This week in grade 4L we went to the Tymo park. In the park we sold ice that was from the frozen pond. Also we sold sticks that were laying on a big hill.
Before heading to the park, we agreed to evaluate our "active citizenship" and reflected on how we did this during our park play upon returning
In Drama we closed our eyes and needed to imagine ourselves as an animal or a creature in an egg that got into a river and washed it to a beautiful place. In reading time we did our personal learner reflections and also we set our learner goals.Then we practiced our goals for reading in the library.
Eva Book Talks 'A-Z Mysteries; Lucky Lottery'
Shourya Book Talks 'Alvin Ho'
Antanas adds a book to his "Someday Book List"
In unit time we connected ideas to the VIS mission in teams.
Veronika, Yelyzaveta, Krista and Migle elaborate on how they connected their thinking to the VIS school mission
In art some of us finished our self portraits. The rest of us drew pumpkins and made pipe cleaner spiders for Halloween. In P.E. we started a new unit called "The Olympics Unit". In math we learned the houses of hundreds, thousands, millions and billions and also we learned were to put commas in a big number.
Students work to organise words in place value order
Also this week in gym we met two people from Paralympics. Their names were Mantas and Justas. They taught us how to play a popular game called:Goalball.
Mantas and Justas explain the rules and skills needed to play Goalball to grades 4 and 5
by Migle and Gerda
This was a reflective week for grade 4L as we began to wrap up work and tasks involved with Unit 1.
In math, we began to explore equivalent names for numbers by working with Name Collection Boxes. Our goal was to challenge ourselves to work with fractions, decimals, percentages, negative numbers or any operation we might not be as comfortable using. We also started investigating place value. We looked for patterns in reading and writing large numbers. We discovered that:
large numbers "live in families" where only 3 digits live in one house
there is a repeating pattern of ones, tens and hundreds for every family
the commas separate each family's house
the commas come where we say the family name like thousand, million and billion
each family is read as a whole number with 3 digits
each digit has a value depending on it's place in a whole number
we say the value of the digit when we read the whole number (example: 3,475 is read "three thousand, four hundred, seventy-five". The value of 7 is actually "seventy" as we just read
We explore mathematical patterns we find in place value together
In language arts, we took time to reflect on who we are as readers. We looked back at our reading logs to discover patterns and habits in our reading. We found our strengths and then created goals for areas where we believe we can improve to become better readers. We also enjoyed some free writing time this week without a specific genre assignment.
In unit, we began working on our summative assessment which is creating our classroom agreements. Since we have been working to build our classroom community for the past 6 weeks, we are very knowledgeable about what it takes to make our community a great place to learn and be. We used a Visible Thinking Routine called Generate-Sort-Connect- Elaborate to accomplish this task.
Our first step was to generate as many responses as we could to this prompt: What can you do to make our classroom a great place to learn and be?
Antanas, Krista, Rojus and Aleksandras generate responses to the prompt
Nora and Elena reflect on the prompt
Then we got in small groups and worked to sort our responses by the main idea or "BIG thinking"
The groups puts their thinking together by big ideas. This one is about being open to new friends
This group has active citizenship as a big idea
This group believed being a risk-taker was a big idea in their thinking
We then read the VIS mission statement and objectives. The mission used pretty fancy language, so first we had to break it down and make it make sense to grade 4.
Students pulled apart the mission statement to make it make sense in 4th grade terms
Next, we took pieces of the mission and objectives and connected them to our own thinking.
Elena, Nora and Steven work to connect their thinking to the mission and objectives
Krista, Migle, Veronika and Liza work to revise and simplify their ideas
We shared our thinking with our classmates and elaborated on why we made the connections we did.
Finally, we walked around to find common themes or big ideas that we thought were most important to add to our classroom agreements.
Students roam between group posters to find common themes
Students track and collect common thinking that they believe is important enough to go into our classroom agreements
After collecting common themes, students document these ideas on the board as our preliminary thinking for classroom agreements
The final result of our data gathering for ideas to include in our classroom agreements
During homeroom this Friday, we watched the Adaptable Mind. Here was what stuck with us as the big ideas.
What stood out to us after watching "The Adaptable Mind"
Then we watched a couple of inspiring videos where people used those 5 skills we had just learned about. You can find these on our blog page called "Links". We also explored the site diy.org a bit to see what other kids are doing with these 21st century skills! Our challenge over the weekend is to browse these sites and find some inspiration for something we might like to start working on during our homeroom time each Friday. We're very excited!
In our continued effort to find where learning lives and what kind of learning we're looking for, I asked grade 4L for some feedback. They gave their thoughts on what learning is... and what learning is not. This sparked a very interesting conversation. After collating our ideas, we added our thinking to our learning wall to help guide us in our search for the BIG LEARNING each day.
Students offer feedback to the simple provocation: Learning is, learning is not...
We collated the results and added them to our visible learning wall. Using these ideas, we are able to identify where the BIG learning occurred each day.
We have referred to this wall throughout the week while generating daily learning that was meaningful. We made sure we took time at the end of each day to fill out a learning log. What we realized is that big learning sometimes comes at unexpected times. Though our learning was very different from one another, we understood straight away that what made the learning important or valuable was that it was something we would use again and again. One student even requested that I add that box to our learning logs so that they might reflect further to decide how this learning could be applied in other areas of life or how it might be used in the future. In striving to think deeply and make our learning meaningful, we have also begun to understand that it means we must take ownership of this process and be metacognitive thinkers.
Example of a student weekly Learning Log
We found that these Learning Logs helped guide our thinking for Friday Letter writing
At the park this week, we worked as one team to pass hula hoops around a circle without letting go of each other's hands. We have become quite good and jumping right into imaginative play now that we've had some practice. This week, what started as quite a simple game became very complex with both spoken and unspoken rules. Play started out with a small group of boys and girls and then grew to include almost every member of grade 4! At some points it was "girls vs. boys" but then there grew to be "spies" and "traitors", it then evolved to include a football passing element, it further developed into play sword fights with sticks and eventually ended up in chaos and mayhem. Once the teachers stopped the game because it was becoming dangerous, we reflected that:
we needed to agree on rules of the game we made up
we needed to ensure that everyone felt safe
we needed to make sure no one was getting hurt
we must always respect and stop when someone says they do not want to play
we must practice active citizenship by keeping the game fair and looking out for everyone participating
There was authentic community building and learning at the park this week. It even inspired writing projects for some of the students.
Using the learning wall and "Learning is..." prompts, we shared some of our BIG learning from the park this week
In mathematics this week, we had a fantastically complex number talk that challenged us and then invited us to work together to build a larger mathematical understanding of a seemingly simple problem.
Number talk for 43 - 9 demonstrates how a seemingly simple problem can turn into a very meaningful opportunity to share and expand our mathematical understanding
We also finished our work with Unit 1 on geometry. The students reflected on their understanding of different skills from our study and then completed an assessment. Because we believe in learning from mistakes and very much live by the saying, "In here mistakes are expected, inspected and respected," we spent time correcting any of the mistakes we made on the assessment. Some of us got the chance to really grow our brains as we searched for answers in many different resources. We also got a clearer understanding of why resilience is an important life skill to have as we tried, tried and tried again until we found the correct answers by thinking about problem solving in new ways. Finally, we returned to our self assessments and re-evaluated our level of understanding. We also began our study of Unit 2 on Using Numbers and Organizing Data. We investigated the different uses of numbers and were surprised that we never thought of numbers as anything but...numbers! We searched for different types of numbers which might be used for: counting, comparing, measuring, reference, and identification. We also generated creative ways to play the game "Name that Number" to challenge us on our own math levels.
Basel and Yigit explore different uses for numbers
Eva and Krista research to identify which kinds of numbers they've just used
Rojus and Antanas play "Name that Number"
Yigit and Shourya get excited as they determine the power of zero during their game of "Name that Number"
Aleksandras, Eva and Migle create a new spin on the game "Name that Number" to challenge themselves and push for brain growth
In language arts, we began to dig for the author's message in books we read. We then used that to understanding to begin to evaluate our own writing to find what our message is to our readers. We shared pieces of writing with a partner or small group, and let them ask us questions about what they still needed to know. By asking each other these questions, we were able to use the feedback to revise a previous composition or apply to our next piece of writing. It didn't take us long to realize that adding details and emotions in our writing makes it much more interesting to read. We also completed our first writing prompt of the year. Our big learning from this process was that even when we don't connect deeply to a topic, we have the creative license to make the reader believe we do because we are in control of setting the mood of our writing and choosing which details we share.
Shourya and Sofia enjoy books that have been recommended to them by classmates or teachers during Book Talks
Nora and Migle conference with one another and ask questions which will offer feedback about each other's writing (Sofija, Veronika and Yelyzaveta do the same, while Eva finishes a composition before sharing it)
We also brought computers into class this week and began to explore them as a tool. We logged into school google accounts, discovered and experimented with how to use different functions in the various applications. We brainstormed how we might be able to use some of the google tools we explored in our class to enhance our learning. We also had another opportunity to practice being resilient problem solvers when the wifi kept cutting out- thank goodness for Mr.Colin and Mr.Thibault!
Mr.Thibault helps Aleksandras troubleshoot
Mr.Colin troubleshoots with Sofia as others explore the wonderful world of Google
We look forward to another great week of learning ahead as we complete our summative assessment for unit of inquiry 1 and move onto unit 2, Sharing the Planet.
This week in Math we learned that math is all around us. We learned this when we read about hexagons and talked about how you use it all the time in your life to do simple things. In writing we learned that you need to describe how you feel to make a level 1 writing to a level 2 or 3. (Level 1,2,3 writing means how interesting is it) We learned this when we heard Ms. Lezlie's story about biting her tongue, as well we read Patricia Polacco books to help us. In art we learned how to paint print. It's important because you can print with your hands instead of a machine. In P.E. we invented games.
Aleksandras tries the game he, Benas, Elena, Nora and Veronika have created
Sofija, Sofia, Antanas, Steven and Eva discuss what will be the next level of this game they're creating
Yelyzaveta explains her group's game to the audience while Yigit, Krista, Rojus and Migle demonstrate how it's played
In the park at first we did an exercise we had to choose a partner and when Ms.Alie and Ms.Lezlie
said a number we had to do a different action with our bodies. Then we got to have free play.
Grades 4A and 4L participate in a silly energiser to get moving on this cold, wet day at the park
Krista finds a creative method to capture a cattail near the pond for Polina as Eva and Basel look on
Basel feeling ready to wrangle some cattails!
Nora, Mante and Elena enjoy playing with umbrellas in the wind
Everyone jumps right into their games and play, which is very different from our first visits to this park
by Benas and Eva
It's been a whole month together as a classroom community in 4L. This week, we spent time looking for the learning that is deeper than the surface. We tried to go beyond the facts to what will actually stay with us as learners and pinpoint the times we learned deeply this week. In unit, we looked inward to continue evaluating our own participation during teamwork. We built structures made of marshmallows and knives. Even if we were successful with our structure, we went back to our student-made rubric to decide what we could've done better as far as personal participation, and we tried two or three more times. We also practiced self-evaluation during PE where we created and presented team games. We're discovering the value of taking time to evaluate and reflect on learning as we note what sticks with us and why.
Sofija, Eva, Aleksandras, Steven, Gerda and Benas showcase their solution to the challenge
Yigit, Migle, Antanas, Elena, Veronika and Krista proudly display their solution
Nora, Yelyzaveta, Sofia, Basel, Shourya and Rojus pose by their solution
Sometimes self-evaluation makes us realise we could have done better and that's not always easy to feel vulnerable
This team has gone through to decide what they could have done better collectively and built a new structure trying to implement their goals of making sure EVERY voice on their team is heard
This team is going through their rubric to decide what they could do better in the next round
In mathematics this week, we took a MAP test. We also created our own math games to help with subtraction, which is what we've been working on during class number talks. We're learning new and exciting ways to think about math when we hear our classmates share problem solving strategies we'd never thought of! We also continued our study of geometry as we reviewed how to describe polygons using mathematical properties.
Krista and Elena create separate games for each other to play
Benas, Migle and Nora have created a game that is quite challenging- good thing they are so supportive of one another!
Sofija and Veronika play Subtraction Top-It
One of our number talks this week was 24-9. We are beginning to get creative with our problem solving strategies
In language arts, we took another MAP test. We also spent time talking about how punctuation has a purpose in both reading and writing. We practiced reading together and using what we noticed during reading in our daily writing. We talked about fluency as we read aloud The Junkyard Wonders and My Rotten Red-Headed Older Brother both by Patricia Polacco and used them as mentor texts for personal narratives. We shared some of our own stories and took inspiration from these sources to add to our writing territories. We have also been reading from our class read aloud called The One and Only Ivan. There were two sad events in the book this week that opened up some fascinating discussions about empathy. We also began studying phonics through games this week.
MAP testing in 4L
We continue to work to grow as a community in 4L. It is a wonderful thing to witness the new friendships blossoming between classmates! We've also become more willing to take risks with each other and to share some of our more personal stories in order to know each other better. We spent time contemplating when it's hard to be a friend and realised that we've all been in similar situations, and that matters because it helps us to be more patient and empathetic when we're struggling with friendships. Finally, we got to celebrate our friend Gerda's 10th birthday!
