Can your student predict what will happen to Ethan's comic project?

The grade 3/4 students have been learning about place value. We have been using the base ten number system to understand each digits proper place and its value. We have been learning how to represent our numbers in different ways such as standard form, expanded form, written and, using base ten blocks. This week grade 3/4 have been playing a variety of games to practice strategies we have learned to better help us understand numbers! We continued Power Hour, students please share which modality you learned this week and if you chose plant or animal life cycles to represent. We learned about Metis "the flower beadwork people." We studied a painting by Canadian artist named Christie Belcourt titled "My Heart is Beautiful." We used her beadwork art as inspiration to create our own! Began reading our class novel "The City of Ember" by Jeanne Duprau. Students began recording their knowledge and understanding of the stories setting, characters, thoughts an...

November 12th POWER HOUR has begun! The Grade 3/4 Team, along with Ms. Bezugley and Ms. Corinne, are engaged in a 7 modality project with all Grade 3/4 students. The modalities were chosen to engage students in unique ways to show their learning. The focus is to build student capacity in the modalities based upon representing their understanding of one of two units in Science we have all covered:  Plant Growth and Change and Animal Life Cycles. Teachers developed an individual rubric for their specific modality specifying what would constitute a 1, 2, 3 and 4 for that specific modality.  As a teaching team, we also created a rubric for the content portion of the project. Students are aware of these rubrics and how they would be assessed in each center. They are given as much flexibility in choosing whether they show their understanding of Animal Life Cycles or Plant Growth and Change.  For example, one grade 4 student chose a pumpkin as her plant for Visual Journali...

Scientists in School! "Life's Like That" All grade 3/4s participated in Scientists in School last week. Scientist Amanda, a biologist, came and led us through some hands-on activities about classifying animals, describing their life cycles, and examining some creatures up close. How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? Students were so excited to count pumpkin seeds this week! Students estimated and measured how many seeds each class pumpkin had as well as its weight, height, circumference and, number ribs! later we opened up our pumpkins and each table group counted their seeds to see how many pumpkin seeds we had all together! Here are some questions students were asked to think about: What estimation was closest? What estimation was furthest ? What else could we estimate and measure ?

Skip Counting Students in Ms. Jaques's class have been practicing skip counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s. We are working on starting at different numbers, not multiples (for example, count by 5s starting at 26). We are also using skip counting circles to see the patterns and similarities in skip counting. Look at our beautiful patterns! Game Redesign Students in Mrs. Clark's class participated in Game Redesign of a patterning question involving animals and food they would be collecting.  Examples were Bunnies and Carrots and Fish in the Coral.  They shared their redesign and open ended games with their peers for Grade 3/4 Game Day. Community Walk We have continued to explore the meaning of home to us by venturing out into the neighborhood with our Walking Field Trip to Lougheed House. We used both photography, sketching and journalling to share our perspectives on "where we can find home in our community."

We have been learning about waste in our world, using drama and literature. We have been practicing and creating presentations to teach the school more about recycling and where our waste goes! Parents please ask your child about the following questions: What are the 4 R's? What are some ways that we can reduce the amount of waste we create in our school and home? How can we reduce the amount of soup spoons we use at school?  These cannot be recycled and go directly to the landfill? What effect will REUSING and REFUSING have on the amount of waste in our world.  We are also collecting soup spoons this week to have a baseline of how many plastic spoons are used per week. Our goal is to show this information visually to the school and work towards awareness of ways to reduce this. Thank you for your support in sending in a metal spoon that will come back home on soup days if your child eats soup.  In science we have been preparing for our Tomatosphere project (grow...

**Don't forget to check out our Resources page for some activities to practice at home!** In Literacy students continue to work on reading and writing in a variety of contexts. We are focusing on strategies students can use when they come to an unfamiliar word:  First, read the whole sentence, and look for any clues in pictures. Next, look for clues in how the word is spelled – does it look like any word you already know? (For example, “scientific” looks a little like “science” – they might be connected).  Finally, try replacing the word with something else that might make sense, and re-reading the sentence with your replaced word. Does the new word make sense? If not, try again!  As you’re reading at home with your family, try using these strategies! What new words have you discovered? Integrating Science, Literacy and Art, students engaged in a habitat transformation project. After reading the picture book, Zoo by Anthony Browne, students e...