Becoming Human Body Experts! September 26

Hello Everyone!

I hope you enjoyed your three-day weekend! TEDEdx in West Vancouver was amazing, and I spent Saturday hearing from interesting speakers around the theme “IMAGINE,” such as Dr. Santa Ono from UBC! Teachers need to keep learning, too!

Unit:

Students are working on becoming experts on one organ of the human body. Everyone has chosen a wide-range of body parts! Today we focused on finding our research in physical books, and Ms. D reviewed some skills related to non-fiction reading and researching, such as:

• what kinds of things we would put down in our notes (key ideas, in our own words, interesting facts), 
• how to cite our resources, looking for title, author, publisher, and copyright date,
• how to use the table of contents and index to find information in the book, instead of reading the whole thing, and
• how to look for headings, sub-headings, diagrams, the glossary, and other key words in bold that can help you find information.

We went over business letter format on the board on Friday, so you have a copy of a letter we did together in your journal. Everyone also received a handout explaining the Human Body Corporation project and showing the criteria to do well. Please keep this in your binder so you will have it to refer to and to evaluate yourself at the end! Letters will be due on Tuesday, Oct. 3rd.

We also did a BLOOD TYPES lab today, as we talked more specifically about what is in blood and what the main eight blood types look like. We discussed antigens, RH factor +/-, platelets, plasma, red blood cells, and white blood cells. During the lab, we used food colouring to simulate how blood types react to one another and to discuss how it is important to have the right type for a transfusion!

Please finish the blood type handout questions 1-4 from our lab if not done already. Then, play the Blood Typing game at home! (works best on a laptop/desktop, rather than mobile device.)

MATH:

Continuing our work on CRUNCHING THE DATA, we reviewed what we had learned so far and talked about how statistics may be used to find out information about a group of people so diseases can be best researched and treated. We defined four more words related to data: median, mode, mean, and range! Then we applied them during a fun activity of analyzing Smarties in boxes received by our classmates! If you didn’t finish the yellow handout for this, you can have a bit of time tomorrow. Remember, if you didn’t understand the percentages section, then please hang on and come back to it after we have talked more about percentages in class. If you know how to do it, though, go for it!

Ms. D has noticed we need to do some more talking about division and decimals. We will be covering this in class, but you are also welcome to practice some at home. I often use these websites if you want to take a look. TOTALLY OPTIONAL! If you are having trouble with division as we move on (division without a calculator) then do practice your multiplication tables to ensure you are able to quickly recall answers. This can help with division a lot!

• Basic Division Practice
• Division With Remainders
• Long Division
• Decimals
• Dividing with Decimals

Other NEWS:

• LIBRARY TOMORROW: Our regular day for library will be Wednesday.
• PE: Our regular days for PE will now be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings before recess.
• Music: Music will always be on Tuesday and Thursday mornings
• Field Trip!! Please be here at 8:50 AM on time to load onto the bus. We will return no later than 2:45 PM. Thank you to our volunteers who are helping! Students need to bring a water bottle, light jacket, bag lunch, and a snack. Please don’t bring valuables or money as we will not have time to get food at the cafe during our visit.
• NOTICES: Please get in all of the notices for the school as soon as possible so they can be sent in to the office.
• PAC MEETING: Please note the PAC Meeting for Sept. 27th has been cancelled and a new date will be posted soon on the PAC website
• FSA TESTS: A notice will be going home for grade four students about the upcoming FSA, so please look for this tomorrow.
• PEN PAL LETTERS: If you haven’t turned your second letter to your pen pal in to Ms. D, please do so tomorrow!

Have a great evening!

Ms. D