Week Of September 6th

Every week room 8 will be starting with a sharing circle. This is a wonderful time to connect as a group, get to know each other better, and set some of our learning intentions for the week. We will also use the last 15 minutes every Friday to reflect on our week by discussing our new learning objectives and addressing any challenges we face as a collaborative learning community. 

Some of the weekly student comments will be posted in red. "I like how we learned idioms because it is fun to talk to our parents, use and learn this silly vocabulary."

"I learned what idioms are and what the definition of some of them are and I learned a few new ones. "

"I loved it when we we drew a picture to go with the idioms so that we could explain what they meant." 

Our week started with a beautifully illustrated novel that a student brought in. " Monkey Business" by Wallace Edwards is a book with a collection of elaborate, off-beat illustrations that feature animals comically engaged in the activities of commonly used idioms (i.e., a bull in a china shop, an alligator that 'eats her words...). We had lots of fun trying to decipher what the idioms meant and had an elaborate conversation about why understanding an idiom is important when reading a story. We discovered that we should learn idioms to understand the real message an author or speaker wants to convey so there will be no misunderstanding. We also used Frayer's Model to focus on a chosen idiom phrase. A Frayer Model is a graphic organizer that helps students determine or clarify the meaning of vocabulary words encountered while listening, reading, and viewing texts. It can be used before reading to activate background knowledge, during reading to monitor vocabulary, or after reading to assess vocabulary. 

"We finally have a real carpet this year and the part on the inside of the carpet is it's area."

"The perimeter is the entire distance around a 2D shape that has no curved lines. It is a polygon."

"We learned about area, which is the part of a shape that is on the inside."

"Polygons they have no curved lines and are always 2D and have no gaps."

"We need to know the perimeter and area to help build our tiny house like an adult does."

In math, we continued our learning this week regarding perimeter and area. We also reviewed and introduced the concept of centimetres and meters as standard unit forms of measurement. When measuring the perimeter and area of polygons, the grade three students also used this time to refresh their addition skills and ability to count the number of unit squares in an area while using grid paper. Finally, the grade 4's applied their multiplication knowledge to determine the area using the formula Area= Length x Width. 

"I loved the paper challenge."

"Saving Fred was fun, but it was tricky having to communicate with my partner when using the paperclips and not my fingers."

We continued to work on developing our collaborative working skills through fun tasks and challenges!