Area and Perimeter of A Puddle

We are getting close to the end of our unit on area and perimeter.  Today we did an activity that let us apply our knowledge in a creative way.....we had to draw a puddle then find its area and perimeter.  

After a brief discussion we set to work.  Here is some of what we did:

Lots of creative problem solving going on! There was a lot of great math talk happening as well.  I heard some of the following as I was snapping pictures:

"does that match our scale?"

" How can I keep track of how many I've counted "

" Line up the squares so they touch"

Keep Learning!

Ms. Pike

Report Writing

Over the past few days we have been learning about how to write a report.  We have looked at different types of reports, talked about what makes a good report, and identified what is missing in a report.  We created some anchor charts for us to use when we write our own reports.

First, we talked about the specifics of a report (the purpose, how it's organized, what some language features are, and where we have seen one before).

Using our R.A.F.T. We came up with different topics that we could write about, and what audience would be appropriate for the topics:

Using a report that someone had written we were able to identify the different pieces of a report.  We highlighted them, and also critiqued a report by giving it some stars and wishes:

Our next lesson was on co-creating success criteria to help us remember what goes into a good report.  We will all have copy of this at our desks to help us as we work through the writing process.

Grade 3 students have already written reports on a community in Ontario and will now get to write a report of their choosing.

Grade 4 students will begin to write a report on a specific aspect of an Early Society (e.g., What the day in the life of an Ancient Roman Gladiator was like).

Happy Writing

Ms. Pike :)

Units of Measure : Large group

Here are some examples of good answers for our test on the units of measure.  This unit will help us be more successful when we solve for area and perimeter.  

If you have any questions about your child's test, please contact me.

Ms. pike

Units of Measure Test : Small Groüp

We have now completed our units of measure unit in measurement.  This will help us be better at solving for area and perimeter during our next unit.

Here are some good answers from our test.  If you have any questions as to how your child can improve please contact me.

Ms. pike

You can see how the student used reasoning to help explain their answer.  They didn't just say "it's bigger, they were able to compare and talk about the relationships between the units.  

The student was ankle to talk about why a unit was appropriate and how it related to the quilt.  To improve, they could have used more specific terms (e.g., cm, m)

This student converts the units to the same,  then applies their knowledge of subtraction to find the difference, or the amount that is needed.

What makes a good visualization?

All this week we have been visualizing about the facts we have heard about Hawaii.  The students would hear a fun fact and then visualize.  We took the facts from our National Geographic Kids magazine:

We talked about how it is not only important to make a picture on paper, but also write about what we visualized.  Rileigh offered to share her visualization with the class.  We then used it to help us talk about how to write about our visualizations.

After working on this for a few days we started to talk about how our visualizations would be marked.  We worked together to make our success criteria.  Here is what we came up with : 

This is what we will use to help us improve our answers before we hand them in.

Happy Learning!

Ms. Pike

Inquiring Minds

In Social Studies the Grade 4 students are learning about early societies.  We created a Q Chart to hold some of the questions that we have about the societies that we are learning about.  Here is what we have so far: 

As we work through the unit, we will be adding more questions into the blank space.  We are doing key research on the different aspects of life for these societies ( e.g., what some physical features are, how they learned, who their enemies were).  At the end of our unit we will be writing a report on one of our questions.  

Feel free to make a family trip to the ROM or do some internet research on an Early Society that interests you.  It will just make you more knowledgeable when you write your report.

Happy Learning!

Ms. Pike

Learning to Visualize

Today we started to talk about our next reading strategy: visualization.

We heard a song about it, and talked about what visualization is.  We created an anchor chart to help us remember what it is and did an activity to help us practice our visualizing technique.  We also wrote out what our friends saw and helped to create "good answers" for visualization.

We are going to be doing more work on visualizing using non-fiction texts, fictional texts and poetry.

Ms. Pike

Relationship Between Units

During the last few math classes we have been working on looking at the relationship between mL and L, and grams and milligrams.  

We did a problem yesterday that gave us some difficulty, so we talked about it today and went over strategies that we could use to solve it.

 

One thing we talked about that we needed to remember was making sure that we properly read the question.  This is where many of us made mistakes.  The second thing that we need to remember is the relationships between units.  In this case we needed to remember that 4 cups is the same as 1 litre.  1 litre is the same as 1000ml. We have written this down on our cheat sheet, and it is also on an anchor chart in our room.

We will continue to work on problems like this next week, and will most likely have a test on mass and capacity the week after that.

Ms. Pike

Success Criteria: Procedural Writing

We are busy working on writing procedures.  As of now, everyone has written at least 1 procedure.  We are going to write 3 procedures and then choose the one that we would like to take to the publishing stage.  

We talked about what makes a good procedure.  We then co-created success criteria on what our procedure should include.  Each student has a copy of this, and it's also hung up on the wall.  Before we hand in our work, at each stage of the writing process, we will check it against the success criteria to help ensure that we have included everything that we need.

Ms. Pike

Learning About Mass

 We began learning about mass today.  We created a class chart to help use see the relationship between grams and kilograms.  We each copied is chart to make a cheat sheet for ourselves for later use.

In pairs, we worked on a problem of our choosing to see how a farmer could divide up a tub of apples.  The type of problem that we did is called a parallel task.  Here were the choices:

(Sorry for the funny colour: our data projector acts up sometimes.)

When we done we looked at the different ways we can solve a problem like this.  We saw how using adding, subtracting, multiplication and division all can help us.  We also talked about the importance of writing the unit after each unit of measure.

Ms. Pike :)

Time test answers: small group

Today we talked about our answers from our time and temperature test.  Here are the good answers we had for each question.

Knowledge and understanding:

All 4questions correct gave you a level 4

Thinking

To get a good answer you needed to show how one person took longer than The other.  You also needed to convert the units to the same (all seconds or all minutes).  Also, a clear final sentence was important.

Communication

For this question using math vocabulary was important to talk about the relationship between days and weeks.  To get a 4 you could have given an example like: if you are 52 weeks old we could also say that you were 365 days old.  Here is a sample of an answer that was in the level, but needed a bit more explaining.

Application

This question required us to justify, which means to give reasons as to why we are right.  We had to apply our knowledge of temperature (and reading a chart) to help us solve it.

After March break we will be working on mass and capacity.

Ms. Pike :)

Time test answers: Large Group

Today we got our math tests back.  We talked about what a good answer for each question was.  We used the ladybug to see examples of the good answers.  Here is part of our discussion:

Knowledge and understanding - Level 4

All questions were correct. 

Thinking 

Both of these questions were level 3 because the thinking was clear in both.  Although one had a mistake, we could see where the mistake was made and how it was more of a calculation error than a thinking error.  Both had clear sentences with their final answers.

Communication

We talked about how subtraction can cause problems if we didn't use it correctly.  For this answer, the students needed to talk about the differences in regular subtracting (increments of 100) and subtracting in time (increments of 60). 

Application

This question was a little tricky for most of the students.  They did not do all of the steps necessary to solve the problem, and therefore did not get full marks.  Many of them were able to get part marks for showing what they had started to do.  So, we did this problem together to show what makes a good answer.

After March Break we will be working on mass and capacity.

Ms. pike :)

How long will we work?

Yesterday's problem was a little tricky for the large group.  It was called "Movie Money" and we had to find out how long a person at the movies had to work.

As a class we read the problem, then did a K -W-C to help us understand the problem :

Many of us struggles to remember the conditions of the problem and put all of the steps into order to solve this problem.  Today we used the ladybug to help us talk our way through the problem.

We broke the problem down into steps.  Then we put the steps together to help us see what time the person needed to be at work at.  Then To find out what time they would end their shift at.  We also put together a number line to find out how many hours the person would work and then wrote out our answer in a clear sentence.

I think we all feel a little better in answering problems like this in the future.

Happy learning!

Ms. Pike :)

What Is The Silver Birch Award?

In library today, B noticed that the non-fiction booke he took out had a special sticker on it that said "silver birch award official selection."  He was wondering what it was, so when we got back to the classroom we had a chat about it. 

We found out that the silver birch award is an award given to books that received the most votes.  The best part is, that it's students who get to do the voting.  The award is offered by the Ontario Library Association.  There are a list of fiction, non-fiction, and express titles.  If you are interested in seeing the list of titles go to : www.accessila.org then click on Current Years Nominees.  This will give you a list of books for this year and winners in previous years.

Happy Reading!

Ms. pike :)

Working on answering questions.

We are so excited that we now have a ladybug to help us learn.  We share it with the other junior division classes, but today it was all ours!

The ladybug lets us put our work under it and then show it on the screen.  Today we used it to peer mark / review a few answers to an inferencing question we were working on.

Here at Brock (like many other schools) we use the RASE model to answer a question.  RASE stands for:

R - restate the question

A - answer the question

S - support the answer with details

E - explain the details.  

Here are the examples we shred today.  Thank you to N & J for sharing their work!

You can see the notes we made, and the revisions, to help improve this answer from its original state.

Here was our second piece we talked about:

We talked about the differences between the two pieces, and why we think one would be marked higher than the other.  The remaining students then had a chance to go back and edit their piece to help them be more successful.

Great job room 24!

Ms. pike :)

Time Problems

Today, we worked in pairs to solve problems involving time.

The small group did these problems: 

 

When we were done we showed each other the work and did a congress where we talked about the math.  Out thinking, or editing, is done in black: 

We talked about how important it is to show our thinking when solving a problem.  This is something we need to remember when we do future problems.

The large group did these problems:

Here is what we talked about when we did our congress:

We concluded that it was important to use the same unit when talking about elapsed time (e.g. All minutes or all hours)