Mr. Wideman (Room 104) - Dec 2 - Dec 6

We hope that everyone is getting a chance to be outside enjoying the sun and the (not too cold) weather conditions. The upcoming week looks decent temperature-wise, but we encourage all families to ensure that students arrive at school with a warm coat, hat, and gloves. As we know, the wind chill here in Calgary can make things feel especially cold outside! For any misplaced items at school, chances are that they can be located in our school lost and found. The holidays are just around the corner! Please note that Thursday December 19 will be the last day of classes for our students. Friday December 20 is a Non-Instructional Day at Ron Southern School.

We concluded our creative story writing with a partner review/edit, and we shared feedback about the strengths of our writing, as well as areas for further growth and improvement. These stories are available for review at home through Google Drive. We know that many of our students had an opportunity to work on these stories at home and have a parent review their work with them, and we definitely appreciate your support. If you were unable to locate the editing checklist through Google Drive, please take a look at the following:

The checklist follows the same template that we used for our Pixar writing, so the students have used this format for editing previously. Our next steps in writing will take us into research and report based projects, and our investigation of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus helped to develop our understanding of the importance of critical exploration and questioning the accuracy of online resources. As we continue to conduct research on Alberta's regions and the physical regions of Canada, we'll be spending time conducting fact checking and comparing resources in order to ensure that we're locating information that is both accurate and useful for our purposes.

Our exploration of multiplication and division approaches and strategies will continue this week, and some of the work that we sent home in our yellow Weekly Review folders demonstrates the "Big 7" method for division. We included a video in last week's blog post that demonstrates this method, as well as several others that we'll be exploring over the next week. Our goal is for students to come away with one strategy that makes the most sense to them, as they should be able to explain how their chosen method works and why it's the best method to add to their personal bank of math strategies. If you'd like to review another video that demonstrates the Big 7 Method, please check out the following:

In Science, we're wrapping up a combined grade 4/5 project that brought us back into the worlds of Electricity (Grade 5) and Waste Management (Grade 4). In mixed grade teams, our students are planning, designing, and building models of inventions that function to help solve a real world issue around waste management for the City of Calgary. Within each team, the Grade 4 students bring their knowledge of Waste Management, while the Grade 5 students apply their understanding of electricity, switches, and circuits. The project involves both the design of a electrical powered prototype, as well as a presentation to be shared that describes the purpose and the practical function of the design. Stay tuned for the final reveal of these projects!

Thank you for your continued support. Enjoy the upcoming week!

-Mr. Wideman