May 28, 2018 Hi families! It has been a busy time here in Room 3. We experienced a wonderful first Knights Bravery Race last week. It was so much fun, and we all felt very proud. This week, we are going to have a chance to document all the changes happening in our plants-it seems that each day we are noticing new changes in them! Ask your son about what kind of developments are happening with their plants. We have been excited to learn about these changes and see them in action. Please ensure that you are sending your son with enough snacks-we've got some hungry boys here in Room 3. Maybe some growing is happening for the boys too!!?? In social studies, we've talked about what types of 3D prism shapes we could use to illustrate some of the buildings that might represent different parts of Alberta. Make sure your child has a water bottle...it's hot days here in Room 3 :) Mrs. Sawko and the boys in Room 3
May 22, 2018 Hello families. Today, we sketched our plants again. Almost every single student noticed a change. We documented these changes in our visual journals with both pictures and label/words. We also compared our plants with our fellow students who planted the same things. In writing today, we practiced using 1st and 3rd person in our journal entries. Please watch for a notice coming home about a really important even happening on Thursday afternoon. It will require your careful attention in terms of what your son wears/brings to school that day. Have a super day!! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
May 17, 2018 Hello parents! We have had such a great week so far. We've done lots of planting and we have a really excellent bulletin board up, created by students! Come and check it out when you're in our hallway. We have had three health classes so far and they are going really well. All boys are being respectful, and listening and asking great questions. If your son is participating, please expect them to come home with lots to talk about in this area with their trusted adults. We got to do some Mathletics and Prodigy today too. REMINDER: TOMORROW IS A PD DAY. Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
May 14, 2018 Check out our photos from our leadership opportunity this morning helping our grade 2 friends do some research to learn about the praying mantis! We’ve also had a great class meeting and started some more work on the second go around on our pre grade four math assessment. A busy morning so far!
May 9, 2017 Hello from the National Music Centre!! Please check our class photos section down at the bottom of the page to see our first activity, Making Instruments!!! This is such wonderful learning directly connected to the work grade 3 and 4s have done in the classroom. Connections include many fine arts music related Alberta Program of Studies outcomes, as well as connections to our social studies learning about our Alberta history. We are going to learn about the history and stories of past and present music visionaries who have contributed to the culture and stories of our province. Keep looking for more photos throughout the day!
PLEASE SEND YOUR SON WITH HIS SWIM CLOTHES TOMORROW. We have Repsol FIRST THING IN THE MORNING!!!!! Tomorrow will be hot dog lunch too. Today, we had the special treat of learning about Mrs Palmer and the grade three’s duck eggs and worms. Wow, have we ever noticed a difference in how our lime tree is growing since we got some work castings. Speaking of plants, today we worked on choosing some plants we’d like to grow In our classroom based on the research we’ve done about what grows well here in Alberta. Examples include: beans, radish, carrots, apples, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers,and roses. We are excited to get things growing!!! In math today, we revisited our first math assessment and found that things were a lot easier this time around. Remember that our health forms were due Friday and that our field trip to the national music centre is Wednesday. Have a great night! Mrs Sawko and Roon 3 boys
May 1, 2018 Hi parents! Wow we can't believe it's already May!! Parents, tomorrow we are allowing students to wear hats to school in honour of the Canadian Mental Health Association mental health awareness day TOMORROW. Please send your son with a hat if he wishes. Parents, please send back the Health consent form by this Friday. Instruction will begin upon my receipt of all the forms. Please send it back regardless of "yes" or "no." Our field trip to the National Music Centre is next week-make sure to let me know if you can volunteer. Next week (Tuesday) is our final Repsol swimming day, and is also a hot dog day. Your son is bringing home a form for you to fill out should you want to order hot dogs. Reminder-please send your son with a plastic bottle that has been cleaned and had labels removed. Have a great night! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 27th, 2018 Hi parents! We are sure enjoying the warm weather today. We had gym outside which was wonderful!! We had a great meeting with Mr. Baustad this morning where we brainstormed some ideas about to add to and connect our learning with our model of Alberta. We need to brush up on the regions and their characteristics, and what makes each part of Alberta unique. We hope you all have a really wonderful weekend! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 26, 2018 Hi parents. Thanks to those of you who have already sent in a plastic water bottle or pop bottle for your son. Please do so by this Friday if possible. In math today we continued the challenging work of solving equations with a missing number. A lot of us are getting a lot better. We took some time this afternoon to make google slides so that we have information gathered to share with Mr. Baustad tomorrow about what we can add into our Alberta model. Today we also worked on developing our understanding of words through some word work with Words their Way. We had some visitors today from Mr. Stanley's class and they were excellent helpers with our computer work this afternoon. Your son is bringing home an important form regarding some upcoming health curriculum. Please return it as soon as possible. Your son is also bringing home their photos. We started our day with some independent Read to Self, which is a lot easier now that we have our wonderful library back! We had a wonderful day! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 25, 2018 Hello parents. I have a request! Please send with your son a *plastic* bottle that is *clear* and not coloured (not a glass bottle), at least 500ml and no larger than 750ml, It could be a water or pop bottle. If you happen to have a couple of extra ones, that would be great in case students don't bring or have one. Before sending the bottle in, please carefully wash the inside and outside, removing any labels that the bottle came with. We are going to be using them to make a mindfulness tool. Ask your son about it. Please try to have the bottle in to class by Friday, April 27th. In math today, we continued working on showing our understanding of number by working on equations with a missing part. Have a great night, Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 23, 2018 Hello families. ****WE HAVE REPSOL TOMORROW AFTERNOON. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU SON HAS HIS BATHING SUIT!*** I am back after a wonderful conference in NYC. I have enjoyed sharing what I have learned about learning and the brain with the students today. Ask them about it :) Today, we read some of our journal personal responses to each other. It really is amazing to see the writing development in the students. We talked more about multiplication tables today, and how the concept applies to real life use. We are excited to begin adding our new social studies learning about Francophones and the Metis people into our scale model of Alberta. Our class sure has some exciting ideas for it. **Please bring in your signed field trip forms asap. Payment can come later, but the signed form is what I need to take them. Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
**April 16, 2018 Hi families. We had such a wonderful end to our week last week with our celebration of learning for our peers. Every student had a big role and we all did a stupendous job. Mrs. Sawko was super proud of us :) Today, we have been working on finishing up our multiplication flip books-we are not going to spend any more class time on these, but we can work on them when we have free moments. They are a resource for us to use when working with multiplication. Again, please feel free to support your son in memorizing these basic facts (times table to 9s) at home in whatever way works best for your family. In writing, we talked about using "word referents" as a way to build suspense in our writing This is going to be a way for us to continue building toward excellence in writing skills. This afternoon we had a visit from three grade two friends! We watched a learning video with them about light and shadow, and worked with them on some math with Mathletics and Prodigy. A special Monday afternoon treat for our boys as we don't usually ahve this type of computer time on Mondays :) **Your son is bringing home a form for our field trip to the National Music Centre on May 9th. Please sign it and return ASAP. Also please let Mrs. Sawko know if you can volunteer for this trip, as our class only has one volunteer so far. **TOMORROW IS PICTURE DAY. YOUR SON CAN WEAR ANY OUTFIT OF HIS CHOOSING!!! BRUSH YOUR HAIR, WASH YOUR FACE, AND WHERE WHATEVER YOU LIKE :)** Thanks! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 12, 2018 Hi parents. We've had a busy day here today! We have been working on our assembly light and shadow show all day! We also took some math time to do prodigy and Mathletics, as well as finishing our flip multiplication books. If you child is not going to be here tomorrow, please let me know ASAP because they are in a show with a role. Please make sure that you dress your child appropriately for the weather, we have had lots of wet socks and shoes this week. Have a wonderful night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 11, 2018 Hello families! It was a great day at Repsol Centre yesterday. We have a couple of Repsol days left before the end of the school year, and we will be swimming for all of the remaining days. We've been working super hard on our assembly for our fellow students for Friday. Ask your son everything he's learned about light and shadow!! Parents, it is very very wet and slushy outside; it may help your son to send an extra pair of socks in his backpack. We have been working on our multiplication flip books again today and are going to work on some suspense building in writing in the upcoming weeks. Have a wonderful warm evening, ***TOMORROW IS JERSEY DAY IN HONOUR OF THE HUMBOLDT BRONCOS. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A JERSEY, WEAR GREEN!*** Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 9, 2018 Hello parents. We’ve done lots of work today on multiplication. We found a fun way to review and practice our basic times tables up to 9. Please feel free to work on these times tables with your son at hone. I showed the students some websites that might work. It is REPSOL DAY TOMORROW!!! Swimming gear should be in their bags tomorrow.
Important-if you can volunteer for our field trip on May 9 let me know ASAP.
Mrs Sawko and the boys in Room 3 April 6, 2018 Hi families! We’ve had a busy week so far since returning from our spring break. We’ve worked on reviewing many mathematical concepts such decimals, multiplication, division and fractions. We are going to be learning about how to solve equations when one number is missing (ie, x + 5=10, what is x?). In writing, we’ve worked on two personal narratives this week, about our spring break and another really fun one about what we want to be when we grow up. We read an inspiring book by a songwriter named Al Yankovic (but parents may know him by a different name :) ). On May 9th, we are going to the National Music Centre!! Can you help? Let Mrs Sawko know ASAP. Have a super day!! Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
April 3, 2018 Hello parents! Welcome back to the blog. It's been a great break but we are so happy to be back together learning! Today, we used the storytelling skills we've built with Jeff Stockton to write and tell each other all the fun things we did on our break. It's so wonderful to see the growth in the boys' storytelling abilities. In math, we had a treat and had a Monday Mathletics session to ease back into things! We talked about our learning in light and shadow, and made some plans for our upcoming weekly sharing assembly for our fellow students. We also talked about our upcoming field trip on May 9th, 2018 to the National Music Centre. We did some more exploring on their website and we talked about what we are going to do there. Some boys have been already, and they loved their visits there so we are excited. We are looking forward to getting back into our Words their Way word work this week. Mr. Vanderlinden is going to come and help us out with this. We got a lot of great read aloud today because of all the wonderful books Mrs. Sawko received from our school book fair at conference time. We are so grateful for this. FYI: The next Repsol swimming date is April 10, 2018. Have a wonderful night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
March 23, 2018 Today, we worked some more on adding and subtracting decimals. Tonight and tomorrow at conferences, you will have an opportunity to work on this with your son. We did a big read to self in the morning; it was nice, because we don’t always have time for such a long period with our books. We had the computers and worked on Mathletics and garage band. We had a phys ed assembly from Mr V and it was really fun to see all the stuff we have done all year!! Have a wonderful spring break, Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
March 20, 2018 Hello parents, We had a really busy day today with a lot of learning about light and shadow. It’s been great finding out about something new! Reminders: please return the form that went home about your plans for next year and also rememeber to sign up for student led conferences. Mrs Dawko and the students in Room 3
Today, in science, we started to talk about a new topic, light and shadow. It's super interesting and we already created a really big list of things we already know, and questions that we have. Reminder: Book Fair is Thursday night as well as Friday morning, which is also conference time. We already made lists of our favourites!! If you have not already signed up for conferences, please do so-instructions are on our website and an email went home. It is student led so please come and give your son that chance to show off :) Have a wonderful night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
March 16, 2018 Hello families from a very tired and proud bunch of boys in Room 3! We sure were happy about how things turned out for us in our storytelling event yesterday. You should all be very proud of your sons! Look for updates next week about upcoming fun. The conference manager for hooking student led conferences next Thursday or Friday should be open now; please book in so your son can share his work with you!! Have a wonderful weekend, Mrs Sawko and the boys in Room 3
March 15, 2018 What a busy day we’ve had today preparing for our special presentation tonight. We are so looking forward to showing you our hard work. Drive safe and see you tonight!! Mrs Sawko and the storytelling boys in Room 3
March 14, 2018 Parents, the time is almost here!!! Our storytelling celebration is upon us tomorrow. Please ensure your son is wearing his formal golf shirt, and that you arrive promptly! We are sooo excited to share our stories with you. We are having our last few moments with Jeff today, and will be rehearsing a final few times. We fit in some math practice with mathletics on the computers today too :). Have a wonderful day!’ Mrs Sawko and the boys in Room 3
March 12, 2018 Hi parents! We've been busy today. We worked on our stories some more this morning, paying particular attention to volume and our movements. It has really been amazing to see the efforts put forth by the boys on this story!! We can't wait to show you on Thursday night. In math, we've continued to review a recent assessment we did designed to show Mrs. Sawko what she needs to teach us next. It is good to see all the learning we have already done about decimals and fractions, and we are excited to do more. It's a busy week coming up before spring break! We have Repsol tomorrow March 13th (swimming), our performance on Thursday, and our student led parent conferences next Thursday and Friday! You will also see two work samples come home this week, one math and one literacy. We are running forward into spring break and will be looking forward to showing off :) Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
March 8, 2018 PARENTS-your tickets to our evening storytelling event are in your sons backpack today. We had a wonderful field trip to the Canada sports hall of fame. Ask your son all about it. Your son is also bringing home a copy of a book they get to keep. Have a super night!! Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3 Hi families! We’ve had another great day here in grade four. We are gearing up for our full day field trip tomorrow. We spent some time today researching athletes that have been inducted into our Canadian sport hall of fame. They sure are inspiring. In math we worked on one more period of decimals so look forward to seeing our work when we are done!! PLEASE SEND YOUR SON TOMORROW WITH: LUNCH NO VALUABLES LOTS OF ENTHUSIASM :)
March 6, 2018 Hi parents, thanks to those of you who have returned your ticket forms for our evening event on March 15. We need that info ASAP! Please try very hard to ensure your son is in attendance; this is an important culmination of many weeks of hard work and each boy has a wonderful story to tell. We’ve worked today on our math self assessment, and many of us had a nice breakthrough on our understanding of decimals. We are looking forward to our field trip on Thursday to the Canadian sports hall of fame, there are so many wonderful stories connected to resilience and we will leave inspired. Look for some visual journal work and writing about this field trip. Mark your calendars-next Tuesday March 13th is our next swimming Repsol day. Have a great day, Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
March 5, 2018 Hello folks! We’re working so hard to prepare for our storytelling evening. Today we worked on how to increase our voice while telling our stories. We worked last week on our movements. Please make sure that you return your form stating how many tickets you need for our evening event. In math, we worked on some decimal activities that we are going to be bringing home along with a letter from Mrs Sawko explaining what you should look for. We are super excited about our upcoming field trip to the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame-we really need some volunteers for this trip! Please let me know via email if you are able to come. Make sure you submit forms and payment ASAP!! Have a wonderful day, Mrs Sawko and the boys in Room 3 March 1, 2018 Today, we had another wonderful experience with Jeff Stockton. We’ve gotten sooooo much better at telling our stories. UPDATE: A notice is coming home for you to sign and return about our storytelling evening. Please return it as soon as you can. Also, please return your field trip forms, with payment, ASAP as well. Thanks! Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
February 28, 2018 Hi parents! Please forgive typos as Mrs Sawko isstill having tech troubles. We hope to have our weebly troubles solved soon!!! Today we had a Jeff Stockton day! We are getting the chance to show our understanding of storytelling, presentation and cooperation. This afternoon, we have a special art lesson where we are going to create art reflecting the elements contained in our inspiration book, The Hugging Tree. Look for the art we produce in March at our Storytellinf celebration. We have talked a lot about bullying the last week. We know bullying is wrong! We know bullies and targets of bullies need help and to talk about what’s going on. Please check the Pink Shirt day website for resources to continue this important conversation. Have a super night! Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
February 26, 2018 Hello parents! An important request and update: you have forms coming home today for our upcoming field trip to the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. We really need some volunteers for this field trip, so please contact Ms Patsy to make sure your police check is up to date and let me know if you can come. February 23, 2018 Hi families! Sorry for the lack of updates and please forgive typos-we’re having trouble with using Weebly on the desktop so Mrs Sawko is updating this on her phone :) we’ve been super busy this week with our storytelling work with Jeff Stockton. It’s going to be an amazing performance on March 15-please put this evening event in your calendars now. In other news, we’ve been working hard on learning about decimals and how to represent them as well as add and subtract them. This is going to increase our overall number sense. Our study of the Olympics gives us real life examples of the importance of a thousandth! Have a wonderful day, Mrs Sawko sand the students in Room 3
February 13, 2018 Hi parents. A note about tomorrow (Valentine's Day): if your son is planning to bring Valentine cards for students, please ensure that they have 20 (plus one teacher :) Here are our first names: Cooper Arthur Adam Joshua Zain Eric Emmett Braden Leo Daanish George Roxas Nathan Rowan Jake Zion Konrad Coen Rhys Lucas Mrs. Sawko :) We had a wonderful day today with Jeff Stockton. He taught us a really interesting technique to start to memorize the stories that we are going to tell. In math, over the last two days we have looked at decimals in the context of the Olympic games. We are lucky because the different sports and how they are scored allow us to explore all the way up to the thousandths. While you are watching the games, see if your son can tell you about decimals! Have a super night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS: Hello families. Could you email Mrs. Sawko ([email protected]) if you are able to volunteer during our Repsol centre field trips? We are in need especially of dads to help in change rooms, but also any parents who are able to come and help during the event. Thank you so much in advance. Mrs. Sawko
February 9th, 2018 Hello families! We had a few more guys join us today but we were still quite light on attendance. We expect more boys to come Monday when the weather has simmered down! Today, we watched quite a bit of the Olympic opening ceremonies. We were sure impressed by it all. We completed visual journal responses afterwards about our thoughts and feelings related to this big world event. We really enjoyed attending a music and hearing and sound based assembly from our grade 3 friends. We'll see everyone next week for Jeff Stockton. Reminder: Next week is teacher's convention, and our Family Day long weekend. The students' last day will be Wednesday, February 14th and they will return on Tuesday, February 20th. We hope you all have a nice time on your break. Our next Repsol outing is February 27th. REMEMBER: ALL OUR REPSOL DAYS NOW ARE SWIMMING DAYS. YOUR SON WILL NEED TO BRING HIS SWIMMING GEAR EACH TIME WE VIST REPSOL FROM NOW UNTIL MAY. Have a great weekend! Mrs. Sawko and the boys from Room 3
February 8th, 2018 Hi parents...what a funny day we had today!! We had five students brave the roads to be with Mrs. Sawko today. Hope you're all at home enjoying your snow day :) We had a good time here too. We worked on prodigy with math, we did a lot of building with Kinex and Lego, and we spent lots of time in the gym with our grade 3 friends. We even helped Mrs. Sawko test out a new math game about decimals and place values. Stay safe and warm out there everyone!!! Mrs. Sawko and Nathan, Leo, Jake, Rowan and Konrad :) February 7th, 2018 Hi parents! Sorry for the lack of blog this week-we were having technical difficulties but they seem to be resolved now :) We've had a wonderful week so far full of exciting things. For example, on Monday it was super cold and we didn't get to go outside for skating...but we sure had fun in the snow!! We spoke a lot about how to learn and make our chosen stories our own. We used a rubric as a class to decide which part of the storytelling process we want to focus on right now, for instance eye contact, voice and body language. Some of us have even shared our work so far with a younger peer! We're super excited to work towards our performances in March. In math, we have continued to look at parts of whole numbers through our exploration of decimals and fractions. This understanding is going to come in handy when we start to experience the upcoming winter olympics!! Something else that's creating a lot of buzz in our room. We are looking very forward to this world event. Have a lovely night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3 January 22, 2018 Hello parents. Today, we had a great conversation right at the end of the day about who we admire. Many of your sons said it was you :) We are striving to always act like a person to be admired. Parents: Your son is bringing home a form that needs to be returned for skating starting February 5th. We really need volunteers!!!!! Please check the form for when your son skates and let us know as soon as you can if you can help us. We did some silent reading today, and it gets easier every day that we work hard at it. For music, we had a conversation about who among us already plays an instrument, who would like to play one, and kinds of instruments we may be able to play together at school. We worked today to try to hone in on which fairy and folk tales speak to us the most. This is going to be important for our work with Jeff Stockton which happens again tomorrow. In math, we had a group lesson about the place values that come after a decimal. Again, please ensure that when you have a chance, like in a shop, that you point out to your son how money is connected to this idea. Students worked again with Mr. Baustad to finish the construction of our scale model of Alberta. Have a wonderful night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room3
January 19, 2018 Hi parents. Today we had our Celebration of Learning assembly in the gym. Many of us worked hard to make sure we were prepared and ready to share our goals and thoughts. We sang some songs together for music today. Some of the assessment of your son's music stems on the report card come from their ability to participate in singing in the classroom. We worked on our silent reading this morning for a little while. This morning while we worked on our assembly preparation, we had the special treat (a rare treat it is!) to choose our own adventure (that means we got to pick our own academic work to do). Ask your son what they chose to work on. We are looking forward to more time with Jeff Stockton next week. Have a wonderful weekend, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3 January 18, 2018 Hi parents and families! Today we worked hard most of the morning to prepare our work for our celebration of learning assembly tomorrow. It is a weekly event and tomorrow is our turn to run the gathering. We are trying to make sure that we each have some kind of contribution to the assembly, speaking part or otherwise :) In math, we worked on learning about the NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR (we thought they sounded like super heroes!) We will be able to increase our number sense in terms of whole and parts of numbers. There is an open house at our school tonight for prospective students-we made sure to leave our classroom very clean for visitors. Have a wonderful evening!! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
January 17, 2018 Hi parents! We had a wonderful day yesterday at Repsol for our swimming field trip. Our next day for swimming is TUESDAY, JANUARY 30TH. Please make sure to send your son with his gear. Today, we worked on a new word work program that targets the particular parts of words that we all individually are having trouble with. It's really fun and the boys are enjoying this new way of exploring words. We are doing this with the intention of becoming more confident readers and writers. We are continuing to explore stories together to work toward choosing one that we will get to make our own for our work with Jeff Stockton. In math, we are going to be exploring fractions and decimals some more, so make sure to tell your child when you notice these kinds of numbers at home and in the community. Having these real life examples really assists the boys in learning about the meaning and use of these kinds of numbers. We spent time this afternoon reflecting on our own behaviour and how it can affect the resiliency of others. We used Iris today to document ways we can support others to be resilient and in turn be resilient ourselves. Have a wonderful day! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
January 15, 2018 Hi parents! We had a special guest today. Make sure to ask your son about the amazing story we were told today by Jeff Stockton, our artist in residence. He told us a story, while playing the Celtic harp. It was a very special and unique experience for us all. This is the beginning of our storytelling residency. Jeff asked us to do a sketch about what we saw in our head while he was telling us the story-we sure have some vivid imaginations! This is an excellent was to retell the story (through pictures). Before he arrived here, we worked on reading. We also were introduced to our words for the week, in our new word work program, Words their Way. We are going to be working with specific sets of words depending on what type of word work we need as individuals. REMINDER: WE HAVE SWIMMING AT REPSOL TOMORROW! MAKE SURE YOUR SON HAS HIS SWIMSUIT, CHANGE OF UNDERWEAR AND A PLASTIC BAG FOR HIS SWIM GEAR. ALSO REMEMBER TO PICK YOUR SON UP AT REPSOL IF THIS IS YOUR METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION! Your son is able to participate in an art contest for our yearbook cover! They may ask you to help them with their art at home. There will be two more dance clubs, one this Thursday and one next Thursday, to make up for classes we missed because of Repsol before the break. When these are done, we will be done with Dance Club and starting on something new in the coming weeks. Have a super night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
January 11, 2018 Hello parents! We ha a busy day today. We started the day with some silent reading. We learned about the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in 2018. We watching the lighting of the torch in Calgary in 1988 and it was a 12 year old girl! We did a visual journal page about the Olympics. In math, we discussed fractions as another way to break numbers into parts from a whole. We learned about the history of wheels and levers, and brainstormed together all the different kinds and uses of rollers. We also watched a great learning video about simple machines. We now have a great foundation for learning more and building our own creations. Have a nice night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
January 10, 2018 Hi parents! Hopefully you were able to keep warm today. We kept your sons toasty warm by staying inside all day long. We got to watch a Geronimo Stilton story, one of our favourites, with our grade 3 friends instead of going outside at lunch time. We are bracing for more cold tomorrow but have crossed fingers for Friday to warm up. In class today, we spent time working on our basic math skills by using both Prodigy and Mathletics online math programs. These are great for reinforcing the learning and skills we develop through our classroom work. We had a short independent reading period to build our stamina while we waited for our fellow classmates this morning, it was a slow journey to school for some in this frigid weather!! You will see a math sample in your son's backpack today. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me! We are moving into decimals and fractions and will be exploring shapes also throughout the term. We wrote a journal entry today and it is amazing to see the improvement in the boys' writing since the start of the year! Upcoming important date: TUESDAY, JANUARY 16TH-REPSOL Thanks to parents who sent in headphones for their child today, it is helpful for when they are on the computers. A note that I have noticed many boys accessing the "no thank you" extra snack bin-please talk to your son to see if they need any extra snacks during the day. Sometimes weather or growth spurts mean hungry boys :) Have a warm and cozy evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
January 9, 2018 Hello parents, A reminder: It is going to be very very cold for the next couple of days. Please send your child with: toque, mittens, scarf, snow pants and boots. They also need to be wearing a thick winter coat; some students came today with a thin spring jacket and were quite chilly. If you have any older mittens or toques could you please send your child with an extra? Sometimes they forget :) Parents: please send your child with an inexpensive set of ear buds that they can keep in a small magazine size box for when they work on the computer. If you cannot obtain these, let me know and I'll help out! Today, we learned about our Artist in Residence, Jeff Stockton. We learned that he is not only an accomplished story writer, but he also plays the Celtic harp beautifully. We are super excited to see him on Monday January 15th. We will work with him all the way through the months of January and February, and we will have a wonderful event on March 15th to showcase our work. This morning, we sat together in a small group to talk about different types of stories. Mrs. Sawko read us a few folk tales meant to teach us a lesson. We are going to be building many language arts skills during this story telling residency, including presenting and sharing work. In math, we worked some more on understanding decimals, fractions and how they are connected to place value. We have already learned about place value, and it is fun to connect this learning to new concepts. We had an excellent brief silent reading period this morning. Over the next couple of days, your child will bring home a simple math sample for you to look at, as a starting point to talk to your son about his mental math skills. There will be an attached letter for your reference. Have a wonderful night! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
January 8, 2018 Hello parents, welcome to our new year! We had a great day of learning today. We started talking about our upcoming artist in residence, we introduced the idea of breaking number into parts like decimals and fractions, and we talked about all the things we are going to learn in the next term. It's going to b be a super exciting time!! Check Mr. Baustad's updates for more details, as well as our website and Weebly. Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
December 20, 2017 *IMPORTANT NOTICE: WE HAVE EARNED A PIZZA LUNCH TOMORROW FROM MR. BAUSTAD!! * Thursday, December 21 we will not require a lunch. Please send your son with snacks only unless they don't like pizza :) Reminder parents, that tomorrow is our last day with students until the new year. We worked on Prodigy and Mathletics again today. This morning we had a great caroling session in the gym. Tomorrow morning will be our last session! In gym, we played a game where the Grinches tried to catch the elves. It was fun! We also had intramurals. We read our final Chris van Allsburg book, The Polar Express. We drew pictures of it and are going to do some more work about this wonderful author in the new year. Tomorrow we are going to watch the movie version of this wonderfully written tale. Tomorrow is a full day of school, so make sure you send your student prepared to stay for the entire day. It is not a half day. Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
December 18, 2017 Today, we had our school caroling session first thing in the morning. We will do this every morning until Thursday. REMINDER: THURSDAY IS THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS. In social studies, we started to talk about fossils-what they are, and how they help us to learn about Alberta's land in the past. We will continue to focus on this in the upcoming term. In math, we worked on our new math Prodigy and Mathletics accounts. This is a great way for us to practice our basis skills. In literacy, we have been reading Chris van Allsburg books and comparing them to each other. This is a skill from the Alberta Program of Studies. REMINDER: PLEASE SEND YOUR SON WITH A CHANGE OF OLD CLOTHES TO KEEP AT SCHOOL. In gym, we played with scooters and had a Christmas game. Have a great night, Room 3
December 15, 2017 Hi parents! I am writing the blog early today because we have a quiet moment :) We have had quite an exciting day!! We had a completely wonderful breakfast this morning, courtesy of our amazing parent council. What a lot of work went into this Who-ville breakfast!! The boys were totally full and very happy. We also had a very special visitor make an appearance :) Next week, we will have four school days before our holiday break-REMINDER: NO SCHOOL FRIDAY FOR STUDENTS. Reminder also to send your son with a chance of clothing he can leave here, to use when working with Mr. Baustad on our fabulous project. Today will be made up of stories, visual journal story responses, Santa visits, pancakes and whipped cream, bacon and hot chocolate, some Mathletics and some reading. There may be some caroling in there as well. Hope you see you tonight at our Holiday event!!! 6-7:30, everyone is welcome. Mrs. Sawko and the mischievous elves in Room 3
December 12, 2017 Hello parents, we've had a busy day here in Room 3. We started to practice singing some carols, for our Friday night evening, as well as our daily morning caroling next week. We did a stupendous job!! Mrs. Sawko is really looking forward to leading the carols next week, and to our support :) Reminder: Friday morning we will have a breakfast and PJ day!!! Festivities start at 830am, so DON'T BE LATE!!!! Thank you to those parents who sent extra clothing with their son today. Please send your son, if you haven't already, with a change of old clothes for our building project. We had a late reading period due to some rearranging of our day to accomodate some building! We hung up our large travel posters in the hallway, and also most of us finished our small travel posters. Please look around for them next time you're in the school! Joshua kindly brought in a bunch of new books for our classroom!! We really enjoyed exploring them today. Zain: "another shout out to Joshua: he gave Mrs. Sawko a really cool pair of shoes." They are beautiful mukluks. Joshua took the discussion as a chance to share some of his culture with the class. Thank you Joshua <3 Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
December 11, 2017 *Please send a pair of pants and a tshirt that you don't mind getting very dirty with your student. They will, at some point, be working with Mr. Baustad on our scale model of Alberta, and it is messy work!! Your son can keep this spare set of clothing here, and then they will have it if they need it. IF THEY DON'T HAVE SPARE CLOTHING, THEY CANNOT PARTICIPATE!* Hello parents! Hope you're enjoying the warm weather. Some updates from Room 3: We have been working this week so far in math on the idea of repeated subtraction, as connected to division. This is building on the learning we have already done about repeated addition for multiplication. Your son should be able to use this mental math strategy after practicing it :) In writing, we had a mini lesson today about Triple Scoop Words. Ask your son what this means! Hint: it is a writing technique designed to make your son's writing more interesting. We have a pretty exciting week coming up. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15TH, 8:15AM-BREAKFAST, AND PJ DAY!! FRIDAY DECEMBER 15TH, 6:00-7:30PM-HOLIDAY BAKE SALE AND CRAFT FAIR! We are working hard to get to the 21st of December :) Have a lovely day, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
December 4, 2017 Hello parents: **TOMORROW IS OUR FIRST SWIMMING SESSION AT REPSOL CENTRE. YOU SON NEEDS TO COME WITH A SEPARATE BAG FOR HIS SWIM TRUNKS, HIS UNDERWEAR AND A SWIM SUIT.** Today we did a lot of fun things!! Including a long blog post that didn't post :( So Mrs. Sawko is writing this one alone! In math we worked on connecting division with multiplication, and used arrays and pictures to work on this. In writing we wrote about how we feel today, after brainstorming a list of feelings words. In social studies we continued working on our travel posters, which should be ready for viewing in the hallway by the end of the week! Have a super night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3 November 30, 2017 Hello parents! Tomorrow is our last session with Ms. Nicole from Sound Kreations. We will be having a performance at 10:30-11:30am tomorrow. Please feel free to attend this performance. If you have any questions, please email me. Today, we got to work on our travel posters for the regions of Alberta that we have been studying. When you are in the school in the next couple of weeks, look for these wonderful posters enticing you to visit areas right in our own backyard! In math, we worked on some basic skills today using Mathletics. this is a great way for us to practice our foundational math skills. In writing, we worked on our picture prompt story again. Our goal today was to not end our stories too early, and to add a lot more detail. Overall, we were extremely successful in this. This helps our narratives to have lots of interesting details, and it helps us to show our ability to write a story that follows a logical sequence. In silent reading, most of us had a really good fit book, after our group library visit. We have been talking about something called "disciplinary literacy." See if your son can tell you what this is :) We are learning to be able to choose books that help us learn to read well and understand what we read. Those of us that had intramurals today played a fun game of soccer.
From Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 28, 2017 Hello parents! We are having so much fun doing our Sound Kreations residency with Ms. Nicole. All reports from Mr. Vanderlinden say that we are doing an excellent job listening and having fun too. **A NOTICE TO PARENTS: YOU ARE WELCOME TO COME TO OUR DANCE ASSEMBLY ON FRIDAY MORNING!! 10:30-11:30AM FRIDAY MORNING!**
Some boys had lots of dance today, because we had our second dance club!! It was so fun. Even Mrs. Sawko ha a super fun time. In our work today, we reviewed how to use personification to make our writing better. It helps us to add details and visuals that make our writing really interesting and exciting, especially when we write personal narratives. We had the results of our first Knights challenge announced today by Zion and Emmett. The Blues Knights had the most stones this month, but we all need to be really proud of ourselves for making the effort to be great Knights.
In other news....our lime tree, which we have been pretty concerned about, does seem to have some buds of very very very tiny limes. We are going to watch the tree very closely to see if it grows the limes.
Have a super evening! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 27, 2017 Hi parents, it's been a great busy day again here at the ABP in grade four. We worked hard today to discuss how we can increase our resiliency and the resiliency of others. We are trying to increase our positive behaviours and today is a great start. In social studies, we worked on planning a travel poster for the region of Alberta we have been studying! We looked at some travel posters from the past and talked about how they are very artistic in their representation of the places they are trying to entice people to see. Parents, please remember to send in any newspaper you have for our Alberta project! Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3 November 23, 2017 Hi parents! Wow have we been busy bees this week. We've learned about how to make our writing even better through the technique of personification. Ask your son about which picture of personification they created this week! In math, we've continued to build good number sense through exploring the connections between multiplication and division. A few of us have had the chance to work in our Alberta room with Mr. Baustad this week. We will all get the chance to work in this room at some point soon. Because of this, we are asking that you send your son a bag of old clothing (pants and shirt) to keep at school in a plastic bag. This set of clothes will be used while working wth: paint, wood dust, and paper mache, among other possibilities. Please label the plastic bag with your son's name. If you do not have a set of old clothing, please email Mrs. Sawko ([email protected]) and we will help you out. Have a wonderful day, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 20, 2017 Hi parents! Tomorrow is our second visit to Repsol Centre. Our classroom will be doing dryland training again, so we DON'T need swimsuits. We do need appropriate indoor footwear. Today, we started off with some stamina building reading in Daily Five. Some of us met with Mrs. Sawko. We then moved on to math, where we worked on our knowledge and understanding of times tables. We also began discussing division and how it is connected to multiplication. In social studies, we broke into groups of three to do some more in depth research into the six regions of Alberta. Ask your son which region they looked at! Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 16, 2017 Hi parents! Today and tomorrow are parents conferences. Mrs. Sawko still has lots of spaces tomorrow morning. Please make sure that you book a meeting. This afternoon, we got to be part of the grade three learning assembly. The grade three students took a real risk and performed on drums after only practicing for a few days. It was great. We helped take care of our place today, and showed resilience as a group of grade four students by taking great care of our classroom. We worked together and divided jobs so that we did a really good clean of our entire classroom, including sweeping behind bookcase and straightening all the boots. In math today, we worked really hard reviewing mental math skills as a group related to solving problems in area. We had indy 500 in the gym, which we love! We had a chair move today and lots of us are at new tables. We often change spots depending on what is working for individuals and for groups. We re-read the hugging tree today, to remind us about being resilient. When you come to your parent conference, ask your child to see this book, and ask them to tell you how it has taught them about resilience. Have a great evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 15, 2017 Hi parents! We were so busy yesterday we forgot to do our blog!! We've been working hard on learning about how to calculate area using multiplication and mental math. These skills will help us when we are contributing to the creation of the scale model of Alberta happening across the hall with Mr. Baustad's guidance!! *WE NEED NEWSPAPERS!! FOR THE PROJECT, WE WILL NEED TO USE NEWSPAPERS FOR PAPER MACHE. PLEASE SEND ANY SPARE NEWSPRINT YOU HAVE IN WITH YOUR SON!* We can't wait to see you at conferences tomorrow night! Please make sure you look in the hallway for some wonderful art and writing your son did. See you tomorrow, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 13, 2017 Hello parents! Hopefully you had a relaxing weekend and got a chance to observe Remembrance Day. Today, we had our second writing block on the book "A Bear in War." We are working hard to improve our writing skills all the time. In social studies, we worked on creating a set of questions and a plan about how we could get information we need to do an accurate scale model of Alberta.We had our class photos today, and we will look forward to seeing our shining faces soon. Your son would have had a retake if he needed it as well. In math, we are working on a set of multiplication equations to send home to you. You will see your son's skills and areas for growth in this work. Look for them tomorrow or Wednesday. Parents, if you haven't had a chance yet, please sign on to our conference manager and sign up for a parent conference Thursday or Friday. Your son is meant to attend with you. Have a great night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 9th, 2017 Hi families! Today we had our school Remembrance Day assembly. Please check our photo section for pictures of student involvement, as well as Mr. Dow doing his presentation. Mr. Dow had a very interesting experience being in the military. We did a great job as a class, being very quiet and respectful during this important assembly. Yesterday, you should have received a sample of yours son's writing along with a page that explains what you should be looking for in your son's work. Our goal in our writing yesterday was to further improve the piece of writing you saw come home. Dance Club starts Tuesday, so please make sure that if you're interested, you submit your form to Mrs. Sawko by Monday, November 13th. Have a wonderful weekend! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3 November 8th, 2017 Hello families! Today we had a guest teacher in the morning, while Mrs. Sawko did some reading testing with some of us. In social studies this afternoon, we incorporated math as well, as we each drew out a plan for our scale model of Alberta! It is going to be the most exciting project. We used math vocabulary like area, perimeter, and 2D and 3D shapes. Some of us got to work with Mr. Baustad today; we will all have a chance to work with Mr. Baustad on the construction of this model. In writing today, we finished our writing samples about "Crow Call." Look for these artifacts to come home to you soon. In art today, we helped to create the parts that are going to make up a poppy wreath in celebration of Remembrance Day. Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
November 6th, 2017 Hello parents! Tomorrow is an important day for the ABP. We have our first day at Repsol centre. Your son in grade 4 has a dryland training day tomorrow, so they do NOT need to bring their swim trunks. Please ensure that your son knows how he is getting home tomorrow. We have a list, but to ensure a smooth end of day, make sure your son knows as well. If there are any questions please call the office. MAKE SURE YOUR SON HAS A PAIR OF OUTDOOR SHOES IN ADDITION TO HIS BOOTS. THEY WILL BE IN A GYMNASIUM, SO THEY NEED INDOOR RUNNERS!!! This morning, we read a Remembrance Day inspired book called Crow Call. Your son will be bringing home a piece of writing about this story along with a letter explaining what you should be looking for. Look for this letter this week. This letter should be an example of some of the writing skills and program of studies outcomes your child is working on. This afternoon, we had a conversation that included science, social studies, math, and language arts. Ask your son what this was about. Have a super evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
October 31, 2017 BOO! Hello parents! In social studies today, we talked about important Alberta landmarks, including lots of national parks and public parks. We made a list of landmarks that we already know about, and some Mrs. Sawko taught us about, and Mrs. Sawko used them in a meeting with Mr. Baustad about a really exciting project coming up! We started the morning with some math using our math program, Mathletics. Ask your son what he worked on today! (Hint: it should be related to addition strategies or patterns in numbers). We worked on silent reading to build our literacy skills. In gym, we got to play a special game of zombie dodgeball!! We had a music lesson where we learned about different types of music, including rock and roll. We listened to a really important first rock and roller...ask you son who this was! Parents, your son might have a lot of candy available to him after tonight. Please consider sending only a few treats with him to school tomorrow. Thanks! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
UPDATE: PLEASE ENSURE YOU HAVE PAID YOUR REPSOL CENTRE FEES. IF PAYING FOR THE FEES IS A PROBLEM AT ALL, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. THANK YOU! MRS. SAWKO October 30, 2017 Hello families! Today in math we talked about mental math strategies related to multiplication. We talked about how knowing how to use the strategy of using doubles can help us to solve multiplication problems. Tomorrow is Hallowe'en! Students are allowed to wear their costumes, however they are not allowed to have weapons of any kind, or to wear a full face mask in class or in gym or at recess. We went outside this afternoon in the chilly weather to observe the changes in our pumpkins once more. Mr. Dow will be removing the pumpkins after Hallowe'en. Tomorrow will be our final observation. It's been amazing getting to see the changes in these pumpkins. In writing today, we reminded ourselves about the different writing techniques we have learned. Before we got started on our writing today, we made a rubric with Mrs. Sawko where we decided what would be important to include in a really excellent piece of writing. This really improved the writing of some students even today!! We talked about what "feedback" is and how we and Mrs.Sawko give each other feedback for our learning. Have a wonderful evening, Mrs.Sawko and the students in Room 3
October 27, 2017 Hi parents! What a great week we've had here in grade four. We've really immersed ourselves in the study of decomposition. Warning: your son will probably want to keep your Hallowe'en pumpkin to study!! :) In keeping with the pumpkin theme, we showed a lot of resiliency today working in groups of 5 or 6 to decorate three pumpkins we were provided with for the school dance tonight. They turned out just amazing!!! This morning our grade fours were in charge of sharing at a learning assembly. We are all going to take turns contributing to the sharing circles. Today, the following students did an amazing job sharing and helping to set up and take down: Rhys Arthur Konrad Coen Joshua Rowan Braden Zain Jake
Thanks for doing such a wonderful job boys!!! Today we began exploring a musical app on the computer called Garage Band. Ask your son about the songs they were creating and what sounds they used! Reminders: -if you have not yet submitted your signed forms for the Repsol Centre field trip next week, please do so ASAP. Our first day is coming up soon!!! -our Hallowe'en party put on by parent council is happening tonight from 6-8! -next week on Hallowe'en, your son is allowed to wear his costume to school. However, weapons of any kind are not allowed, and masks won't be worn during class time. Have a wonderful spooky weekend!! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
10/25/17 Hello parents, A reminder that our Hallowe'en party (put on by our parent council) is happening this Friday, October 27th. Please ask at the office about tickets. If you have not returned your Repsol Centre forms, please do so by tomorrow! We had a guest teacher for gym, Ms. D, and she returned later in the afternoon for a short time at the end of the day. It's nice to have a new face!! We worked together this afternoon to make a google slide presentation about ourselves. We used a lot of new computer skills to do this. We logged on to our google account, shared folders with Mrs. Sawko, and learned how to use pictures in our presentations. Great job boys! We will be happy to share this with you at home or at conferences. We talked a lot about multiplication today and how it relates to division. We worked on some multiplication problems together and compared them to their corresponding division equations. We observed our pumpkins again today and there were a few differences in all the pumpkins today. Ask your son about them! We also used the technique of the sense of sight to write about what we saw in our pumpkins. Have a great evening, Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
10/24/2017 Hi parents! We went to visit our pumpkins again today, to see what's going on with them and what has happened to them since yesterday. The tiny's pumpkin's lid seems to have disappeared. We had a lot of amazing hypotheses about what may have happened, including an animal such as a bird or squirrel taking it, it shrinking to the point it was able to be blown away, or that it has disintegrated to the point that we can't see it anymore. Lucas is wondering how long it would take for a big pumpkin to disintegrate into soil or so that it isn't seen anymore. We had a silent reading period again today where we worked on our stamina for text. We read a book by Shel Silverstein, a new author to us, called The Giving Tree We then did a piece of writing about how this book made us feel, and how it showed resiliency and is connected to our text for the year, The Hugging Tree. Mrs. Sawko introduced us to a new book from a favourite author, Micheal Hearst. Ask your son what this book is all about. Make sure to check out all the new pumpkin pictures on our blog photo section!! Have a wonderful night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
10/23/17 Hi parents. We sang today again together. We are going to try to sing a lot this year. It is a great way to develop our music skills. We don't have to be expert singers, we just need to try our best! Today, we got to have our individual pictures taken! If your son didn't make it today, don't worry, there will be a retake day in November that they can participate in. In math, we worked some more on our number sense by solving a word problem involving division. Many of us figured out that we could count in groups up to our given number in order to divide evenly. In gym, we played a game called Pacman and got to level 3. Mr. Vanderlinden noticed a lot of us being successful in different ways (helping, trying hard, being resilient) so a lot of us got stones today. Nice job Room 3!! In science, we sketched our pumpkins and we drew the details we observed. We tried to describe our pumpkins, and some people compared the pumpkins to each other. We were checking to see if they had rotted or decomposed any more. We decided that the cool weather prevented them from decomposing quickly. We had a great conversation with Mrs. Sawko and Mr. Baustad where we really showed our understanding. We had little silent reading while we all finished up with our photos and some of us were really quiet. Have a super night, Mrs. Sawko and the student in Room 3
10/18/2017 Hello parents! In science, we did some research on the computer to investigate how the city of Calgary manages and where it puts waste. We were demonstrating the science skills of curiosity and asking good questions, as well as learning where to look to get answers to our questions. Our classroom pumpkins continue to decompose and we observed and sketched them in our table groups. One pumpkin seems like it is almost about to burst like the one we found Tuesday morning! We put our pumpkins outside in a very special place (thanks to Mr. Baustad and Mr. Dow!) where we can safely continue to watch them decompose. Because Mr. Vanderlinden was busy painting amazing new games on our compound surface all around the school, we had Mrs. Sawko for a gym teacher!! We had a fun game of original dodgeball. We continue to work on building our stamina for reading through daily independent stamina building reading. Soon, we are going to learn how to read text depending on which subject discipline we are working in. We were lucky today because Joshua brought in a special personal artifact which helped us to learn about a different way of life from the past. Ask your son about this. Hint: it is connected to our social studies learning about Aboriginal peoples. Have a super night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
10/17/17 Hello parents! We had quite a surprise when we entered the class today. One of our pumpkins had decomposed! We did get a brand new pumpkin, but it is for the Hallowe'en party in two weeks. In gym, we got to play a game called "pizza party." In science and social studies, we talked about the election and mayor and what his policy might be on waste in our city. We also noticed that many of our pumpkins are quickly decomposing. In math, each table got a different set of objects. Our job was to divide them into equal groups for each table member. We did division with objects instead of numbers, and it was fun! This was an introduction to how we might divide numbers. This will help us to develop strong number sense. In science we observed the pumpkins and then drew what was on and inside them. Arthur said he didn't expect the big pumpkin to rot the fastest! We did a lot of observing, hypothesizing and predicting. We did some silent stamina building reading to build our capacity for disciplinary literacy. At recess, we were able to use our new school compound games! Ask your son about this. Parents, a reminder that October 23rd is individual picture day! Have a wonderful night, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3 10/13/17 Hi parents! We did a ton of extremely fun learning today. We built some basic math skills when we counted all the seeds from all four of our pumpkins together. Building these basic skills (strategies for adding big numbers and using place value) is going to allow us to enter into some really exciting inquiry work in the future. Yesterday, we emailed Mr. Baustad to ask him if he would help us with a pumpkin inquiry. We are going to learn about composting, decomposition, organic or degradable materials, and waste in our world. Ask your son what our really interesting experiment is going to be! Mr. Baustad had a really great idea for us in order to make our pumpkin experiment even better!! In other pumpkin news, we observed and documented what kind of changes our pumpkins are starting to show. Today we started to focus on music. Mrs. Sawko had us singing our hearts out today! We will be doing all kinds of music this year. We had our Friday assembly today where we learned about a great project that the grade 5 and 6 students are doing. Mr. Baustad also talked to the group about a future grade four project that is going to be AMAZING!!! You can't ask your son about this yet....because he doesn't know what it is yet :) Reminder: There is no school Monday, October 16th due to a PD day. Have a great long weekend, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3 10/11/17 Hello parents! Your son will be bringing home a sheet about our parent sponsored Hallowe'en party. You are welcome to attend. Also coming home is a reminder that picture day is October 23, In room 3 news, in math each group counted the number of seeds in their pumpkin. Last week, we predicted how many seeds were going to be in each. Tomorrow, we will add up the entire number of seeds in all four pumpkins. This allows us to practice adding strategies and working with big numbers. We had a guest teacher in gym, and we played the line game. We worked on our stamina building reading-we get better every day, which is going to help us a lot in our research. We learned how to sign in to our google accounts, which we be using extensively to share our work with each other and with Mrs. Sawko. Your son can log on to their account at home too! It's a great tool for documenting their learning. Ask your son about it! Every day, we make time near dismissal to come together and reflect on all the learning we did that day. When I write the blog, I am often directly quoting student remarks about what they have taken from their learning today. It's wonderful to hear about what things were important to them :) Have a super chilly evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
10/10/17
Today in science, we finally cut open our fresh pumpkins. Mrs. Sawko wanted us to get our hands on some organic material so really see what it is like. Nathan remembered that the thick skin on the pumpkin protects it from rotting quickly. We know that a lot of pumpkins are used at Hallowe'en. We are curious about how the city manages this extra waste. We are going to do some research on this! We cut them open to get the seeds, which we are going to use to practice our counting big numbers math work. We may also use them to learn about cooking!! Seeds and pie may be involved. Recipes are a wonderful way for your son to connect math to the real world in an impactful way. Lucas thought it was cool we got to take the insides out of the pumpkin, it felt gooey and sticky. Roxassaid you can make sculpture with the seeds. Arthur wonders how long it would take, how many months or days, for the pumpkins to rot? Rhys pointed out that the pumpkin could rot inside and it wouldn't be visible from the outside. Nathan says we learned to communicate and work together during this activity. Arthur also mentioned that we should try not to waste food. In other news today, we did a brand new type of dodgeball in gym!! In writing we learned a new technique to create an interesting beginning!! We wrote an ACTION in the first part of the story. Mrs. Sawko and the students in room 3
10/06/17 Wow was today ever exciting!! Not only did we practice read to others with Mrs. Palmer's class, we attended an amazing assembly. We will tell you more next week-ask your son :). Please check out our new photos.
10/5/17 Today, we had a guest teacher for gym and also for our picture prompt writing block. We did a pretty good job working well. We looked at a picture and wrote a story about it. Zain wrote a story about a famous author who gets scared by something under the carpet. We went outside to look for natural waste in our school yard. See the pictures below! In math we worked on sorting and seeing patterns in numbers. Have a super night, Mrs Sawko and thebstidents in Room 3
10/03/17 Hi parents! Today we did a lot of writing. We continued with journal entries. Zain says the challenging thing is to add a lot of detail and not make it boring. In social studies, we learned more about Alberta and the land. Today, we learned about glaciers. Ask your son how they are made and why it makes Alberta's landscape unique! Lucas says it is very interesting that we have had glaciers for thousands of years. We also talked about the Blackfoot story of Big Rock. See if your son can retell this legend to you! In math, we were given a pumpkin per table group! We sketched the pumpkins with the intention of estimating how many seeds there are in our table group's pumpkin. We have special tricks for determining whether or not pumpkins have a lot of seeds in them. Ask us what our tricks are!! We worked on building our reading stamina again today. This will help us in the future when we engage in disciplinary literacy in science, social studies and math. Our grade 4 boys and the grade 3 boys will have the chance to participate in a dance club starting late October. Please watch for a letter coming home indicating your son wants to join this club. Have a great evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
10/02/17 Hello parents! We hope that you had a chance to talk about Orange Shirt day with your son. They had a lot of great things to express about this topic on Friday. Today, we worked on learning about particular genres of writing. We learned about Journal Writing. In doing this, we should be able to express our thoughts, ideas and feelings by creating original text. We tried doing our own journal entries today. Emmett says that it was fun and it wasn't difficult to write the things that we had to. In science, we sketched our observations of our lime tree today. We talked about how the tree needs to be cared for now that the weather is getting cooler. Nathan observed that the tree has a small plant growing in the dirt! We beat our stamina building reading record today!! This Daily Five technique to build stamina for reading text is a great way to work on our reading outcomes from the program of studies. Ask your child to tell you what the new record is! Have a lovely evening, Mrs. Sawko and the knights in Room 3
9/29/17 Today is Orange Shirt Day. We had a lot of talks the past two days about what this day means. Please talk about this issue with your son. We took a school picture of all the boys with orange shirts. We read two stories about Orange Shirt Day, about a girl named Margaret-but that isn't her real name. Ask your son about this story. We did a visual journal response where we shared our ideas, thoughts and feelings about Orange Shirt Day. We had a great gym class with Mrs. Palmer's students. Have a wonderful weekend! Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
9/28/17 Important points: -tomorrow, your son is allowed to wear an ORANGE SHIRT for Orange Shirt Day. We did a bit of learning in class today about this important initiative. Please ask your son to explain to you what we are wearing orange for. -check your email for an important school fundraiser notice -today we had our Terry Fox Run and your son did awesome!!! From the students in Room 3 and Mrs. Sawko 9/25/17 Today, we were learning about worms!! Well, officially we learned about vermicomposting. Ask your son what this is. We are going to have an exciting presentation about this topic tomorrow afternoon with Mrs. Palmer's grade 3s. We found out through a Terry Fox learning video that he was great friends with a former coach of the Toronto Raptors! He was so inspirational to Jay. This is a story about Terry's resilience, and his friends' resilience, that does not get told often. Ask your son about it. In math, we began to read a story about adding up big numbers and different ways we could do this. This will help prepare us for a fun activity that is coming up!! Have a wonderful night, Mrs Sawko and the boys in Room 3
9/19/17
Today, we talked and learned more about Terry Fox. He sure was resilient. In social studies, we learned about the Frank Slide and talked about Fort Macleod, because we are going to be learning all about Alberta and the land and people who live on it. We worked hard on our shields, which represent how we feel about our own resiliency. We all put a tree on our shield because we feel that the tree is a symbol of resiliency. In writing, we wrote a response about our provocation for the year, The Hugging Tree. In math, we started to learn about a game we are going to play to increase our understanding of numbers to 5000, called Mystery Number. Ask your child about it. We ended our day by showing each other soome support to increase resiliency, by writing a list of compliments to a fellow student.
Have a wonderful evening, Mrs. Sawko and the students in Room 3
9/18/17 Today, we had our first visit to the library. We might be bringing some books home. There is no specific library day for our classroom; your son is free to return and check out books on any day. Their specific visit day is Wednesdays at lunchtime. We began working on our individual crests, where we are making crests with symbols that represent our own resilience. We broke our classroom record for stamina building. Ask your son what our time was? We worked this morning on some artistic expression about Terry Fox and his resiliency. We can't wait to show you our work at meet the teacher night. We've been learning a lot about Terry; ask your son what they learned from the short video clips we watched about Terry Fox today. Have a lovely night, Mrs.Sawko and the students in Room 3
Parents: Please see below for all blog entries until September 15th, 2017. Going forward the most recent blog entry will be at the top of this page. Welcome!! 9/11/17
Hello parent and families! Welcome to Mrs. Sawko’s daily blog. Your son is now in my classroom. I am very happy to have all the grade four boys with me for the rest of the school year! We are going to have a wonderful time together with our learning. We talked about Daily Five, and we did a session of Daily Five Stamina Building reading. We made it to 1:15seconds. We are going to work to increase our reading stamina! We had gym today with Mr. Vanderlinden, where we played a game called Land, Sea, Air. In writing, we learned about Brain Pockets and started to write down things from our pockets. Ask your son what a Brain Pocket is!
Have a wonderful evening,
Mrs Sawko and the students in Room 3
9/12/2017
Today, we learned about representing numbers to 10000. That’s the big number we will be working with throughout the school year in numbers sense. We read the hugging tree together and started working on a Wordle to represent what words remind us of resilience. We also talked about our Lime tree. We are going to watch it and hope it bears fruit with our support and care. We will be creating a question about resilience to guide our learning. We did a great job this morning finishing three tasks-brain pockets, name pages, and visual journal covers.
Have super night,
Mrs Sawko and the boys in Room 3
9/13/17
Today, we worked on math. We worked on writing 10000 in picture, numeral, and word form. In science, the whole class did well completing a KWL chart (Knowledge/Want to learn/What I Learned) about Waste in our World. This will be the first topic our class will explore in science. In our language block, we worked again on Stamina Building reading, and we learned about Terry Fox. We then created a visual journal page about Terry Fox and his incredible resilience. We read some of our read aloud book, George’s Marvellous Medicine. Mrs. Sawko reminded us that we would NEVER EVER EVER create such a medicine!! Roald Dahl has such an incredible imagination. Being able to listen and respond to stories is part of our language curriculum.