October in Review
Mrs. Hammell Grade 4
Global Read Aloud: The Wild Robot
We have begun reading our “Global Read Aloud” novel The Wild Robot! We started our literary focus by doing a picture walk and collaboratively making predictions about the characters, setting, and plot line based on what we saw.
As we read more each day, students are working on communicating their thinking in reading responses by including evidence from the text, and their own ideas as they answer like an ACE!
Purposeful Letter Writing
Students have been busy learning the traits of a successful friendly letter. We worked together on shared writing as we wrote back to polar bear biologist Alyssa after our Google Hangouts with her in late September. We were lucky enough to hear a response back (see next slide).
Students got the chance to put their new learning into practice as they wrote their first letters to their pen pals. We are connecting with a Gr. ¾ class at Our Lady of Fatima school in Chatham. We can’t wait to hear back!
Our Letter to Alyssa
Alyssa’s Response!
Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness
This month we have been focussing on bringing kindness into our school and classroom. Kind deeds for others were recorded on confetti and added to our school bulletin board!
Gr. 4’s watched a short video and reflected on how they can start this kindness chain. We made posters including a kindness quote, and deeds we can do in our own lives and posted them above our cubbies! This will be a good reminder for us as we enter and leave the school each day.
Measurement Fun!
Gr. 4’s began our look at measurement by considering different attributes to measure, as well as strategies and units in order to record our measurements. We investigated the benefits and disadvantages of non-standard vs. standard units. We were able to further put our thinking into action by teaming up with the Gr. ⅘ class to measure the attributes of the beautiful trees in our school yard. Students used rulers, meter sticks, string, body lengths, grid paper, and much more to complete this exploration. As we continue our look at perimeter and area, students will be pushed to develop further estimation strategies and measurement techniques!
Habitats & Early Societies Update
Our awesome 4’s have done research into an invention or development that an early society brought about! We were shocked to learn that mirrors, makeup, medicine, & more were invented by these early people! We will continue to look into early civilizations by comparing Sarnia to early Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc. by considering the key elements of civilizations and building our thinking wall!
After investigating a habitat in our school yard in late September, students have continued their learning by thinking about energy movement in food chains ! The students will get to act out a forest food chain to really get a better understanding of the difference in the number of producers, primary consumers, and secondary consumers in a given habitat!
Coding & Robotics
We have been informally introduced to our newest classmates: Dash & Dot! Over the coming weeks we will get to experiment with programming these robots and learn how coding and programming work through centres and whole class investigations. We are hoping to be able to show you some of their new skills at our student-led conferences on November 23!
Stay Curious & Keep Learning!
Twitter: @MrsKHammell
Remind: @smsgr4