Watercolour, Fractions & Decimals, Zones of Regulation, etc.

Hello, 4A families!

We had another great week! In Science we have been learning about the Earth, Moon, and Sun—and playing games like “Meteor Shower” and practicing the difference between rotation vs. revolution in the gym to reinforce concepts.

The PCS production of FINDING NEMO was a joyful, colourful event—our grade 4s were inspired by the students’ wonderful singing, acting and dancing.

In Math, students brought home another quiz in equivalent fractions this week, and they are working to write and dramatize their our Fractions Math Stories. They will have these ready to read/perform at the Student Led Conferences this Wednesday, April 22nd from 3:30-5:30 in our class.

Decimals! We enjoyed getting outside with the 4B students for some “mathy” fitness doing creative stations that were timed down to the hundredth decimal place.

A new record! We have been practicing our skill as a class in doing our “attendance countdown” — each student has a class number between 1-22, and we have succeeded in smashing a new record of taking attendance this way in 7.65 seconds! Everyone was so excited. This learning connects to our listening skill, teamwork, understanding of decimals and fractions. 7.65 seconds divided by 22 students is 0.35. That means on average it takes each student just about 1/3 of a second to contribute his or her number to the attendance! Amazing!

A new Language Arts routine for Term 3 is “Word of the Day”—and it’s resulting in some pretty erudite, sophisticated-sounding 9- and 10-year-olds around here!

Each day, we explore a new, challenging word (its meaning, spelling, part of speech, and origin). It’s been so fun to see these words start to appear naturally in student writing and to hear them pop up in everyday conversation. You can keep track of these daily words too as they are written in the agendas each day.

In morning Crew we often start with 5 minutes or silent Bible reading and reflection as all classmates arrive and join the circle.

Then students go around sharing either a verse or insight from that reading time. We pray, share intentions, play “Welcome Ball”, unpack the theme(s) of the week (this week’s was self awareness and self control) and either have a related story or creative/cooperative activity to help get our team working together.

We explored the “Zones of Regulation” framework to help us have a shorthand for expressing what we are feeling.

Table hockey continues to be a favourite game in our class!

In Art, we continue to work on the Learning Coats project, and we are also now deep into our Salish Sea Watercolour unit—the pieces are looking so beautiful! Here are some paintings still in progress…