Monthly Archives: January 2025

We’ve had another exciting week full of learning and activities. Here’s a look at what we’ve been up to:

Language Arts: Sentence Structure and Variations This week, we continued to work on our sentence structure and sentence variations. We’re still figuring out the best ways to combine sentences to make our writing more interesting. For example, instead of writing “The cat is black. The cat is small,” we can combine these sentences to say, “The black cat is small.” Another example is changing “I like to read. I like to draw,” to “I like to read and draw.” Keep practicing these combinations to make your writing flow better!

It was “dress rehearsal” week for your Reader’s Theater performances.  Every group presented to the class on Thursday.  You were given feedback about your speaking skills ( clarity, volume, speed, expression, and preparation) from your classmates as well as from Mrs. Davis.  All of you have been working hard to memorize your lines and are now working on how to best “deliver” them.  It is very common for nerves to impact speed and volume.  As you continue to practice, remember to slow down not only in saying your individual lines, but also between lines… just “take a beat” between lines, before jumping to the next.  Speaking a bit louder will also ensure that the audience hears everything.  Next week are final presentations!  Keep practicing between now and then!

Math: Multiplication Facts In math, we spent some time working on our multiplication facts. We learned some helpful strategies to remember the harder equations, like the 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s. For instance, for the 9’s,

1. 9 x 8: The first digit is 7 (one less than 8), and the two digits (7 and 2) add up to 9. So, 9 x 8 = 72.
2. 9 x 9: The first digit is 8 (one less than 9), and the two digits (8 and 1) add up to 9. So, 9 x 9 = 81.
3. 9 x 10: The first digit is 9 (one less than 10), and the two digits (9 and 0) add up to 9. So, 9 x 10 = 90.

This trick makes it easier to remember the 9 times tables because you just need to find the first digit (one less than the number you’re multiplying by 9) and then make sure the two digits add up to 9. Keep practicing, and you’ll have these down in no time!

C’est L’Hiver!  (It’s Winter time) and we are busy learning some new French vocabulary pertaining to this time of year. In Quebec, Carnaval is a big festival that is celebrated from Fri, Feb 7, 2025 – Sun, Feb 16, 2025.  We have been trying to learn the theme song “Bonhomme, Bonhomme” that is sung during this festival.  It’s a catchy tune, but has some tough timing and is pretty fast, but we’re getting much better at it!! We also started making a flip book called “Que Porter en Hiver”  (What to wear in Winter).   Each section of the book describes what to wear on our head, on our body, on our legs and on our feet.  Once the book is finished the sections can interchange between the three “bodies” we dressed for winter.

Science: Oceans, Tides, and the Moon In science, we studied the oceans and tides and how they are related to the moon and the sun. We learned that the moon’s gravity pulls on the Earth’s water, causing tides. We also explored the indigenous perspectives and beliefs about these natural phenomena. We watched videos and read articles about the Haida and the Cree. The Haida have oral stories about how the Raven brought the sun, moon, and stars to the sky. Also, they have story how the sun and moon are brothers, sharing the job of giving light to the world by working together. The Cree tell stories about the moon and sun being a brother sister duo who couldn’t work together to keep the fire going that lights up the world. As a result, their father split the job into two and had his son (Sun) light and warm the world for half the day and his daughter (Moon) light up the night much less so that people could rest. Working together, the siblings keep light in the world. These stories help us understand the importance of the sun and moon in different cultures.

Guess What?? We’re going on a virtual trip around the world!! This is a big project that not only our class is doing, but 3 other grade 4/5 classes are participating in as well.  But… before we can do any travelling, we need a PASSPORT– which is what we spent Thursday and Friday doing!   We completed our cover design and the ID page of our passport. We also added on to our growing list of facts about each continent.  If you haven’t been able to finish the continent information yet, the assignment is still on TEAMS, so please  get that done over the weekend.

Digital Literacy: Media and Mood We also had a digital literacy lesson about how media can affect our mood. We discussed how different types of media, like music, movies, social media, and even books can make us feel happy, sad, excited, or even anxious. We learned to be mindful of how much time we spend on screens and consuming media and to choose media that makes us feel good.

Physical Education: Basketball Skills We continued to play 3 on 3 basketball. Everyone is getting really good at blocking, dribbling, passing, and shooting. It’s great to see how much you’ve all improved and how well you’re working together in teams!

Next week is FAMILY LITERACY WEEK!  There are so many activities that we will be taking part in as a class ( Guess the Teacher, School Wide reading, Guest Readers, Literacy Trivia, and Rebus Puzzles) as well as some activities that you can do at home starting this weekend! You all have taken home the family literacy activity grid.  The goal is to do at least 7 of the activities on the grid, but try to do as many as you can!  There are some fabulous activities on there!  Which ones will you complete?

Here is your Blog Response activity this week.

Choose someone to tell one of the Indigenous stories we heard this week to. Pick your favourite one or the one you remember the best. Tell the story, as best you can remember it so we can practice oral story telling. When you are done, ask the person you told the story to the following two questions and type their responses into your blog response page.

1. Who was your favourite character in the story and why?
2. What was one thing you believe the story was trying to teach us?

Keep up the great work, everyone! Let’s look forward to another week of learning and fun.

Mrs. Gil and Mrs. Davis

This week was full of fresh air and clear skies. It was a little chilly outside, but it was dry so all your breaks were dry and full of fun!

We continued our work around recognizing our past accomplishments and planning for what comes next. Starting 2025 by looking at our successes and how we accomplished our goals is really helping us make new and achievable goals for the new year. We are so impressed with how well you know yourselves and how you apply the SMART strategy when setting these new goals. Paragraph writing has been a focus for us lately so we combined goal setting with paragraph writing and you all wrote a paragraph explaining your own accomplishments. Doing this helped you understand how important it is to know how to write a clear paragraph. We use paragraphs in all kinds of ways in all different subject areas. Once you have the form down, your ideas will flow and your writing will be clear. You are all getting there, way to go!  During our weekly GOW ( Graph of the Week) you also get to practice this skill as you respond to our weekly survey question.  This week we asked “What are your favourite winter sports” and you wrote a paragraph describing your top three out of the choices given.  Many of you took this home to finish, because we just didn’t get it fully done while at school.  Please have that finished and in the IN BOX before Thursday.

Our study of the moon centered around the phases the moon goes through every month. We learned that there are eight phases and we discussed how the phases even happen. Next week, we will be looking at how the moon is related to Ocean Tides. Also, we will be learning about how Indigenous People value the moon and sun and also how they discovered a lot of the science around what is happening in the sky.

We are building our understanding of Multiplication. This week we learned that you can multiply numbers using simpler multiplication facts that you already know. Also, we used mental math strategies to relate unknown facts to known facts. You started your work in pairs  with a known fact and used it to figure out unknown facts. As well, you were also asked to start with an unknown fact and related it to known facts.

Our study of GEOGRAPHY is up and running!  This week we were introduced to the 7 Continents and the 5 Oceans of the world.  The continents are the areas of LAND that make up the earth and the Oceans are the large water bodies around the land. We watched two You Tube videos that helped us gather some facts about each continent and each ocean.  We also labelled and coloured a map of the world.  Some of you took the map home to finish the colouring.  Remember, the water is being coloured blue and land is coloured green.  The only continent that we left white on our map was ANTARCTICA, because it is frozen and covered with ice for most of the year!

Our final Young People’s Concert was on Wednesday. It was a spectacular show brought to us by Rainbow Dance Theatre. The group uses LED lights and darkness to Ilumidance. Remember, that was the made up word the Director used to describe what their form of dance. It was amazing to see how they made their own props and choreographed such cool dances. There were owls and serpents, butterflies, and beautiful flowers.  The dancers were costumed in electro-luminescent wire and fibre optic fabric while they danced to classical, tango and modern music motifs. What was your favourite part of the performance? Can you explain the performance to your parents?

Speaking of performances… your Reader’s Theater lines should be getting close to being memorized!  Next week on Thursday and Friday, your group will be doing a dress rehearsal for the rest of the class.  This should be like a “run through” of your performance… and you should be as close to ready as you can be.  After each group performs, you will receive feedback from your classmates and from Mrs. Davis.  Final performance and assessment will happen the following week ( Jan 30 and 31st). 

Your Blog Response for this week is:

How do you feel about performing?  What do you enjoy about it?  What do you find challenging?

Have a wonderful weekend Division 7!

Mrs. Gil and Mrs. Davis

Welcome back Division 7!

After a restful Winter Break, it is nice to be back with all of you again. We jumped right back into working straight away. On Monday, we moved our seating arrangement slightly so you all have new desk partners for the month. Also, we chose our jobs for the first week back so you can start earning those Mega Bucks again. For many of you, Mega Bucks were earned on the break as you completed your reading logs and hit some milestones. There are only a few students who have yet to take advantage of the reading club earnings, hopefully this new month will be the one where we see EVERYONE in the class on the chart. If you are one of the students not on the chart yet, maybe this could be a goal for you?

Speaking of goals……we began the week with a deep dive into Growth Mind Sets and New Year Resolutions. We took our Brain Booster time this week, to think about ourselves last year. Many of us made mistakes but also, we had many successes too. We asked you to think back on your last year and tell us about some of your accomplishments. Then we asked you to look forward and think about setting goals to build on your last years achievements. Having a Growth Mind Set instead of a Fixed Mind Set is something we are working towards. Great success can come from accepting that mistakes happen and are a great way to learn, rather than a place to get stuck. Ask your parents about their last year. Did they make any mistakes they learned from? Do they have any resolutions? Share yours with them as well.

We followed this up with a collaborative puzzle art activity as well! We began with the phrase “This is our year to be…”  and then brainstormed a HUGE list of adjectives about what we want to be as a class.  the puzzle had space for nine adjectives so we narrowed the long list down to the top 9 words.  Our final descriptors are:  organized, focused, helpful, kind, creative, positive, collaborative, grateful, and successful.  Creating the puzzle allowed us to practice the “collaborative” aspect right away as we had to meet with several people to discuss how to colour our pieces so that they would fit together seamlessly.  It was great watching you all work together and seeing how the puzzle came together!  Your collaboration skills certainly shone!  It’s a beautiful piece and is hanging in our room as a reminder for us as we move through these next months of this school year.

We dove into our study of Multiplication this week as well. It is very obvious that many of you are working on memorizing your facts and we were SO VERY impressed. The goal of this weeks work centered around helping you recognize multiplication situations and explain why they are multiplication situations. We asked you to read word problems and decide whether or not they were multiplication problems. If they were, you solved them, if they weren’t, you and your partner had to make the story problem into a multiplication problem. We also worked on identifying fact families. While most of the time you worked with partners or we worked through problems as a large group, next week we will be seeing what you can do independently.

We also began exploring another aspect of measurement: how to calculate perimeter.  Perimeter is the distance around an object or shape and to figure out the perimeter of something, you need to add together the length of all the sides.  You had some practice time with this concept and both worksheets only needed a bit more time to finish– which you have taken home to get done by Wednesday. We’ll mark them and carry on with more practice next week.

In Language Arts, we worked on our second draft of our Pet Paragraphs. We met with at least 3 other students in the class to have some feedback on our work. Your classmates were giving you some ideas about things they liked but more importantly, things they think you could work on to improve your first drafts. From there, you all prepared a second draft which will now be edited by Mrs. Gil. Hopefully, with a few minor tweaks, next week you will be able to publish the completed paragraphs.

Our oral language skills are being practiced again through a new reader’s theater.  “I Resolve” is a short script with 6 readers and is all about New Year’s Resolutions.  This time, the script is quite a bit shorter than the one we did before the holidays, so the expectation is a bit higher than previously.  This time, you need to memorize your lines!  Don’t panic… you have until the end of January before we perform for our class (and maybe some other classes too!).  You already had two practice sessions this week and there will be more, but don’t forget to also practice at home too!

We embarked on a new Social Studies unit this week!  Each of you were given a word on a card and then you shared what you knew or thought you knew about it during a “walk about” around the room.  We discovered that each word was actually a name of a place… but we are still figuring out what they are names of.  In partners you sorted the 30 names into 5 groups and labelled each grouping with a title or explanation about why those names are in the same category.  Next week, we’ll continue learning about some of those names.  This actually leads beautifully into your BLOG RESPONSE for this weekend:

Blog Question:  Our Social Studies topic has the following letters:   

          O E A P Y H G R G 

Can you unscramble the letters to make ONE word?  What is it?  What does it mean?  

Have a wonderful weekend Division 7!

Mrs. Gil and Mrs. Davis