Mr. Wideman (Room 104) – Oct 21 – Oct 25

This week saw us take on some new learning challenges in Room 104, and we worked hard to persevere and further develop our confidence as learners. We are excited about the interest in our student leadership club, as we were well represented by students throughout the Grade 4/5/6 classrooms. On Tuesday morning, we had a great discussion about the results of the federal election, and we investigated how our voting process works. We made some interesting observations when we compared the percentage of the popular vote to the number of seats that each political party won in Parliament. We also looked at the patterns and trends that emerged through comparing voting results in different provinces and territories.

In Language Arts, we worked to complete our Pixar writing, and we started the process of planning for our own original stories. Our class novel study, Skeleton Creek, provides us with some possibilities for planning and designing multimedia storytelling. We’ll draw inspiration from this novel, as well as other sources of novels, films, and games, as we begin our storytelling project.

In Math, we worked with perimeter, area, and volume, and we further investigated the relationship between all three concepts. While working with a given perimeter, we explored the ways in which the area of different rectangles and squares can be manipulated to increase and decrease the total area. One of our challenges this week required us to design an area for WallBall that would provide the maximum playing surface for our students. We also worked with more estimating strategies and number clues in the “Esti-Mysteries.” Each challenge required us to work with two different estimates and their corresponding clues. Multiplication will continue to be the focus of our computational work this week.

In Science, our Grade 4 and Grade 5 students have input their photos and project descriptions into IRIS. We are further exploring options for planning and designing our upcoming assessment task. In Social Studies we started our exploration of qualities and characteristics that make up “good” maps (and what we can learn from them). Through examining maps from popular novels, films, and games, we worked to identify common characteristics that are essential to our understanding of information presented by maps. How does the omission of these characteristics affect our understanding of maps? Our continued exploration of maps will further provide us with an opportunity to examine exemplary maps, while creating maps of our own.

Please note that our Feedback Friday this week has been shared within your child’s Google Drive. With our focus on maps in Social Studies, we included an assessment task to demonstrate our ability to evaluate the clarity and the communication of information within our sample map.

With Halloween coming up on Thursday, students will be able to wear costumes at school throughout the day, provided that they are school appropriate and do not include masks or weapons. Friday November 1^st will be a Professional Development Day, and there will be no school for students.

Enjoy your Halloween week, and have a fun and safe time on Thursday evening.

-Mr. Wideman