Mr. Pressey

January 20th - 24th This week we continued our research of the different animal classes. We focused on reptiles and mammals. This was our first chance to see how cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals are different. The grade 3's we focusing on symmetry, reading graphs as well as continuing to develop quick strategies for subtraction. The subtraction strategies we focused on was counting up, making to ten and thinking addition. The grade 4's were exploring representing fractions as decimal numbers and developing paper and mental strategies to subtracting decimal numbers. During reading we were beginning to independently use the reading strategies that we have been learning about. The reading skills we have been focusing on have been connecting, code breaking, summarizing, questioning, visualizing and analyzing text features . We also practiced using these skills during our new class novel, The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. We have continued our Art focus of doing reali

January 14th - 17th Well we survived the week in the freezer. This week in Science we began exploring the different Animal classes. We started by researching about fish and then amphibians . The first thing we did was learn about some important vocabulary that we needed to know like vertebrate, cold-blooded, habitat, carnivore, herbivore, adaptations and lifecycle .  Then we read articles and watched videos to collect information. We learned about why we need to record our resources and why it is important to use more than one resource. Finally we learned about how we can use clear questioning to find information in a search engine lik e google .  In Math, we were looking at strategies to get faster at our subtraction facts. and making to 10 were two strategies that we could use to get quicker at subtraction. Our goal is to be able to solve subtraction problems up to 18 in less than 3 seconds. We practiced all week for 2 minutes a day and had a quiz to see how many question

January 9th - 10th Welcome back everyone. This week we started our new Math unit. We are learning all about subtraction and subtraction strategies. We need to make sure that we can use automatic mental strategies to solve problems up to 18. So that means we can solve 18-9 within 3 seconds mentally. So please practice at home. We are also learning about strategies to solve subtraction up to 999 for the Grade 3's and 9999 for the grade 4's. We have been using think boards to help us out with that. Here is an example of a think board and a blank one to practice with. Please remember that we have our It's a Crime Not to Read visit to the school on Tuesday so remember to return your books. On Friday we continued our weekly drawing, creativity and response activity. The drawing was very challenging but we showed excellent perseverance and the response conversation at the end was wonderful. Have a great weekend and remember to dress warm next week.