Mr. Wideman (Room 104) – Oct 15 – Oct 18

Although this was a short 4-day week, we managed to progress quickly through our topics as we look to complete some of our current units of work. Just a note that we will be visiting the Calgary Public Library book truck this week on Wednesday, and that forms were sent home if your child did not currently have their own library card. We will also be having a meeting with students in our leadership club, as each of our Grade 4/5 and 5/6 classes will be represented by student leaders to help discuss school issues and plan for school events.

In Language Arts, we are close to wrapping up our dialogues for “Smash and Grab,” and these are available to view through your child’s Google Drive. As our focus for this particular piece of writing, we looked at how to structure a dialogue within a story using paragraphing and punctuation involving quotation marks. These dialogues included a brief introduction to the chosen scene from “Smash and Grab,” a short dialogue (6 quotes) between the two characters, and a final paragraph that sets up the events that follow the dialogue. This week, we’ll be further investigating the planning process as we start to consider our own original stories based on themes from the Pixar films.

In Math, we continued to apply perimeter and area, with an additional focus on volume. We'll be starting some work with creating 3D shapes and calculating the perimeter and area of the faces, as well as the volume of the shape as a whole.  This will follow up on our investigations of quadrilaterals and other polygons. We also worked with estimating strategies and number clues as tried to solve some “Esti-Mysteries” involving items in glass jars. These were quick but engaging activities that required students to apply their knowledge and understanding of numbers as we eliminated ideas that didn’t match the criteria given within each clue. Our work with computational strategies will continue, as we begin to expand on our abilities and confidence in multiplication.

In Science, Grade 4 completed work on their “Trash to Treasure” projects, and Grade 5 developed their own projects to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of electrical circuits. We will continue to work with these units this week, and our goal will be to conclude our work with an assessment task before the end of the month. Social Studies will take us into the world of maps, and we’ll begin the week by starting an exploration of qualities and characteristics that make up “good” maps (and what we can learn from them). Our Google Earth maps investigating ghost towns will also help to form the basis of our work, as we situate ourselves and these communities within their greater provincial and Canadian contexts.

Please note that a letter was sent home on Friday that provides an update on our Feedback Friday work, and the ways that parents can access this work at home through your child’s Google Drive. If you are unable to access your child's Google Drive at home, please contact me and I can help provide support with this.

As always, we greatly appreciate the support that you provide for your child’s learning. Enjoy your week; Halloween is just around the corner!

-Mr. Wideman