Dragons are emerging

Many of the students have brought in their milk jugs and are prepping for paper-mache to create our dragon masks for Chinese New Year. Keep those milk jugs coming in... if you have extra send them along for those who do not have any.

The Week of January 31 - Feb 4th

Notices:

Food for Fun
Hampton little league

For Choir students Victoria sings 2011

Socials:
The Inuit: The students are working on a flip book on the Inuit which will be finished this week
along with small reports on Chinese New Year.
We are including Chinese culture and the New year as the First Nations and Inuit came over to North America on a land bridge toward the end of the last Ice Age from Asia.

Language Arts:
The students are reading classic novels one page reports on five chapters due by Friday.

Famous Canadian: Adrien Clarksen first Chinese Governor General of Canada of Chinese Ancestry one page report assigned Monday due Friday

Instead of the usual writing assignments, this week, we are focusing on Read For the Top in anticipation of the School wide contest. We are reading books in the class and practicing making questions. Students in teams of 4 will compete first in the class, for fun, then they may choose to compete against the other grade 4 and 5 students.
All students competed in their classes. Select groups go on to compete at the school level


Mini book due Friday
Using the book Stellaluna (a bat raised to act like a bird) and the story of the ugly duckling (a swan raised by ducks) as a model, the students will write a story of a creature raised by an unlikely other creature.

Friday Test Spelling Unit 18

cinder circle cardinal cereal cycle concert dancer celebrate twice dangerous strange ledge damage geography gentle signal regular sugar

Math:

This week we are continuing with the unit on Measurement: The unit starts with telling Time.
This Week we are completing the Math FSA testing. Tomorrow we do the first section on the computer.

Times tables to be mastered this week 4x and we are redoing the 7x as not enough students demonstrated mastery


Music/Choir
During Choir, the non-choir students do musical appreciation: This Week we are doing the Bee Gees and Queen

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School Safety Rules state that all students should have appropriate footwear in the Gym.
Name Brand, expensive or stylish shoes are optional as we do little standing around or leaning on the wall looking cool being noticed for our shoes. We play games, learn skills, run and jump so cheap, clean and comfortable shoes are best.

Bring in Next Week

The Friday test was not marked and sent home today!

Next week we will be making dragons to celebrate Chinese New Year. We would ask that the students bring in clean empty 4L milk jugs to use as the base of our Dragon masks. Thank you.

Puppets

The students continued to work on Paper bag Puppets from characters in their Classic Novels. Part of their novel is to do a final presentation which will include a puppet show. Can you spot Beauty (from Beauty and the Beast), and the mad hatter and Alice (from Alice in Wonderland)?

Greek Lunch

The Greek community in Victoria cooked and prepared all morning to give every Tillicum student and staff member a taste of real Greek food which was served by Mrs. Burley. It was fantastic and almost everyone in our class went back for seconds. Then we were given another treat, a taste of Greek generosity in the form of a check for $2 000.

So a great σας ευχαριστώ (Sas efharisto) (thank you to the Greek community for their support)

Thursday update

Friday Test:
Spelling unit 17
Math 3x and 7x tables (marked on accuracy and speed)
List 3 facts about how travel is different between winter and summer for the Inuit.
Describe how an Inuit hunts seal in the winter.

List 5 important facts about Emily Carr.

Tests are usually marked on Friday and sent home with the students.
A new feature on the test will indicate which assignments were not completed this week.

Wednesday Update

In the picture a student is working on Part 2 and 3 of the four part Literacy section of the FSA test. Part 4 will be completed tomorrow. Part 1, the computer component of the FSA test, was completed at the end of last week.

2 Notices:

February calendar & Wed Express (the school's valuable weekly information newsletter)
Students on the lunch Program be sure and bring in your signed forms

New assignments:

Math title page for new time unit. Students draw and label on a clock face what they do in a typical 12 hour period on a non school day. Designed to have them face the problem of putting 12 hrs on a 24 hour clock (they wake up am; go to bed pm)

Language Arts: Cover for the new Mini-Book

Assignments due by Friday:

-min 4 chapter reports on the classic novel being read by each student.

-Emily Carr one page report

Friday Test:
Spelling unit 17
Math 3x and 7x tables (marked on accuracy and speed)
List 3 facts about how travel is different between winter and summer for the Inuit.
Describe how an Inuit hunts seal in the winter.

List 5 important facts about Emily Carr.

Show and Share

No matter how old they get students love to still do show and tell. This week several students brought in special items to share with their classmates and teacher.

One student brought in 1 Japanese doll and 2 korean dolls. A second student brought in 1000 rupiahs from Indonesia. One Indonesian rupiah is worth 0.0110489538 of a Canadian dollar. That is down 0.0000002 from yesterday.

Tuesday

All students had a practice today doing 'Read for the Top' using the actual buzzer board Under competition rules. Players soon learned to answer with a complete sentence so as not to loose points.

New Assignments Tuesday

•Read for the Top Team Players: reading and doing questions on "The Extinct File"

(we covered the book "The Hockey Sweater" in class and in a practice read for the top today)

•Science: The Inuit used different hunting methods during different seasons of the year. A one page report was assigned on the seal hunt in winter. (we watched part 6 of Flaherty's 1921 movie "Nanook of the North" on the winter seal hunt.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Bskqk4dlw

This weeks spelling words

also bought cough almost false officer soft stalk halt faucet saucer caution lawyer awesome stall crawl awful because (Hint: all the words have the aww sound made by the different vowels: a, au, aw, o, ou)

The Week of January 24th - 28st

Notices: Greek Lunch Friday 28th

Science:

Weather conditions affect living things (e.g., growth, behaviour, food, shelter)
We will examine seasonal food chains (webs) in the arctic.
Friday test: see by wed

Socials:
The Inuit: The students are working on a flip book on the Inuit, along with small reports.
We are integrating the socials and science this week by looking at life style changes and traditional hunting methods for main sources of food during the different seasons (seal / caribou)
Friday test: see by wed

Language Arts:
The students are reading classic novels one page reports on four chapters due by Friday.

Famous Canadian: Emily Carr one page report assigned Monday due Friday

Instead of the usual writing assignments, this week, we are focusing on Read For the Top in anticipation of the School wide contest. We are reading books in the class and practicing making questions. Students in teams of 4 will compete first in the class, for fun, then they may choose to compete against the other grade 4 and 5 students.
All students compete in their classes. Select groups go on to compete at the school level


New Mini book assigned today (Monday): due in two weeks.
Using the book Stellaluna (a bat raised to act like a bird) and the story of the ugly duckling (a swan raised by ducks) as a model, the students will write a story of a creature raised by an unlikely other creature.
Friday Test Spelling Unit 17

words sent home today - but will be on blog tomorrow

Math:

This week we are starting a new unit on Measurement: The unit starts with telling Time

Using math to solve multi-step problems as anticipated in the FSA testing. for example using the following numbers 1 4 6 3 how many different odd three digit numbers can you make.

Times tables to be mastered this week 3x 7x
Friday test: 50 x table questions mostly 3x and 7x

Music/Choir
During Choir, the non-choir students do musical appreciation: This week to go along with our socials and science themes we are listening to and doing mini reports on Vivaldi's' four seasons' Next week is student pick and they are debating between the the music of Queen and ACDC.
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School Safety Rules state that all students should have appropriate footwear in the Gym.
Name Brand, expensive or stylish shoes are optional as we do little standing around or leaning on the wall looking cool being noticed for our shoes. We play games, learn skills, run and jump so cheap, clean and comfortable shoes are best.

Group Work

The students finished off their group project work from yesterday. Every Thursday I like the students to experience working in groups to learn appropriate communication and social skills. Their group creations and great projects adorn the bulletin boards in our class and around the school. This week the groups worked on a theme project in Socials showing what the Inuit do during one of the four seasons.

*Friday tests have been marked and given back to the students to take home.

Mr Clark

Mr Clark visited for our third and final Friday afternoon with him. Over the last three weeks he shared stories and myths with us about the First Nations peoples. His delightful stories and experiences add much to the First Nations focus in the grade 4 curriculum. His visits are greatly anticipated and enjoyed by the students. After his stories he gives the students a brief art lesson. We are sorry our time with him is up but look forward to seeing him around the school working with other classes.

Tepee projects

This week the tepee projects have been rolling in. They are super and show a lot of hard work and thought. We will display them in the upper cabinet and in the library. Great job everyone.

Mini-Books

Our first set of amazing mini-books are finished. The books were inspired by a picture book called "Kids Make the Worst Pets." The student mini-books are funny and thoughtful. They range from the normal range of pets such as dogs and cats to having parents, aliens, cheetahs and dinosaurs as pets. The books explore the problems and joy different pets would bring. Be sure and ask your child about their book. You will hear great lines, like the one out of how

Parents Don't Make Good Pets.

"I am going to walk my new parent.

Let's go. Come on Honey! I'm waiting.

Don't make me come in there!"

The students will be publishing a new mini-book every two weeks.

The Week of January 17 - 21st

Notices: Greek Lunch Friday 28th

Science:

How animals and people respond to changes in weather
This week three concepts Hibernation, Migration and Adaptation
Friday test: What is Hibernation? What is Migration?

Socials:
The Inuit: The students are working on a flip book on the Inuit.
This week we are looking at unique Housing and transportation developed by the Inuit
(the igloo/ the Kayak and dog sled)
Tepee model was due on monday

Language Arts:
The students are reading classic novels one page reports on three chapters due by Friday.
Famous Canadian: Rick Hansen one page report due Friday
Writing one page topics: a) don't let the pigeon...
Friday test: What was the name of Rick Hansen's journey? (Man in Motion) and what was he trying to achieve? (to raise awareness of the potential of people with disabilities/ and raise money for spinal cord research)
Mini book was due Monday: On a special pet
Friday Test Spelling Unit 16

leaf leaves wolf wolves potato potatoes roof roofs family families library libraries journey journeys hero heroes ditch ditches

Math:
Using math to solve multi-step problems as anticipated in the FSA testing. for example using the following numbers 1 4 6 3 how many different odd three digit numbers can you make.
Times tables to be mastered this week 1x 2x 5x 9x
Friday test: 50 x table questions mostly 5x and 9x