October 4th, 2016

Hello parents!

Today we began our day by reviewing what we learned yesterday regarding Non-Fiction and Fiction text features (see yesterday's post). We then did Read to Self while I did Guided Reading groups with a Non-Fiction text related to plants and animals. Individually, I coached children how to read a Non-Fiction text and they were tasked with pulling out one or two important details and writing it down on a sticky note. For an idea of what Guided Reading is, please refer to the following video: Grade 3 and Grade 4. Guided Reading is an important part of the Language Block and is a means to conference individually and focus on key reading concepts to push your child further along the reading continuum. We then read "Charlotte's Web" and ate snack. After recess, we continued further with our research on Terry Fox. We continued reading a story and students were tasked with writing an important fact from the book on a sticky note. We compiled the facts on chart paper and will be reviewing them tomorrow. 

Guided Reading book and jot note

Terry Fox facts for our timeline

We also talked about how this book is historical fiction based on the way it was written (so it lives in the fiction and non-fiction world). Eventually, we will be putting together a timeline of his life. Students will then complete their own timeline (more on this later on in the month!!). We then went to French. One student made a connection to the "Draw My Life" series on Youtube which you may want to see with your child. 

After lunch we had a lesson on adding 10, 100 and 1000 more to a number for Grade 4s. I passed a ball to each student and gave them a number and asked them to add 10, 100 or 1000. We also talked about how to look at the place value and then just adding one to that number. With the Grade 3s, we looked at what "more" and "less" meant. I then passed a ball to a child and gave that child a number and said "2 more than 20" or "2 less than 30." We discussed how to write number from 20 to 99 (with the -ty suffix) and then how to write numbers from 100 and up. Please see the worksheets attached for extra practice here. After recess we had Library and then Gym. 

Homework:
- Read for 20 minutes
- POW (Due Thursday as it is a short week)
- Grade 3: page 38 in JUMP Math
- Grade 4: page 36 in JUMP Math