CTV Weather School Visiting Our Classroom

Amazing day today with CTV Weather School visiting our classroom! Thank you to Astrid Braunschmidt and her team for teaching us about the weather and making us look good on TV!! All of the kids were very engaged and some of us got to try out the green screen and tell weather stories. If you missed the broadcast this evening, here is a link to it...

CTV in Ms. van der Leeden's Grade 4 Class

 

 

... and here are some more pictures from this great day of learning:

 





Beans in the Jeans

This week was a bit tiring and not always as productive as we like it to be, as we found that many of our students had "beans in their jeans" and had a hard time to settle down. This made it more difficult to focus on school work listen to instruction. We decided to pick up our daily runs again and head outside before lunch for a few laps around the field. This seems to really help our boys and girls to release some excess energy.
We did work hard in Math though and went through a lot of extra practice to become more proficient with fractions. The quiz was postponed to Monday, January 27, and it will cover a small section of multiplication basic facts and an assessment of the students' understanding of fractions.
In Science our students designed some amazing weather instruments, and we learned about wind, wind speed and barometric pressure. Here is a great pic (courtesy of Vienna's mom) showing two students working on their weather vane model:

All of us had fun testing our weather instruments outside on Friday. There was not a lot of wind, but we did manage to get some data. Here are four of our students with their barometer models:

 

Did you know that next week is LITERACY WEEK at Ruth King Elementary? We are so excited, I asked all students to bring their favorite book (can be a picture book, a chapter book, a fiction or non-fiction book) to school on Monday. Each day of the week five different students will introduce their favourite book to the class! But there is more... Here are some highlights from Literacy Week:

On MONDAY we will engage in a 10 minute school wide reading session after the Monday Morning Assembly. On TUESDAY we will be participating in a workshop with author Troy Wilson. On WEDNESDAY we are looking forward to learning about the writing process from Dana White, publisher from the Paper Mache publication. On  THURSDAY we have scheduled another exciting workshop with storyteller Anne Glover and it will be "Dress Up As Your Favourite Book Character Day"! This should be fun! Finally, on FRIDAY is "Poem in Your Pocket Day"!. Can't wait for all the excitement! If you want to support Literacy Week at home, you might want to try this READO-Bingo activity!

Have fun and don't forget to ready with  your child and to your child every day!

Last but not least, we are adding one more exciting guest speaker presentation to our full program next week, as we are inviting CTV into our classroom on Wednesday. Please remember to tune into CTV News with Hudson Mack at 6:00 pm (Shaw or Optic TV on Channel 12) on Wednesday, January 29 and watch for the Division 4 Ruth King Weather School with Astrid Braunschmidt to be featured on air! You will also be able to see the visit at http://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/weather/weather-school. Here is to learning outside the box!!!

 





Busy Week

Last week was very busy and it seemed to have buzzed by quickly, and it is hard to believe that the second half of January is already upon us! Wow, time does fly when you are having fun! As you can see from our beautiful bulletin above, the students created some gorgeous watercolour pictures of birch trees. They experimented with shadows and different mediums, including charcoal, pencil (for shading) and of course water colour! The results are pretty stunning and I invite you to come by our classroom and see for yourself!

We also had the opportunity to participate in a curling workshop that was offered at Ruth King on Tuesday last week. One of the instructors, Tula, from the Westshore Recreation Centre came and introduced our class to curling, the terminology and the game's rules. We even got to play a few games and everyone enjoyed themselves.



In Math, we started our unit on Fractions and we are getting ready for a quiz on Thursday, January 24. We continue to practice our multiplication basic facts and often play math games likes Bingo and Yahtzee to keep our mental math brain sharp!
In Social Studies we worked on a fun project to showcase our (multi-) cultural backgrounds. Here are some of our students working in their groups on this creative project:

At the end of the week, we met with our little buddies in Ms. Walker's class and helped them create some snowflakes for their windows. We also enjoyed some hot chocolate with marshmallows; although Ms. van der Leeden really needs to learn how to prepare the drinks.... THREE teaspoons of hot chocolate powder PER CUP!!! Next time it will taste better...I promise!
Next week we have more fun activities planned. I am mostly looking forward to sharing all of the amazing Science projects you completed at home this weekend. Almost all of our students built a weather instrument and we are eager to test it and learn more about wind and air pressure. Here is an amazing weather vane created by Katie and Kianna - a little taste of what's to come:



 

Happy New Year!

Hope you and your families enjoyed a restful and happy Christmas holiday and you feel energized and excited about what the new year has to offer. It is so good to be back in the classroom and my students already amazed me during this first week back with some incredible writing pieces, reflecting on goals and resolutions for the new year. Check this out:

Thoughtful. Honest. Powerful. Well done, Division 4!

Please note that in Math we will be starting a new unit on Fractions. Most of our students have made excellent progress with regards to the recall of the multiplication basic facts, and I can tell that many of you supported the learning of this important foundational skill at home. We will continue to practice our "quick math facts" first thing in the morning to get our brains fired up! Keep practicing at home!