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Month: February 2014

Give me a…

Give me a…

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Dear grade 4 students & family members,

This Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014, was a winsome day!  We followed our Thursday routine closely, starting with a short quiz in math followed by exploring more about probability as a large group.  Mrs. Waffenschmidt turned up at The Leaning Tower of Pisa, the students really enjoyed learning about the reason the tower so famously leans.  We watched a short video explaining the science used in attempts to correct the lean and preserve this historic site.  Did you know one strategy engineers used was to freeze the ground beneath the tower with liquid nitrogen?

Every Thursday I spend some time reading aloud to the students.  This Thursday we started a new novel, Safe as Houses, in which we met the main characters.  This story promises great excitement as the characters are faced with survival during historic Hurricane Hazel which devastated Southern Ontario in 1954.  As the students engage with this story they will learn about resourcefulness, maturity, communication, cooperation, and courage.  The students really love to be read to, consider spending some time reading to or with them, it can be a very rewarding activity!

During Social Studies the students were separated into groups and asked to read a passage together, then work through various questions engaging in the text they had just read.  The students demonstrated teamwork, encouraging language, focus, and subject matter knowledge.  I really wanted to acknowledge how impressed I was with them!  Some students even said it was their favourite part of the day. 

Finally, poetry is something we do to practice both functional and creative writing skills.  It has been really interesting as a teacher getting to know this group of students to read their poems each week.  The best part is that the students hearts, humour, personality and voices shine through in their writing.  This week, after working on poems titled “Give me a…”, where we explore desires for tangible and intangible things, I asked the students to volunteer to share their work with the class.  After the volunteers read their work, the class voted on their favourites.  It was a time for the students to take pride in their work and encourage each other.  I will include the three most popular poems in this blog post.  While I haven’t posted all poems, they each were creative and interesting to read!  

I hope you all have a fun, safe and active weekend!

Ms. Froyland

Give Me A…

Give me a hundred and fifty dollar skateboard.

Give me a spray paint can for the wheels.

Five me a meat pizza.

Give me a hundred meat pizzas.

Give me a car.

Give me a car that can fly.

Give me a rover.

Give me a rover that can fly around the world.

Give Me A… 

Give me figure skate to skate on.  Give me a teacher to help me.

Give me a horse to ride on.  Give me a helper so I can win a horse medal.

Give me a great school. Give me a great school so I can get a good job when I’m older.

Give me a special power to fly.  Give a special power so I can fly all around outside.

Give me a trip to Hawaii.  Give me a trip to Hawaii so I can pick sea shells on the beach and go swimming. 

Give me gym.  Give me gym so I can grow good muscles.

Give Me A…

Give me a horse, so I can run free with it.  

Give me a true friend, so I can have trust within them.

Give me love, so I can love others as myself.

Give me freedom, so I can run forever shall be.

Give me the fruit of the spirit, so I can teach others about God.

Give me faith, so I can have faith within God.

Give me a free trip to Alberta, so I can see my cousins!

 

 

 

Genius Hour, Spelling and More

Genius Hour, Spelling and More

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A couple of things for this week!

First of all, I will not be here tomorrow as I am attending a conference in Vancouver. For that reason, we will move Genius Hour to Friday from 1:15-2:15.

A reminder that Mar. 7 is a half day Pro-D day.

Here is the Spelling List for this week:

Spelling Q1


Here is the link to this week’s Spelling City. Remember to bring in your completed quiz with 100% to get a bonus mark on your spelling test!

SpellingQ1

Our memory verse this week comes from the Book of John:

John 16:24

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.

Winter Fun Day on Monday

Winter Fun Day on Monday

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In the spirit of the Olympics, and just because we have been slogging through the dreary January and February months, we are going to be celebrating the end of the Olympics by having an afternoon of Winter Olympic Fun!

On Monday afternoon, the Grades 4-6 will be put into teams by country and participating in a number of Olympic events (modified of course for our location and for the supplies we have on hand). It should be a great afternoon of fun! It will also be a casual day with students dressing in the colour representing their country. Colours will be Red, Blue, Black and Yellow. Students will find out tomorrow which country they are. In terms of clothing, students should try to have as much of that colour visible as possible but it does not need to be a solid colour shirt if your child does not have one. Patterns and decorations (appropriate of course) on shirts are fine.

Spelling for the Week

Spelling for the Week

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Here is the spelling list for the week:

Spelling P7

Here is the link to Spelling City. Remember to bring in a copy of your completed quiz or get your parents to sign your planner saying you got 100% to get a bonus mark on your Spelling Test!

SpellingP7

Our memory verse for this week is:

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

Psalm 46:1

100th Day and Love Guatemala Day

100th Day and Love Guatemala Day

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So Wednesday was  the 100th day of school depending on which school calendar you are using and how you count up the days. We were using today as our 100th day. And to celebrate, the students are all writing about whether or not they would like to live to be 100 with reasons to back up their opinion. At the same time, I have taken pictures of the students and used one of my apps to “age” them. Once students are done, we will post the writing up on the wall alongside their future selves. Should be quite interesting to see!

Here is a great video that I showed the class.

This Friday is “Love Guatemala Day” as a way to give our missions team some recognition and to help support them with their financial goals. On Friday, students are allowed to wear casual clothes by bringing in a toonie. Students can bring their toonies to me on Friday. If students are unable to bring a toonie or would rather not participate, that is fine but will need to wear their uniforms on that day.

How Quicksand Works

How Quicksand Works

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With quicksand, the more you struggle in it the faster you will sink. If you just relax, your body will float in it because your body is less dense than the quicksand.

How many times have you watched a movie where the hero is sucked down into a pit of quicksand, only to be saved at the last minute by grabbing a nearby tree branch and pulling himself out?

If you believed what you saw in movies, you might think that quicksand is a living creature that can suck you down into a bottomless pit, never to be heard from again. But no — the actual properties of quicksand are not quite those portrayed in the movies.

Quicksand is not quite the fearsome force of nature that you sometimes see on the big screen. In fact, the treacherous grit is rarely deeper than a few feet.

It can occur almost anywhere if the right conditions are present. Quicksand is basically just ordinary sand that has been so saturated with water that the friction between sand particles is reduced. The resulting sand is a mushy mixture of sand and water that can no longer support any weight.

If you step into quicksand, it won’t suck you down. However, your movements will cause you to dig yourself deeper into it. In this article, you will learn just how quicksand forms, where it’s found and how you can escape its clutches if you find yourself hip-deep in it.

Next, we’ll find out how the ground shaking beneath your feet can lead to sand slipping beneath your weight.
What’s Quicksand?

Quicksand is an interesting natural phenomenon — it is actually solid ground that has been liquefied by a saturation of water. The “quick” refers to how easily the sand shifts when in this semiliquid state.

Quicksand is not a unique type of soil; it is usually just sand or another type of grainy soil. Quicksand is nothing more than a soupy mixture of sand and water. It can occur anywhere under the right conditions, according toDenise Dumouchelle, geologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Quicksand is created when water saturates an area of loose sand and the ordinary sand is agitated. When the water trapped in the batch of sand can’t escape, it creates liquefied soil that can no longer support weight. There are two ways in which sand can become agitated enough to create quicksand:

Flowing underground water – The force of the upward water flow opposes the force of gravity, causing the granules of sand to be more buoyant.
Earthquakes – The force of the shaking ground can increase the pressure of shallow groundwater, which liquefies sand and silt deposits. The liquefied surface loses strength, causing buildings or other objects on that surface to sink or fall over.

Vibration tends to enhance the quickness, so what is reasonably solid initially may become soft and then quick, according to Dr. Larry Barron of the New South Wales Geological Survey.

The vibration plus the water barrier reduces the friction between the sand particles and causes the sand to behave like a liquid. To understand quicksand, you have to understand the process of liquefaction. When soil liquefies, as with quicksand, it loses strength and behaves like a viscous liquid rather than a solid, according to the Utah Geological Survey. Liquefaction can cause buildings to sink significantly during earthquakes.

While quicksand can occur in almost any location where water is present, there are certain locations where it’s more prevalent. Places where quicksand is most likely to occur include:

Riverbanks
Beaches
Lake shorelines
Near underground springs
Marshes

The next time you’re at the beach, notice the difference in the sand as you stand on different parts of the beach that have varying levels of moisture. If you stand on the driest part of the beach, the sand holds you up just fine. The friction between the sand particles creates a stable surface to stand on.

If you move closer to the water, you’ll notice that the sand that is moderately wet is even more tightly packed than the dry sand. A moderate amount of water creates the capillary attraction that allows sand particles to clump together. This is what allows you to build sand castles.

But beach sand could easily become quicksand if enough water were thrust up through it. If an excessive amount of water flows through the sand, it forces the sand particles apart. This separation of particles causes the ground to loosen, and any mass on the sand will begin to sink through it. In the next section, you will find out how to save yourself if you happen to fall into a pit of quicksand.

Probability Fair

Probability Fair

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For fun you might want to practice the games we tried in class, click on the link below to give it a try.  While you play remember your new vocabulary: likely, impossible, certain, predict, data, unlikely, spinner, trial, experiment, less likely, possible.

Have a great long weekend Grade 4!

Ms. Froyland

p.s. Good luck to those of you competing this weekend!

http://mrnussbaum.com/probfair-play/

The Beginnings of My First Genius Hour Project

The Beginnings of My First Genius Hour Project

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You are probably going to be hearing a lot about Genius Hour this year. I wanted to share with you the beginnings of my Genius Hour project. Now, you’re probably saying, “Wait. What? Teachers are doing projects too?”

That’s right. Even though I am the teacher, I am also a learner who is passionate about learning new things and growing in my knowledge and skills. So, as the students know, I have always loved lego and with all the new Star Wars and Lord of the Rings sets coming out, my wife has kindly purchased sets for me at various times (you can see some samples in the classroom!). My son also loves lego and we will often spend hours playing together with the pieces. So, over the past couple of weeks, I had the big castle set down (much to the fascination of my son). I have, for the longest time, wanted to make a lego stop-motion movie. So, I decided to learn how to make one with a couple of apps I had found.

Well, it’s actually a lot harder than I thought! I took about 500 pictures, moving the pieces a little at a time but quickly realized that I should have a tripod to keep the camera steady as the final movie was a little jerky. Then, once I had the video complete, I realized that adding the audio posed a whole other issue. I had written my script but was only about a paragraph into it when the movie finished. So I had to go back and pause pictures to allow for text to be added.

Moving forward, I am going to look at adding a green screen, getting a tripod and doing more with audio to make the next chapter even better!

Anyway, I added my video below. It is extremely cheesy so be forewarned! 🙂

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