Frenzied Neurons Firing on Friday

Dear Parents :
What a fabulous week of learning.  Today we tried something different instead of home journals we created a google form to completehttps://goo.gl/forms/hLaBJW6dZFne8fXJ3.  Here are some examples of student entries:

Look at all of the tasks we explored this week:

Speaking of the Zones of Regulation  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGQwBsajCzQ, here are some student pages from their visual sketch journals.  The task was to illustrate a time when you'd experienced each of the zones.  Create your own unique symbol for the zones and to come up with personal strategies for moving out of a particular zone.  The optimal learning zone is green.  

Thinking About Essay Writing on Thursday

Dear Parents,

Some of our learning highlights on Thinking Thursday:

Plays in French

During our plays in french class we all did amazing! One of the plays that really amused me was the play with Mason Owen Kian Logan  and Tristan performed. I loved it because there was a lot  of action logan hit them all with "snowballs" after they each said their lines and then after Logan said his line they all jumped up and attacked him with snowballs! I was surprised when Suleman pulled it off with only one person. My group didn't know we had that much competition so ours wasn't as eye catching. Over all I was blown away!-Ainslee.A


Here are some photos of deep thinking, pulling evidence from the novel Fatty Legs to support our reasoning in our opinion essay. 

Mindful use of global mind

Student Perspectives:

We had an experience on writing essays over the past week so we can prepare ourselves for the higher grades. We are doing the essay on the book Fatty Legs.  -- Owen

When we got to write the essay we got to experience how it would be typing our very first opinion essay.  -- Temilayo

Here is the class created rubric that we are using for self assessment of the essays.

Today we did some thinking about emotional self regulation using the zones of regulation.  When you are in the green zone you are ready for focused learning.  Here are some photos of us designing a page to represent our thinking about experiencing the different zones.

Here are some photos from the creative movement practice:

Wondering about Pulleys on Wednesday

Have you heard of simple machines?  Check out our exploration of pulleys this afternoon:

How do these work?

mindful focus to figure them out

Team work reading the scale 

prototype 1 upgrade to prototype 2 with addition of an axle.  

Here's what we learned about them through our exploration:


What did we learn about pulleys today?

“Pulleys -- expands the weight -- spreads the weight” -- Kian

“I learned that if you use 4 pulleys -- the weight doesn’t change it just affects the amount of force you have” -- peyton

More pulleys = less force required to life object

“pulleys are helping you, like 4 friends could help you carry something -- so do the pulleys -- “Mustafa

Today my thinking was transformed when I learned for pulleys the more weight the more force needed to work the pulley -- Ainslee


Pulleys help you work against the force of gravity pulling down on object.


You need a Thicker rope for heavier objects -- Brock


What did we learn about the Green scales - the more the weight the more expansion in the spring - because of the weight.


A pulley is a great simple machine because you don’t have to apply as much force.


Where do we find pulleys? Construction sites, home (venetian blinds)

Winter Celebration Performance for Grade Four - December 21 @ 8:30

Winter Celebration performances on Dec 18^th – Dec 21^st  

Please see the attached schedule to determine when your child will be performing.  All families are welcome to attend. 

The Grade Fours are performing on Thursday, December 21st at 8:30 a.m. 

All Library Books are Due this Week

Please remember:  

This Friday, December 15^th, 2017, all student learning commons books are due.

Thank you for promoting a love of reading and of our wonderful books.  

Mindful Monday - Hardy Learning

Dear Parents:

Today we learned how to use google forms.  Ms. Hargreaves sent us a link to a form she created with google forms all about connecting of our novel Fatty Legs. Check out this link to the form incase you want to try it out.
https://goo.gl/forms/WGEBI1wKN42AMfKQ2


Here is what we liked about using google forms:

I liked google forms because if you were on a complicated question that really required deep thinking and plunging into back ground knowledge after you could give your brain a little break and move on to a multiple choice question.-Ainslee

I liked the activity we did in google forms because we had to relate our self to a characters in the book and compare and contrast.-Tristan

Today I learned that you can experience to do new things that you might not have known and make quizzes to transform your thinking.  You can experience new ways to look at a familiar book/topic. You can use google forms to ...connect your ideas and thinking with someone else's ideas and thinking.  You might get inspired to make your own google form.  -- Vasile

Our vocabulary word of the day was hardy.  Hardy means strong,  tough, capable of surviving difficult conditions.   For example, hardy plants or hardy animals who are adapted to a certain environment.
We got this word from our daily advent calendar clue:  "These hardy animals have chosen a different kind of high-life"   Check in with your child to see what animals were shown in the video clip.  Talk about why these animals are hardy. 

Special Request for small glass jars

If any one has any empty small jars at home, it would be appreciated if you could  send them with your child to school. We are using them for an upcoming art project.    Here are some examples of the size we are looking for: 

Thanks in advance. 

Learning is a work in Progress

Talk to your child about what this means for them and their learning.  Mistakes are the best ways to move learning forward.  Risk taking is all about making mistakes and learning from them.  Here is another question to discuss at home:  How can we inspire and support a student's passion?