Well, it has been awhile since I actually have written a post. It has been busy here in Grade 4 and I wanted to take some time to tell you about some exciting things that are happening here in Grade 4.

The most exciting thing is that we have recently started a new unit in Language Arts and Social Studies on Pirates and Explorers. The two units fit really nice together and I thought that it would be a lot of fun to explore the topic of pirates as the students were studying explorers in Social Studies. Our big question that we are asking ourselves is whether or not Pirates are similar to Explorers and how Pirates and Explorers affect us still today.

If you come by our classroom, you will see that we have changed somewhat. Our class has become a ship with rules and guidelines for being a shipmate on our pirate vessel. If you do stop by, please make sure to check the poster outside the door and ask yourself if you have scurvy or check out the poster by the starboard porthole to see whether we can properly fit you for a peg leg!

Throughout the unit, students will be learning about pirate life and using their learning to write their own paragraphs about various aspects of pirate life. We are also building ships to hang from our ceiling as well as planning a pirate day where students will have to search for treasure. Lot’s of fun!

To start our unit, we went out to the Maritime Museum in Vancouver. We did this before Spring Break but I wanted to share with you some of the pictures that we took of the day and all the great learning that happened!