Have you ever used your hands or feet to measure objects? Or used string? Over the past few weeks we’ve done both while we’ve been learning about non-standard units of measurement. A highlight for many of us involved using IKEA paper rulers to measure distances between objects in the classroom. Did you know that IKEA rulers have shorter lines on the top than on the bottom? We discovered that that is because they are different units of measure. The lines on the top are metric so show millimeters and centimeters. We’ve also learned about different shapes, including polygons. This week we greatly enjoyed our Google Hangout with a grade 3/4 class located in Warrenton, Vermont! They are also reading Front Desk (the Global Read Aloud novel), but we were far more interested in finding out about Vermont than chatting about the novel! We were excited to ask questions about their state and we had fun sharing facts about our beautiful province. It was interesting to hear how similar Vermont is to BC. We both have large forests (according to Google, 64% of BC is forested compared to 76% in Vermont) and we are both near the ocean (Pacific for us, Atlantic for Vermont). A big difference is the size of our cities. We have over half a million people in our city compared to under 10,000 in Warrenton! We have another Google Hangout at the end of October… and we can’t wait! Remember how we recently planted seeds and exposed them to different conditions (no water, no soil, no light and fertilizer)? It’s been fascinating watching some of the seeds sprout…and grow! And interesting to see some not sprout at all. We’ve been recording observations and will continue to track those observations for another week. A few of us have already noted some of a plant’s basic needs: sun! and water! We’ll keep you posted on what else we observe. We ended our week reading a lovely book by Monique Gray Smith: My Heart Fills with Happiness and reflecting on things that fill our own heart with happiness. Life is busy and sometimes we might feel stressed or anxious as a result. In moments like these, we need to remember to seek out things that make us happy. Enjoy your weekend everyone and see you back next week!
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The 2019 Global Read Aloud (#GRA19 & #GRAFront) kicked off this week and over the next 6 weeks, we will be joining hundreds of classes around the world as we read Front Desk, a novel by Kelly Yang. Before getting started, we activated our background knowledge by examining the cover of the novel and thinking about the title. We saw many different clues on the front page – a character on the phone, bags on the floor and keys hanging on the wall – that we used to make predictions. We wondered if the character was at home or work. And we wondered if she was on vacation or in a hotel. We used those observations to make predictions about the story. We recorded our predictions and then began reading! The story immediately grabbed our attention and we’re looking forward to continuing next week. We’ve been exploring one of the Science Big Ideas How Living Things Sense & Respond to Their Environment with some science experiments that involve our senses. We’re all familiar with our five senses, but we didn’t realize how much they actually work together when sending signals to our brain (even when we’re sleeping!). Fascinating! We also learned that plants are similar to humans in that they also sense and respond to their environment. We started an experiment to see first hand how seeds respond to different conditions (no water, no soil, no light). After getting our seeds planted, we used our prior knowledge to make realistic predictions. A few of us wondered how the plant would respond to darkness because it needs the sun for food. We’re curious to see it for ourselves!! We kicked off our letters home last week, so this was our second week of sending letters home to share our highlight of the week. Our writing goal for the first term will be to develop our ideas with supporting details. Our teacher modelled how to brainstorm before writing to help come up with ideas to write about. We noticed that that was really helpful! Here’s what our learning intentions and criteria are: Learning Intention: I can communicate my ideas using written language Criteria:
A great week of learning :)
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March 2020
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