I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe summer holiday full of lots of new adventures! I've enjoyed my year and hope all my students have as well—see you in September!!
—Ms. Jagger
0 Comments
Today grade four students hosted a wonderfully diverse multicultural festival! Students showcased all their hard work over the past couple of weeks as we celebrated different countries and cultures from around the world. The many varied artifacts that students brought in were excellent—and also delicious!!
Enjoy the first weekend of summer! —Ms. Jagger In humanities, students started working on their country research project. Earlier in the week, an email was sent to all grade four parents explaining about the artifact portion of this assignment. A copy of the letter can also be found on the home page of our grade four blog. After picking their country last week, students started researching their chosen country by looking for answers to three different types of questions: Inch questions - questions that can be found immediately with a Google search. Ex. What is the population of China? Foot questions - questions that involve gathering information and creating a summary to answer the question. Ex. What is England's national sport, and how is it played? Yard questions - a question that involves looking at multiple resources to come up with your own answer or opinion. Ex. How is your country different from Canada? Next week they will be taking their research and turning it into a trifold/poster presentation for our Multicultural Festival on Friday, June 21st. If students are purchasing a trifold, they should bring it to class on Monday (poster paper will be available for students who are not bringing in a trifold). On June 21st, all grade four students will be involved in our Multicultural Festival where they will showcase their country and also tour through the other classrooms. We had a great day of fun and learning at Heritage Park on Wednesday. Heritage Park’s exhibits span the early 1860s fur trade to the petroleum and automobile-dominated 1950s. Student groups worked through scavenger hunt questions focusing on all curricular areas namely humanities, math and science. They did a great job on these challenges along with learning a lot about Alberta’s past. A big thank-you to all our parent volunteers who made the day such a success!
Have a happy Father’s Day weekend! —Ms. Jagger It was a busy first week of June with the triathlon on Tuesday and the “Taste of the Arts” evening on Thursday. We have a lot of talented students at Nose Creek School! Just a reminder that the Heritage Park field trip form and payment is due Monday. We are looking forward to our visit on Wednesday, June 12th. Students should wear comfortable shoes, dress for the weather, and bring a bag lunch & water bottle for our trip. They can bring a small amount of money if they wish to purchase a snack from the bakery or a few treats from the candy shop. It will be a fun day of learning! Students have also been working very hard each day on their year-end project “The ABC’s of Grade 4.” After completing their rough copy of their writing, they started working on their scrapbooks at the end of this week and are doing a great job! In humanities, we looked at some famous Alberta mavericks and researched about their contributions. Mavericks are important men and women who have helped shape our province in some way. Students used the Glenbow Museum website to find three mavericks they wanted to investigate further. They needed to explain how or why they were important to Alberta, and list three additional facts about them. Some of the mavericks that students researched included Henrietta Muir Edwards, John Ware, Preston Manning, Mary Dover, Peter Lougheed, Henry Wisewood, and Stu Hart—to name a few! We also discussed how Alberta’s population is so diverse. The First Nations have always lived in the area that became Alberta. Other people have come from almost every country of the world! Some families have been here for hundreds of years, and others are new to Alberta. Everyone has experiences, knowledge, ways of life, and traditions to share. They are all part of Alberta’s story which is something to celebrate! Students shared their own family backgrounds—some students were born outside of Canada; for others, their parents were born in other countries; and for others still it was their grandparents or great-grandparents born elsewhere. We learned there are 195 countries in the world spread out over six continents. Students had a chance to look at some of these countries and were tasked to pick a few that they were interested in looking at further. Students will be starting a project next week in which they will research and present a country for an upcoming Multicultural Festival on June 21st. At the end of the week, students decided if they were working by themselves or with a partner, and made a final choice which country they would like to investigate further. They are excited to start the research process next week! Students also continued to work on their poetry skills, and reading & sharing poetry with each other. We started the week by writing limericks. Limericks are short funny poems that are five lines in length. Lines one, two, and five rhyme together. Lines three and four are shorter in length and they rhyme together. Students also wrote cinquain poems. Cinquain poems are also five lines long and each line follows a set form. Line one: one word idea or subject (noun); Line two: two adjectives which describe line one; Line three: three verbs showing actions of the noun in line one; Line four: three or four words which give the poet’s feelings about the subject (noun); and Line five: one word synonym for line one. Today we wrote poems entitled “I wish…”. Below are some samples of student poetry:
There once was a boy in grade four, Who thought school was such a bore, He thought Math was lousy, In Science he got drowsy, And in French he started to snore! Hawaii, Fun, hot, Relaxing, entertaining, swimming, I love Hawaii, Paradise. Calgary, Large, old, Extending, populating, building, I like Calgary, City. 4C Class Poem Fire, Hot, orange, Burning, sparking, spreading, I love campfires, Flame. 4D Class Poem Fox, Silent, sneaky, Hunting, hiding, sprinting, I love adorable foxes, Mammal. I wish I could go to my country; I wish I could drive all the super cars; I wish I could live in a mansion; I wish I had my own phone; I wish I could get 100 billion dollars; I wish that my wishes would come true. Have a great weekend! —Ms. Jagger Use the website below to learn more about the many countries in our world:
http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/countries.html Use the website below to research about some famous Alberta Mavericks:
https://www.glenbow.org/mavericks/ In humanities this week, we continued our focus on poetry by creating some Haiku poems and artwork around the season of Spring. Haiku are three-line Japanese poems about nature that follow a strict syllable scheme. The first and third lines are five syllables, and the second line is seven syllables. Students did a great job crafting their poem before drawing some spring artwork, and then finally finishing with watercolour paint. Some of these pieces will be on display during the “Taste of the Arts” evening next Thursday. We also had fun creating couplets in class. A couplet is a two-line poem which rhymes. Each line begins with a capital and both lines are about the same length. After mastering the couplet, students then tried writing a triplet (a three-line poem which rhymes). Here are some student examples below: My furry friend he is a cat, Sometimes he wears my hat! In my house I have a rat, He eats all my cheese and is very fat! On my lawn I have some trees, In the winter they all freeze, They all blow over in the breeze! This week we looked at and discussed a timeline of important events in Alberta that have shaped our province in some way. Students were tasked with picking two events they wanted to learn more about with particular focus on events in the 1900s and 2000s. They researched each event and wrote jot notes in their writing journals. When done researching, they turned their jot notes into a summary of the event in their own words, and discussed why or why not they felt this was an important event in Alberta’s history. Today, all grade four students were also introduced to our year-end project entitled “The ABC’s of Grade 4.” This is a culminating project that allows students to show their learning and understanding from everything that was covered this year. This major assignment will be due Wednesday, June 26th. Each day, students will be working on their YEA for at least one period. For each letter of the alphabet, students will choose a topic from each of their subject areas that we covered this year to write about. As a final project, they will create a scrapbook with pictures and decorations as well as their writing that will be shared with the class and marked by the homeroom teacher. Students have already been working on their topic-planning page, and they will start their rough copies next week. Students are incorporating their writing with a visual representation. They will have some supplies in class to get creative with, such as: stencils, magazines, colored paper, stickers, foam letters, stamps, yarn, and decorative tape to name a few! Donations are greatly appreciated and students can bring in their own supplies to add to their project if they wish. Students are also encouraged to keep in mind the calendar goals and timeline in order to complete their project for the June 26th deadline (see below).
Happy June! —Ms. Jagger It was a great week with lots of fun activities for the grade 4’s! On Wednesday, students attended the “Freeze DNA Comic Tour” presentation and learned some drawing techniques from published comic illustrators. On Thursday, we enjoyed some delicious meals & snacks from five food trucks, and students enjoyed eating their lunches outside. On Friday, all grade 4 students participated in some bowling fun at Bowling Depot! We also have an upcoming field trip to Heritage Park on Wednesday, June 12th and are looking for some parent volunteers to join us. 4C has three confirmed volunteers so far and we are looking for one more! In humanities this week, students learned about the steps leading to Alberta becoming a province of Canada. We looked at the reasons why Alberta wanted to become a province; discussion around where the new borders would be; what the new provincial name would be, and which community would become the new capital. It took years of discussion and debate before Alberta was established as a new province in 1905. We also discussed the formation of communities, and how Alberta’s population was becoming more diverse with people coming from different cultures and countries to settle on farms, and in towns and cities.
Students presented their radio announcements in class on Tuesday and did a great job! We also continued with our focus on poetry by writing bio & rainbow poems, and started looking at Haiku poetry which will be incorporated into an art project next week. Have a great weekend! —Ms. Jagger In humanities this week, students took their knowledge of settlers to create a poster and radio ad to persuade others to immigrate to western Canada and of course Alberta! Students did a great job on their posters as they represented the time period well and each contained beautiful scenery & phrases to sell others on moving to the Canadian west. They also crafted a radio announcement which was a longer descriptive written piece explaining about the benefits of Alberta. We discussed how to write an effective advertisement and looked at some samples before students wrote a rough copy, edited it, then wrote their final good copy. Some students took this home on the weekend to finish up as we will be presenting the radio ads in class on Tuesday. We also started working on poetry concepts which will be a focus over the next couple of weeks. Students learned that there are many different forms of poetry and that it expresses the music & emotion of language, teaches us about language, expresses feelings, and is personal and can be about anything & everything. The first type of poetry we looked at this week was acrostic poetry. In an acrostic poem, the letters of the subject are written down (vertically) to form the word of choice. Next to each letter the poetic statement is written horizontally to express the subject in creative ways. Students created some acrostic poems in their visual journals.
Enjoy your long weekend! —Ms. Jagger In humanities this week, students learned more about how the immigrants and settlers made their way to the prairies. The main mode of transportation was by railway as thousands rode the rails from the 1880s and well into the 1900s. Students watched a short video about the history of building the railroad and the formation of the Canadian Pacific Railway. They used a website to read more and answer questions about the history of the 138-year-old company. Some of the items students learned about the C.P.R. was:
We also looked closer at the posters and pamphlets that were used to advertise the vast amounts of land available in Canada’s west. These posters put up around the world, particularly in Europe and the United States, displayed idyllic surroundings with abundant farms and beautiful scenery, using buzz words & phrases like “free land”, “easy to reach”, and “the best wheat land & the richest grazing country under the sun.” No mention or pictures of mosquitos, prairie fires, weeks of exhausting travel, back-breaking work, and bitterly cold winters! We discussed how advertisements, even today, want to promote the best in their product, and not dwell on or even mention the negatives. The government described the climate as “fresh” and “bracing” on its posters instead of “cold” and “snowy!” Students started working on creating their own immigration poster to persuade immigrants to settle in Alberta. Their poster needs to represent our province between 1880 and 1920, and should be representative of the time period. They worked on a rough copy in their visual journal and will start creating their actual poster next week. To accompany their poster, they will also craft a radio ad.
Have a happy Mother’s Day weekend! —Ms. Jagger |
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at:
[email protected] Submit assignments to: [email protected] Archives
June 2019
CategoriesResources for Practice
Reading: ReadTheory TumbleBooks Word Activities: Sight Word Bingo Sight Word Game Letter Blocks Bookworm TextTwist Coconut Vowels Word Toss Spelling: Spelling Practice Spelling Spree Story Writing: Story Writing Game Create your own Comic Storyboard Creator Poetry: Poetry Tools Rhyming Dictionary |