Time Flies

Wow. Time has been flying by so fast lately and we have been so busy that I completely forgot to update the blog after updating the spelling words. So here it goes....

Language Arts: We started a novel study of the book, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume. The class seems to be enjoying the story so far. The father of our main character is a marketing executive who writes magazine and tv ads. We decided it would be fun to create our own magazine ads for products the kids made up themselves. There have been some interesting new products created. We could have some future inventors here. 

Spelling: As you know, the word list was updated last week. I gave 10 new words and am randomly choosing the last 10 words from previous word lists. Therefore, students will need to look back in their agendas at the previous lists to practice words that still need it. 

Math: Last week we were learning time to the minute, 24 hour time and elapsed time. This week we have been learning to find the area of shapes to the square centimeter. Today we are going to focus on irregular shapes and move on to square meters next week. 

Math packs are coming home again today.

Science: We have begun a new science unit on lights and shadows. We learned about the parts of the eye and how we see. Also, we tracked our shadows over the course of the day tracing them out in the staff parking lot. It looked like a crime scene of chalk outlines to anyone driving in. : ) Next week we are going to learn about light and color, how they blend, prisms, etc.

Social Studies: There has been a lot of discussion about the early settlers and the challenges they faced. Today we are going to discuss how communities began to form and then move into Alberta shaping to become a province. 

Other News: Samsung Canada has been very interested in what we have been doing with the tablets. Next week a group of  Samsung software developers are traveling all the way from South Korea to hang out with the kids and see how they are being used in order to further improve the software on the tablets for educational use. It's very exciting to be such an integral part of this project.

Jane Felling is also back next week after working with teachers in Quebec, Houston and Chicago for the past couple of months. She will be here to teach new games to our class and just have some fun. This will likely be on Thursday afternoon. This too has been a very special opportunity as our class is only 1 of 2 in the province to receive this exclusive treatment.