Sept. 18 News

Hello Parents

It was wonderful to spend some time with you  last week getting to know you and share the  grade 3/4 curriculum for the upcoming school year.

Over the past few weeks, I have noticed the students are becoming more focused and back into the grove and routine of school. I am pleased with how they are committing time to completing their homework and coming to school well prepared for the day. Thank you for your support at home in this area.

In reading workshop, we have added onto the strategies that good readers use and have been practicing these skills during independent reading time. We have looked at how readers infer and determine the importance of a fiction text.  Using the story elements, we completed maps and used these to guide our summary writing. Students will be completing a DRA(Developmental Reading Assessment) next week and this skill will be evaluated as part of the reading process to determine comprehension levels.

In writing workshop we have been busy revising and editing our narratives based on the mini lessons taught in class. Students have impressed me with their willingness to re-look at their narrative and make changes to improve their  piece of writing. Stay tuned for our published versions which will be available for your reading pleasure shortly.

Grade four students have been working with larger numbers in math. We have focused on:

• reading and writing these numbers
• place value
• ordering
• rounding
• strategies to solve word problems
• money concepts

Our next unit will focus around multiplication strategies and algorithms.

A note from Mrs. Craig:

In grade 3 math, we just finished up our first unit on a review of numbers with a graphing project.  We learned (or maybe just remembered from grade 2?) about line graphs, bar graphs and pictographs.  Check out the results of our seed-spitting experiment outside the math room!

There were lots of oohs and ahhs as the grade 3/4 scientists dissected an owl pellet so we could compare and contrast rodent and human bones. Next week we will be completing other experiments where students will learn about various joints. Here are a few shots of the scientists in action!


Scientists at Work on PhotoPeach


Until next time,
Theresa