Mrs. Phelan

This week in Grade Four!  For buddies today we used our mapping skills to help our buddies create treasure maps. We included compass roses, landmarks and, of course, X marked the spot!  We are writing personal narratives! We examined a mentor text for transition words, a hook and a closing and then thought of an event from our lives that we can remember well and has a big emotion attached to it. Then we planned a beginning, middle and end for our narratives. We're going to be writing our rough copies next week!  Coming Up:  Tuesday, March 17 is wear green day at MTS school!  The Book Fair is coming to our school. We will preview the Book Fair on Tuesday and then have a time for purchasing materials on Thursday. Students can bring money to school that day or purchase books during Parent Teacher Conferences.  Please book your parent–teacher conference online beginning on Saturday, March 14 . Conferences will be held in person on: Thursday, March 19 from 3:3...

This Week in Grade Four:  In Science this week we've been talking about observing the day and night sky! We learned about different technologies that allow us to view space and built our own pinhole camera. On Thursday we had a chance to take our pinhole cameras outside to view the daytime sky. Students have learned about celestial objects and should be able to name some celestial objects that are visible in the sky.  We've been doing an author/illustrator study of the Food Group books by Jory John and Pete Oswald. We read 7 books and chose our favourite one and then wrote an OREO paragraph telling everyone why our favourite book is the best one. Students planned their paragraphs, wrote a rough draft, edited, revised and finally published their paragraphs!    Coming Up:  Please return your Nighttime Observation by Tuesday, March 10.  Thank you for all your empty Pringles cans! We still need a few more so you can keep sending them in.  Finish Up:  ...

  This week in Grade Four:  We went to the Hitmen Be Brave Game and marked Pink Shirt Day! We talked about how Pink Shirt Day started and learned about the difference between conflict and bullying. In grade four students are getting older and can often handle conflict on their own. Students are encouraged to reach out to a caring adult if they or someone they know is experiencing bullying. A big thank you to all our parent volunteers!  We started multi-digit multiplication! This week we tried to multiply 3-digit numbers using repeated addition and by using the distributive property. Next up is the area model and then we'll be diving into the traditional algorithm which will be most students most efficient and accurate method. Student Writing Offices are coming home! Thank you for taking the time to read your child's writing and write them a quick note in their journals. Please return journals by Monday, March 2.  Thank you for sending your pringles cans in. We only n...

This week in grade four:  We're learning about humility this week! The creature that teaches us about humility is the wolf. We used our non-fiction skills to learn more about wolves and then created illustrations in our visual journals.  Look in your child's backpack for our Guided Reading tasks from our fiction unit. Students worked on fluency and decoding skills and then completed comprehension tasks about their books. The skills we worked on were identifying story elements, summarizing a text and making text connections with our own experiences, other texts and real-world events. You do not need to return these to school.  You'll also find our materials from our review on multiplication and division concepts. During this review we worked on multiplication and division concepts, times tables recall and multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000.  Looking ahead:  We're excited for our first field trip to the Hitmen game on Tuesday, February 24! The Hitmen wil...

  This week in grade 4:  Today we exchanged Valentine's cards and we've been talking a lot lately about being kind with our actions and our words. In grade four lately we've had a lot of serious talks about how we can show up in our classroom with kindness and make it a better place to be. On Tuesday we will be embarking on a 10 day kindness challenge and will be completing a kind act each day. You could ask your child about what we take on!  We have been factoring all week long! In grade four students are expected to factor numbers up to 100 without the use of a multiplication chart. In order to do this we learned that we need to be organized and work in a way that ensures we don't miss any factors. We learned divisibility rules to help us with this task and also had to use our mental math skills to find factors greater than 12. We also examined the numbers from 1 to 100 to identify them as prime or composite. Ask your child how they know if a number is prime or compos...

  This week in grade four!  In Social Studies we are learning about treaties and examined the Two Row Wampum Belt which was created in 1613. It represents a treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch. The design represents peace, friendship and respect. Students were inspired to create their own design to represent their promise to the world. We made ours out of beads.   In Math we are working on factorizing numbers! We have learned how to check the factors of a number by going in order which helps make sure we don't miss any factors. We're using this skill to classify numbers as prime or composite based on how many factors they have.  Coming up!  We'll be recognizing Valentine's Day on Wednesday, February 11. Students are invited to bring cards for their classmates if they'd like. We have 29 students in our class. Please do not send food or treats with your child. It will also be Red and Pink Day!  Book Talks have started. Your child has a planning sh...