Ms Burton Snow's Blog

As you know, we have been collecting postcards from around the world for the past several months.  Today the students took special pins and "pinpointed" the various locations of the postcards on continent maps. See below for photos of our continents bulletin board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf--PQNDn7g Cam, here is the video of the Continents song that you liked so much today.  I find it quite catchy myself!

We watched a Bill Nye video about digestion today.  The video served as a good summary of our Health unit on the Digestive and Urinary System.

Today I gave each student a portion of a larger picture.  I did not tell the students what the picture formed.  The idea of the project is to have everyone work together to complete a finished piece of art.  I will take some photos in the coming days and post them here for all to see.

Girls, I think you will like this video.  Your favorite guy sings about fractions.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV_s0Q48R6c&feature=related

Today Mr.Walter taught me how to post on kidblog.  I like writing comments about  people's work. By:  Christina

We began our Charlotte's Web novel study today.  We listened to the author read the first three chapters on cd.  The students really enjoyed listening to the actual author read the text.

Today we continued our work with the continents.  The students worked in groups to trace the various continents and decide on how they could remember the shape of the continent.  For example, Africa reminded one group of a high heeled shoe.  The groups worked well and used their imaginations to come up with the responses.

We are working on writing lists of instructions.  Today we watched a video about how to make a traditional Irish beef stew.  The students needed to write the steps necessary to create the tasty dish.  I am pleased to report that the students did a great job with this task.  You can view the video we watched via the Links page on my blog.

Today we worked on ordering fractions from least to greatest and greatest to least.  When you are working on this concept at home you can use the Fraction Strips worksheet that is in your child's dua-tang to help.  We do not find common denominators at the grade 4 level.

Today the students worked on a variety of St. Patrick's Day centre activities.  The activities focused on developing Math, Social Studies, Language Arts and Technology skills. We are working on writing lists and instructions.  The students had to watch the video on the links page of my blog and write the steps for making a traditional Irish beef stew.

We had a good time at the Fluvarium this morning learning about the concepts of light, sound, reflection and refraction. Many thanks to Grace's mom for volunteering to come along on our trip today.  Parent help is always appreciated!

Check out the limericks that we worked on in Technology/Language Arts today.  I'm only halfway there with the uploads so be sure to stay tuned.

Today we officially unveiled our plays to some wonderful audiences.  We began our day by presenting to Ms. White's class as well as Ms. Harris, Mme. Collett and Ms. Cleary.  The students also performed for their Kindergarten buddy readers and this afternoon they will perform once more for Mr. Yetman's class. Tomorrow I will be videotaping the students as they present their plays.  I plan on creating two cd's so that one boy and one girl can take home the video each night.  It should take about ten school nights before everyone at home sees the great work!  I am sure all parents are excited to see how the plays turned out. Many thanks to the parents who sent in props for our play.  A big thank you to all the parents who ran lines with their child in preparation for today's performance.

Today we began our Math unit on Fractions.  I made many references to pizza as the students find fractions easier to understand when they can relate it to their own lives.  Don't be surprised if someone asks for pizza for supper because they need to learn their fractions.

I am nearly finished the French interviews for this term and I am pleased to report that many students are doing quite well.