Parts of the ear

This morning we received something special that will help us with our writing throughout the year....personal dictionaries!! Our dictionaries have frequently used words along with animal words, feelings words, colours, numbers, provinces and territories and superheroes and villains. We had to work with a partner to go through our No Excuse word list and make sure all of those words were also included. Ms. Binks is hoping that our writing becomes more exciting and detailed with all of the words we now have at our fingertips.

In math today we created a "cheat sheet" to help us remember 4 different ways to represent a number.
They were:
1) Standard form: a way to write a number showing only its digits
2) Word form: a number written in words
3) Expanded form: a way to write a number showing the sum of the value of its digits
4) Place value: the value of a digit is determined based on its location

Ask me to show you an example of each of these 4 ways for the number 7852

We continued to read our novel today. In the chapter we read, Suds begins to be trained by Joey on how to be a rat. Joey makes Suds watch the part in the movie E.T. where they think E.T. dies over and over to make sure Suds doesn't cry. It took nine times. He also captures spiders around the house and keeps putting them on Suds arms until Suds doesn't scream. Finally he makes Suds go out on the roof of his porch to get over his fear of heights. Suds only agreed to go if he could have a rope tied to him and then tied to his bed. Suds ends up getting dizzy and falling off of the roof!

Some of us finished our fall leaf art today! Check out how wonderful this art project looks:





In science today we learned all about the parts of the ear. We had to label 8 different parts including:
- Pinna
- Ear canal
- Ear drum
- Hammer
- Anvil
- Stirrup
- Cochlea
- Auditory nerve

Ask me all about how these parts of our ears work together to interpret a sound and send the message to our brains.

REMINDERS:

- Swimming forms are due on Friday. Students who do not return the forms will be unable to come swimming with us on Monday. Payment does not have to be made by Friday and can be made at a later date.
- We are still looking for male volunteers to help out in the boys locker room. If you are interested please let Ms. Binks know asap
- A letter from Parent Council was sent home today

Swimming forms sent home today

This morning we started off by drawing pictures of our family. Lots of us found it difficult to draw family members and pets using lots of details and not using stick people.

We had library today. There were still quite a few students who did not return their library books. Please make sure that you are bringing back all of your library books on Monday so they are ready to return on Tuesday morning!

In math we continued reviewing place value. Yesterday we created place value numbers and reviewed how the different digits in numbers have different values. We practiced identifying the value of digits in the ones, tens, hundreds, thousands and ten thousands place. Today we reviewed how to create numbers using base ten blocks. We also reviewed how we need 10 ones to make ten, 10 tens to make a hundred and 10 hundreds to make one thousand. We practiced drawing out numbers using base ten blocks. We will continue to review place value throughout the rest of the week as it will be revisited when we continue with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Ask me to show you how to draw out these numbers in base ten: 2347, 7853, 1326, 9999

This afternoon in science we learned about pitch. Pitch is how high or how low a sound is. To explore what sound waves look like we used rulers and extended them at different lengths off of a desk. We saw that when the ruler was further out it moved faster and therefore showed a higher pitch. When there was more of the ruler on the desk it moved slower and showed a slower pitch. We practiced waving with our hands to remember what sound waves are doing when they are making high and low pitch sounds.

REMINDERS:

•  Swimming forms were sent home today. They need to be filled out and returned by FRIDAY.
• We are still looking for male volunteers to come to the pool with our class. If you are interested please let Ms. Binks know asap and she will send home the volunteer forms

Meet the Teacher Tomorrow

Over the past few days we have continued to learn about hearing and sound. We watched a video from Bill Nye and worked together to answer some questions. Here are some interesting facts that we learned:
- Sound is vibrations of air
- An echo is when a sound wave is reflected
- Frequency is how fast or slow a sound wave is moving
- Sound can be timed to see which direction it came from
- An ultrasound machine turns echo into pictures

We have had a spelling test that has taken us 2 days!! We were tested on our knowledge of our grade 4 no excuse words. We have 96 words on this list. Ms. Binks is going to mark them and see if we got any words incorrect. These will be words that we will need to work on throughout the upcoming weeks so we don't need to always be looking at our word list when we are writing. We will have our tests marked and returned by next week.

We started Number Detectives this week. Ms. Binks gives us a choice of 3 numbers (along with a bonus number) and we have to figure out these 10 questions:
1) Write me in words
2) Show me in base ten blocks
3) Show me using tally marks
4) Skip count to me
5) Show me in expanded form
6) Show ways to make me using addition
7) Show ways to make me using subtraction
8) What is 10 more than me?
9) What is 100 more than me?
10) Add the digits together

Students who are looking for extra practice with their math skills can complete the number detectives activity at home.

Reminders:

- Book orders are due tomorrow
- Meet the Teacher forms (yellow) should be returned by tomorrow
- Meet the Teacher night is tomorrow. Please go to the school website and book a time to come
- There is no school for students on Friday
- Please return digital citizenship forms asap

Fire Drill Today

This morning we had to reflect on our adjective art that we have been working on and how hearing and writing complementary adjectives makes us feel and makes others feel. Some students chose not to use their time wisely or ask for help this morning and as a result did not finish their work. They have homework. Please check blue folders to see if your child has homework. If they do, it is to be completed tonight and returned tomorrow.

We started a new unit in science today about hearing and sound. We worked in partners to brainstorm facts that we already know about this topic. Some of our facts were:
- Some sounds are from your mouth
- Animals can hear
- When you get water in your ears it is harder to hear
- Sounds bounce off walls and into your ear
- Your voice sounds different in your head than what it sounds like to other people

We also had to think of questions we wonder about. Some questions we came up with were:
- Why are ears the shape they are?
- How come we get infections in our ears?
- How big is an eardrum?
- What does an eardrum look like?

We continued reading our novel "Fourth Grade Rats"...here's what happened in chapter 2:
- Joey kept making fun of Suds and his lunch. Joey said that Suds should have a bologna sandwich instead of peanut butter and jam
- Suds said hello to his third grade teacher who said she will always think of him as an angel
-  Suds got his lunch knocked out of his hand and his food kicked everywhere
- Joey asked Suds to meet him at the swings (we had to write a prediction about why they are meeting)

This afternoon we had our first fire drill practice. After coming inside, we had to review appropriate behaviour during a fire drill. We needed to be reminded not to talk, not to cover our ears and to be responsible and respectful while waiting in line. Please ask me about my behaviour.

Reminders:
- We have library tomorrow. Please make sure that you bring BOTH of your books back
- Please bring your yellow digital citizenship forms back in
- Book orders are due on Thursday
- Blue folders going home today with some new information
- Meet the Teacher is this Thursday. Please sign up for one session.
- BBQ is on Thursday. Please return your form with the information about what burgers you would like
- There is no school on Friday

Our Wonderful Week

This week we did lots of work around Care for Others and Care for Self.

The celebration of Eid was on Monday. We brought all of the grade four classes together to hear from Mrs. Cokar and some students who also celebrate Eid to learn about why it is a special day. Some things that we learned were:
- It is celebrated by Muslims
- It can be celebrated differently
- People visit their friends and family
- You get to wear brand new fancy clothing
- People give up something they really love
We talked about how in Canada we are very lucky to have so many different cultures who are able to celebrate their beliefs, speak their language, dress in traditional clothing and other amazing things while still being Canadian.

With the Terry Fox run today we wanted to review the incredible accomplishments of Terry. We watched a video all about Terry Fox's story and how the legacy of his Marathon of Hope lives on. Some things we learned from the video were:
- He never gave up
- He tried to run across Canada and raise money but he had to stop in the province of Ontario
- He was planning to dip his leg in the oceans on each end of Canada

We did some writing around Terry and whether we thought he was a Canadian hero. 19 students believe he is a hero for his selflessness.

So far we have raised $84.00 as a class to donate to Terry Fox. We would love to reach $100.00 as a class. We will still accept donations on Monday.

We continued to build our understanding around adjectives. We had to brainstorm and replace "boring" adjectives with juicier words. As a class we brainstormed adjectives that could be used to compliment classmates and "fill their bucket". We came up with words like:
- brainy
- wonderful
- boisterous
- marvelous
- athletic
- kindhearted
Using these words, each student went around and wrote adjectives about each other. We then used these adjectives to complete our art project we have been working on.

We used the beautiful background that students painted and glued a headshot onto the paper. Students then wrote their adjectives coming out of their heads. We will be writing about how these adjectives showed care for others and care for self next week.

We started a novel this week called "Fourth Grade Rats" which is about a boy named Suds who has just started grade 4. His best friend, Joey is a rat because he picks on other kids and thinks you have to act grown up in grade 4. Suds is worried about becoming a rat and how that will change his angelic  reputation. We had to make predictions about what they thought would happen. Lots of us think that Suds will become a rat so he fits in with his best friend. Some of us thought that Suds will stand up to Joey and remain an angel.

Reminders:
- Please return your pink Family Celebrations form
- Book orders were sent home today. They are due back next Thursday.
- Digital citizenship forms were sent home today. Students must review them with parents. Forms must be signed and returned before students will be able to use technology at school.
- Information regarding Meet the Teacher night was sent home today
- Information about before/after school care was sent home

Amazing Adjectives

This morning we reviewed adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe a person, place or thing. Ms. Binks read us the book called "Hairy, Scary, Ordinary" and then we brainstormed some adjectives. Some of our ideas included: bumpy, beige, soggy, angry, tired and smooth. Ms. Binks talked about how some adjectives can be boring. These are words like nice, fun, good and cool. To help build our vocabulary with juicy adjectives we learned about synonyms (different words with the same meaning) and how to use a thesaurus. In partners we had to look up boring adjectives in a thesaurus and replace them with juicy words. Some of the juicy words we discovered were charming, delightful, clever, jolly, relaxed, weaken and gloomy.
We will continue work with adjectives later in the week.

We learned about time capsules and watched a video about a man who dug up his own time capsule 37 years after we buried it. We filled out a sheet all about our favourite items and our current height, wing span, foot length and head circumference. We will be creating a time capsule box as a class that we will put special items into and then open on the last week of grade 4.

After lunch we started an art project that will use our knowledge of adjectives. To start the project we needed to create a vibrant background. Using pencil we drew diagonal lines down our page. Then we went over our pencil lines with black fine liner. Our final step for the background was to paint in our lines using different colors. Some example of the steps of our background are below.

We will continue to work on this project later this week.

Reminders:

- Toonies for Terry begins tomorrow. Please bring any donation you can to help raise money for cancer. If enough money is raised to reach our goal teachers will dye their hair. (Ms. Binks is thinking purple)
- Terry Fox run is on Friday. Please make sure that you are wearing appropriate clothing and shoes for the run.
- Please return the pink Family Celebrations sheet asap

No Excuse Words

In math this morning we talked about subtraction and we had to make posters that explained everything we knew about it. Some facts that we had on our posters included:

• Subtraction is the opposite of addition
• You can use pictures instead of words
• You start with a bigger number and take a smaller number away
• You can also use the same number
• You can use subtraction when you are using money

We practiced some of our skills by doing some practice subtraction questions involving single and double digits.

Last week we had to write about our summer holidays in our journals. Ms. Binks reviewed our writing and used a highlighter to indicate any spelling mistakes, incorrect spacing, missing capital letters, capital letters where they shouldn't be and missing periods. Then we were given a list of words called “Grade 4 No Excuse Words”. This means that we should not spell any of the words on the list incorrectly. We glued the list into the front of our journals. This week we are going to choose 10 words off of this list and they will be our spelling words. After reviewing the words on the list we made corrections to our writing. Ms. Binks will be looking for these common errors so it will be something we need to continually work on.

Reminders:

- Please bring back any form packages

- Pink sheet about Family Celebrations sent home today. Please fill out and return to the classroom

- We will be collecting Toonies for Terry starting on Wednesday

- There is early dismissal on Friday

- We will be doing the Terry Fox run on Friday morning

Floating Self Portraits

This morning we started off by writing in our journals about how we spent our summer. Ms. Binks will be looking at this writing to get a good idea about what kind of writers we are. We were asked to add lots of details and use best try spelling. Some of us wrote 2 pages! We did lots of interesting things over the summer including:
- going camping
- rode up a mountain on a horse
- went to B.C.
- went on a Disney cruise

We began an art project today. We are creating floating self portraits. We had to trace our hands and feet and then draw in our bodies. Since it looks like we are floating, we were able to choose a place where we could be floating. Some of us chose space, underwater, a pizzeria and in Minecraft world. There are some pictures below showing the first stages in our portraits.



This afternoon we continued our outside activities. In our sketchbooks, we chose to either create a page with sketches about the rules we learned yesterday or sketching the school with a focus on the specific shapes and textures of the building.

REMINDERS:

- Please make sure students have appropriate indoor footwear. These should be running shoes that they can tie/do-up themselves and are appropriate for running and moving around the gym

- Please try and return student forms package by Friday

- Principal's message sent home today

Our first day of grade 4!

Today was our first day of grade 4 together! Lots of us knew each other from coming to Beddington last year, but we have 3 new friends to our school.

Ms. Binks read us a story called "Tiger Tail" which was about a little girl named Anya who grew a tiger tail the night before her first day of school. She was so panicked and was worried that all the kids in her class would make fun of her. She tried to pull off her tail, squish her tail and cover it by wearing all of the clothes in her closet. Nothing worked. When she got to school she bumped into a boy named Ben and knocked off his hat. Ben had bunny ears. At the end of the story there was a picture of Anya's class and there were lots of kids with animal ears or teeth and who were different than Anya.

To get to know each other better we had a snowball fight. Each of us had to write 2 interesting facts about ourselves on a piece of paper and then crumple it up to make a snowball. After everyone was finished writing, we threw the snowballs around the room. We then had to pick up a snowball close to us, read the facts on the paper and then track down the person who the facts were about. Some things we learned about each other were:
- Rihanna likes pink
- Kyla's favourite ride at Caraway Park is the strawberries
- Rowan's dad has flown on an airplane
- Ms. Binks has the same birthday as her mom

We had a classroom tour and then reviewed the expectations Ms. Binks has for us. We talked a lot about the importance of respect and kindness; not only towards others but also towards ourselves. We talked about how in grade 4 we are starting to become leaders in the school and how our behavior can influence younger students.

In the afternoon, we met up with the 2 other grade 4 classes and did a walking tour outside to review rules and expectations when we arrive/leave school and when we are outside for recess and lunch. After our tour we broke out into 3 different groups. Our class worked on making different letters of the alphabet using only our bodies. We were put into small groups and had to plan and then execute our letter. We will be using these body letters as our alphabet in the classroom. We will continue the other outside activities throughout the week.

Ms. Binks asked us to describe how we thought the first day of grade 4 went, our favorite things about today or how we were feeling today. Here are some of our thoughts:

Awesome - Aurora
The best thing ever! - Julie
Feeling a little shy - Zara
A day that you can see around the new classroom and meet new people and make new friends - Rowan
Not the best - Emmalyn
I have the best teacher in the world - Dakota
Great - Tristan
I was a little nervous at first but now better - Abby
No work - Finn
It felt short - Goner
Seeing old friends - Kendall

REMINDERS:

Student information folders were sent home. Please fill out the forms and return by Friday