Friday Weekly Reflection 18

Hello Grade 4 Families,

I hope you have been able to keep warm this week!

Grade 4 students have been busy finishing up their "Zentangle Landscapes", adding finishing touches and decorative borders. 

The group has begun a unit of Geometry in Mathematics and have been having fun using protractors and setsquares to measure and draw angles. There are new vocabulary words and concepts coming up, so I have put an invitation to explore on the Mathematics bulletin board. As we work through the unit, it is hoped that students will add their growing understanding to the vocab charts through words or pictures. I have included a photo of the board below. I look forward to seeing and sharing it's development. 

During Language, Grade 4 are continuing their creative writing. I have been conferencing with the students this week about the progress of their narratives. Most are coming along incredibly well and I hope to post the published and polished stories in next Friday's blog. We have targeted specific grammar skills that have challenged some students throughout this process such as punctuation, capitalization and using direct speech.  Additionally, we revised "awesome adjectives", "vivid verbs" and using better sentences to build interest and detail. 

Our Inquiry has taken an interesting detour over the past few days. The students have been keenly interested in discussing history and geography. I have had many questions such as 

" Why do countries want to take over another country"

"What did Ghandi do?"

"What is a continent?"

"Where is Greenland?"

" Is there bad countries?"

With these kinds of questions clearly of interest to grade 4, I decided to alter our approach to this unit. Students have started investigating "Colonisation", which builds on their prior knowledge of "Exploration", an area they investigated last year. 

This week we discussed primary and secondary resources and how these can help us to investigate events, people and places from the past. 

Students have been working on a timeline and world map to chart their research as they investigate some of their wonderings (see below). 

-Who
"were the powerful colonizing countries?"


-When
"were the most times of colonisation?"
"did these times start and end?"

-What
"happened to the people who already lived there before ?"
"what points of view did the colonial powers and indigenous people have ?"

-Where
"did colonisation take place?"

-Why
did colonisers choose particular places to settle?
did colonial powers want to expand ?

Art will be incorporated into the unit through the investigation and interpretation of primary sources as well as being part of the students summative task. 


Have a great weekend!

- Miss Raciti