Fantastic Fours

This week, we used two wonderful picture books as a springboard for a writing and art project. Mrs. Pols' class used the book, The Barnabus Project and Ms. Mitchell's class used to book, Where The Wild Things Are. Using the books for inspiration, the students were excited to create their own "wild things" and critters. We then worked together brainstorm descriptive ways to write about our creations. Our focus was on using a variety of words to express ideas.  The students came up with a many interesting and effective ideas such as; massive bulging eyes, one lonely viper tooth and miniature teeth as sharp as razors. Next week, the students will complete their written piece and create their final piece of art representing their critter. We cannot wait to see how they turn out!

Over the last two weeks, the students have been working on a variety of literacy centers including word work that focuses on spelling patterns and partner reading where the students are working on their reading fluency. The students have also been reading within a small a teacher-led group. During this time, we have been working on making predictions and summarizing texts read. We connected this work to our focus on fossils within social studies. Our learning focus was: identify other perspectives by exploring a variety of ideas, opinions, responses and oral, print.  The students read three different newspaper articles from the Calgary area. One from 1882, another from 1948 and a final article from 2011. The students compared the changing perspectives around the importance of fossils within our province. The students wrote short summaries on the perspective represented in each article. The small groups then worked together to read a variety of opinions on fossils, matching them to the

This week, we completed our work on our Finding Muchness project. The students created a piece of watercolour art and selected a pose for a photograph they felt best represented them. The students then pieced these together to create a final work of art to represent who they and who they aspire to be. Our focus was on the learning outcome; select visuals, print and other media to add interest and to engage the audience.

  In math, our focus has been on representing and describing whole numbers up to  10 000 and ordering and comparing numbers to 10 000. The students have been engaged in a variety of learning activities including using whiteboards, math scoots and the game, Kahoot. Be sure to ask your child what was their favourite.