Mr. Pressey

December 9th - 13th This week, in Science, we have been exploring more about waste in our world by looking at recycling. We explored recycling by using our scrap paper to make new paper. We started by collecting up waster paper and then we turned it into pulp by shredding the paper and then putting it into a bucket of water. Over 24 hours we let the paper scraps soak in the water and stirred the pulp to break the paper into even finer pieces. The next day we took the pulp and laid it onto a screen on a lattice so that we could spread it smooth and press out some of the extra water. Finally we laid it onto a flat surface and let it dry over the weekend.  For Math this week we started off by doing a survey about which pictures we wanted to draw during our Friday Art. We needed to conduct a fair survey and complete a clear accurate tally chart. Then we used our data to complete a bar graph. We also looked at arrays and how they are used to better understand multiplicat

December 2nd - 6th Language Arts This week, in Language Arts we were doing a new Talk For Writing. It was a persuasion all about how chewing gum in class is a TERRIBLE idea. We learned that the purpose of a persuasion is to convince someone about something. All last week we practiced saying the entire persuasion because, "if we can say a persuasion we can write a persuasion." Math  In Math we learned some strategies to solve two-step word problems. We also learned how to use a picture or diagram to help us solve a word problem. The Grade 4's learned a strategy to help them solve two-digit times one digit multiplication.  Social Studies  The Glenbow Museum lent us a special kit that was full of artifacts like posters and pictures all about how the newcomers came to Alberta. We looked at photos of newcomers from Asia, Eastern Europe, England, Iceland and Africa and why they came to Canada as well as where they settled. We looked at some posters t

November 25th  - November 28th Please remember that Monday is our class field trip to the Saddletown Library through the It's a Crime Not to Read program. Also Mr. Katchur has asked that all of the students in Room 8 practice for the assembly. There is a link to the video on last weeks blog post. This week we started our newest class novel, Mr. Gum and the Goblins. It is a quest story that uses humour, odd smilies and creative author techniques to make the story interesting. We will be focusing on the roles of text analyzing and visualizing to build our comprehension skills while reading this story. In Writing, Social Studies and Science, we continued to learn about taking notes. We learned about taking web notes. On Thursday we practiced using web notes along with sketch notes as we learned about some problems that waste is causing in our world. As we watched two videos,  Flooding in Venice  and  The Air in Delhi  we discovered how human actions are impacting the lives of

Thank you so much. We had every parent from Room 8 attend our Parent-Teacher Night on Thursday. It was a great opportunity to discuss our successes and next steps. This past week we were working on our new writing unit of persuasive writing. This type of writing will become very important as we explore our Science unit of Waste in Our World and our Social Studies exploration of current events that impact Alberta and the rest of the world. In Math, we are beginning to look at a variety of strategies that we can use to solve addition problems. We start off by using an estimation strategy and then we use drawings, expanded notation (chunking), column addition and inverse operations. During gym class, we have started to explore a new game called handball. To play this game we need to demonstrate accurate throwing skills, proper catching technique as well as teamwork, cooperation, fair play and defensive effort. In Art, we continued our series of mixed media art explorations of the

End of Week November 12th -15th This week in Science we began a new unit of study. We are looking at waste in our world. Our class started out by making a video about all of the things that we already knew about waste and garbage. The next day we did a kahoot test to find out some more about what we already knew and also to learn a bit about some new vocabulary like compost, toxic, landfill and recycling. Finally on Thursday and Friday we began watching a CBC news report about some of the garbage problems that are happening in Canada and we took some jot notes and did a news retell. This is what we will be learning about during our Waste in the World Science unit. In Language Arts, we finished out defeating fear novel, Welcome to Camp Nightmare. It had an interesting twist ending and we really enjoyed all of the cliff hanger chapter endings and descriptive words that the author used. In Math, we spent lots of time exploring time. We learned how to tell time to the hour, to the h

End of the Week Nov 4th - 8th This week in Math we learned a bunch of new Math games. We learned how to play Rack-O, array conquer, tenzi as well as addition war. Besides games we also explored how the words, "what is the difference between ___ and ___,"  is a phrase that means subtraction. We also explored 2D and3D shapes and a the word vertices, which are corners. On Wednesday, we looked at time to the half hour as well as even and odd numbers. Then on Thursday we explored the link between multiplication and repeated addition,  here is a link to a Khan Academy video if you would like to explore more.   Finally in Math we continued our Math Talks lessons by looking at word problems, solving them in small groups and explaining our mathematical thinking to the class. We are learning from each other to explore how there are many ways to solve the same problem. In Social Studies we explored Remembrance Day. We looked at why we observe Remembrance Day. We looked at the sy

Tuesday We had a lock down drill today and a visit from It's a Crime Not to Read. Today in Math we explored the corners (vertices) of different 3D shapes. We did some extra practice using the website I Know It and choosing grade 3 geometry  https://www.iknowit.com/lessons/c-geometry-solid-shapes-3d.html  . O.S. Geiger's Remembrance Day assembly will be held on Friday at 10:30. We would love to see you there. Our school is looking for non-perishable food items and personal hygiene items to donate to the veterans food bank.

We had a wonderfully spooky week this week. We started two new important daily activities this week in Math. As a whole group we have begun our Math Talks problem solving. There are many purposes for this such as exploring challenging math problems. Explaining our problem solving strategies using math language and to discover that there are many different ways to solve the same problems. Another key math activity we started this week was working on our mental math work sheets. We are doing this in order to learn new skills and practice math in a whole bunch of areas such as patterning, measurement, shape and number facts. In Language Art Reading we have been focusing on the comprehension strategy of identifying the main ideas. While reading our class novel and during guided reading groups we were challenged with finding the main idea of single paragraphs, single pages and entire chapters. We continued to explore this same idea while watching the news on Thursday. In Writing, we

Remember tomorrow is Halloween dress up and fun lunch. Also please remember that there is no school on Friday because of a teacher professional development day.

End of the Week October 21- 25 REMEMBER MONDAY IS PICTURE RETAKES This week we have been doing lots of work with graphing in Math. Both grades have been exploring how to ask questions and record data using tally charts. The grade 3's have been looking into making pictographs using one-to-one ratios The grade 4's have been making many-to-one ratios with their pictographs and bar graphs. During our reading time we have been continuing with our class novel and looking at the comprehension skill of visualizing. We learned that good readers make movies in their minds while they read to help them to understand. During our guided reading Mr. Pressey has been helping us to make connections, code break and summarize paragraphs. Keep up the great work that you have been doing with your home reading, last week was the best week that we have had all year. We have finished writing our Talk For Writing defeating fear stories.  We are currently typing up our stories and a

Oct 25 Ask me how we decided to decorate our class door for Halloween. October 24th Tomorrow is the last day to score some home reading points for this week. October 23rd Today we started our new spelling after the fall break. We began by sorting our words. We have almost finished typing up our defeating fear stories and they can be accessed on Google Docs.