What a wonderful fall season we’re having! The leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and our class has been filled with energy, laughter, and plenty of learning. Here are some updates about what’s been happening in Grade 4 and what’s coming up soon.

🍁 No School Friday

Just a reminder that there is no school this Friday for the Provincial Professional Development Day. I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend and has a chance to rest and recharge!

👩‍🏫 Parent-Teacher Interviews

I look forward to connecting with you during our Elementary Parent-Teacher Interviews on Friday, October 31, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. These meetings are a great opportunity to celebrate your child’s growth and discuss next steps together.

Please sign up for a time slot using the link below:
Parent-Teacher Interview Sign-Up

If you’re unable to meet during the scheduled times, feel free to contact me to arrange an alternative meeting time.

🌎 Missions Fundraiser: Supporting Clean Water in the Philippines

This year, our Highroad Academy Missions Team is partnering with Clean Water International to bring clean water to a community in the Philippines. You can help support their mission by purchasing poinsettias and other holiday items through the fundraiser website:
https://highroadacademy.growingsmilesfundraising.com/home

There are many wonderful products available—not just poinsettias! Thank you for supporting and praying for our team as they prepare for this life-changing trip.

🔬 Science: Wrapping Up the Scientific Process

We are finishing up our first Science unit on the Scientific Process. Students have been reflecting on how their adventures with the mysterious substance Oobleck mimic how scientists prepared for the Mars Landers—testing, observing, and experimenting to uncover its properties. Our next unit is one of my favourites: Sun, Earth and the Moon!

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sending home a Family Science Project. This project will give your family the opportunity to participate together in a fun, hands-on science activity. Look for details coming home soon!

📖 Reading: RACE Strategy Expansion

In Reading, we’ve been using the RACE strategy (Restate, Answer, Cite, Explain) to respond to comprehension questions. Students have practiced using this strategy with one article, and now we are extending it to include two articles. This next step encourages students to find and use evidence from multiple sources to support their thinking—a great skill for building deeper understanding and critical thinking.

✍️ Writing: From Turkeys to “The Best Parts of Me”

We’ve recently finished our humorous Thanksgiving writing project, “Turkey Escape How-To’s,” and the results were both creative and hilarious! Students imagined clever ways for turkeys to avoid becoming the main course, and their writing showed great imagination and voice.

We are now returning to our Personal Narratives unit. In this next phase, students are learning to focus on “seed moments”—small, meaningful moments rather than large “watermelon” topics. For example, instead of writing about a trip to Disneyland, a student might focus on the first time they rode a roller coaster—zooming in on the sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings of that specific experience.

To begin, students will write a piece titled “The Best Part of Me.” This project helps students see themselves in a positive light and reflect on what makes them unique. When finished, their stories and photos will be compiled into a real printed class book, which will be such a special keepsake!

We’ve also been talking about “bringing joy to the reader”—thinking more about writing for an audience rather than just for themselves. This mindset shift has made our writing time even more meaningful and engaging.

🔢 Math: Place Value and Times Tables

In Math, we are moving quickly through our first unit on Place Value to 10 000. Students are learning to represent numbers in standard form, expanded form, and word form, as well as model them using base-10 blocks.

We’ve also been practicing multiplication facts, and have now moved from the 2x tables into the 5x tables. Please continue to practice multiplication facts at home using flashcards or quick oral quizzes. The brain is wired for repetition—the more frequently students review, the faster and more confidently they’ll recall their facts!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and encouragement. Your partnership makes such a difference as we guide students to grow in confidence, creativity, and character each day.

It has been such a beautiful stretch of fall weather lately—cool mornings, golden leaves, and sunshine-filled afternoons! The students have been enjoying the crisp air at recess and the feeling that autumn has truly arrived.

In the classroom, we are still gradually building our routines and procedures, adding new pieces to our weekly schedule as students work to become more confident and comfortable with our daily rhythm. It’s wonderful to see how much more independent and responsible the class is already becoming each week.

A reminder that Knights Day is tomorrow! Students are welcome to wear their Highroad Knights shirts with casual bottoms as we show our school spirit together.

Place Value and Multiplication Facts: We have begun our new math unit on Place Value, where students are exploring numbers up to 10 000. We are learning to describe numbers in three different forms:

• Written word form (e.g., four thousand, two hundred sixty-one),

• Expanded notation (e.g., 4000 + 200 + 60 + 1), and

• Picture form using base-10 blocks to visualize each value.

Students are developing a stronger understanding of how digits represent different place values and how numbers can be built, broken apart, and represented in multiple ways.

How You Can Help at Home:

• Ask your child to read and write large numbers (for example, numbers on speed limit signs, prices, or receipts).

• Play simple number games—say a number like 3 407 and have your child tell you how many hundreds or tens it has.

• Encourage your child to use base-10 blocks, Lego pieces, or drawings to represent numbers in different ways.

We are also continuing to build multiplication fluency. Right now, we are working on our 2 times tables and will be moving on to the 5 times tables soon. Please take time to practice multiplication facts at home using flash cards or quick oral quizzes in the car or at breakfast. The brain is wired for repetition—the more often students practice, the faster and more confident they’ll become in recalling their facts.

The Foundational Skills Assessments (FSA) are also coming soon for our Grade 4 students. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be completing some online practice activities to help students feel comfortable with the format. The actual assessments begin toward the end of October and extend into mid-November. While that sounds like a long time, we intentionally spread the different sections out—online reading, online math, a written reading response, and a written math section—so that students don’t feel pressured to do them all at once.

A quick reminder about electronics: please ensure that any electronic devices beyond simple watches are kept at home. We want to make sure these items are not a distraction during class time and that they stay safe from being lost or damaged.

Finally, in writing, we’ve taken a short break from our personal narratives to work on a lighthearted Thanksgiving project called “Turkey Escape How-To’s.” Students are writing creative instruction manuals to help turkeys outsmart becoming the main course! The ideas have been hilarious and imaginative—from disguises and secret tunnels to clever decoys—and I can’t wait to see their finished pieces.

Thank you for your continued support at home as we move deeper into our fall term. It’s a joy to teach your children each day and to see their creativity and confidence grow.

Hey there, awesome parents and guardians of our Grade 4 superstars!

We hope you’re all enjoying the beauty of fall. It seems like it’s been so long since we’ve been together. Tomorrow’s going to be a fun one – it’s Fall Colour Day at our school! Your kids can choose to rock their regular school uniforms or enjoy time wearing some casual fall-colored outfits!

Next up – memory verses! Just a reminder that I will be hearing verses on Thursday! Verses are always glued into your child’s planner each week. Working on these verses is part and parcel of being a student and being organized with their homework, and dedicating a few minutes each night can make a world of difference. Plus, it’s a key part of their report card evaluation in Bible. We also know how important it is to have God’s word in our hearts and minds. For a deeper dive into how we assess memory verses, you can check out one of the previous blog posts.

Just a reminder to send back your child’s comfort kit if they haven’t already. We want to make sure they’re tucked away safely and we are still missing a few! You should have received a letter home on our comfort kids. 

Thanks for being amazing partners in your child’s education. We’re looking forward to a fantastic Fall Colour Day.

We have been having a great September with beautiful weather and lots of fun things happening in class!

It’s the time of year where I make my annual apple pie (always adding a nice slice of cheddar cheese to every slice!) and the fall colours blossom throughout the foliage.

It has been so wonderful working with this keen class. I have appreciated how quickly they get to work and how they are learning to build perseverance. Here’s a run down of some things that are happening:

• • Orange Shirt Day: is coming on Friday, Sept. 26. Students are encouraged to wear an orange shirt on that day along with casual pants. This is an important day for us at Highroad. As a Christian school, we want to share God’s love with our community, and we take our role as peacekeepers very seriously. We will be participating in several activities throughout the day.

• • Ice Cream trip: We had such a fun time on our Ice Cream field trip. The students were so polite and respectful. The ladies at Kent’s Ice Cream were very impressed. If you would like to see a picture, send me an email.

• • Number Talks:We have been having some amazing talks in Math! We have been emphasizing that anyone can be a math person, that speed is not essential to doing math well, and that resilience and perseverance are important math traits. Above all, math is everywhere around us. We know that this world, solar system and universe around us are God’s creation because there are perfect mathematical patterns and relationships in everything! To help with this, we have been doing daily math warm-ups where we put an open-ended problem on the board and discuss it as a class, then in partners working together to come up with multiple solutions. These talks have been amazing!

• • Writing:We are so excited with our writing this year! We are going to be using Google docs to write our stories after planning them. The students love using Google docs for writing as there is a lot more creativity allowed and the editing process is so much easier. To start with, we are going to be writing personal narratives. These are paragraphs and writing that are all about them. One of the things students learn is that they are filled with amazing stories about themselves and other readers can connect to them because they may have similar interests. This helps create writing that is engaging to the reader. One of the concepts we are focused on this year is that our writing should be a “gift” to the reader. That is, our writing should be written in such a way that it is interesting to the reader and that it is clear to the reader.

• • Science: We are finishing up our look at what Scientists do. We are in the design phase of our study of a mysterious substance my twin brother, Bob, found in our backyard. Students have been working on their Sapce machine vehicles. They are trying to create an imaginative machine that could fly to a planet of this mysterious substance, hover or land on the planet without sinking, collect samples of mysterious substance and return to Earth without getting stuck. With their knowledge of the mysterious substance -mainly that it can be a solid when pressure is applied and be a liquid when it is resting – students are working hard to create a scientific drawing of their machine with labels! The end results should be fascinating!

 

We have a special day coming up at Highroad. On Tuesday, Sept 23rd, students will participate in Terry Fox Day. We will be doing a 30-minute walk/run on Tuesday, September 23^rd. Students are invited to wear Knight Clothes on this day as we commemorate the life of an amazing Canadian. Just the courage and strength of faith as he battled to overcome all the challenges placed in front of him doing something he was passionate about.

Terry Fox sort of epitomizes and personalizes one of the challenges I want to place on the students this year; that while things will be hard, nothing worth doing ever comes easily and if we persevere, we can do great things. He was an amazing man whose joy came from helping others. He personally sacrificed a great deal to bring hope and happiness to others. I have added a video below that highlights his accomplishments. It is a very powerful video and I always get choked up watching it. While we can only do a little to remember him, it is still important to remember an ordinary person who became …

…. a hero.

If possible, please send a toonie to help us raise money for Cancer Research.

For science today, we started an exciting investigation. You may have noticed that students came home today covered in some white substance.

I was telling the students that in Bob’s (Bob is my mysterious and very strange brother) travels around our backyard this week, he found this mysterious substance. Today we had a chance to explore this strange substance and we discovered that, while it was harmless, it had many strange properties. Today, the students got a chance to play with this substance and determone some of those properties after discussing what properties are.

The students had a great time (and the substance does wash out! 🙂 ) We are using this mysterious substance to start our Science year as a discussion about how scientists answer those mysterious questions that baffle us and how students can be scientists as well by using some of the same techniques, ways of thinking and just plain old curiosity! More on this later!

Dear Parents,

I have a few important reminders and updates for you this week:

Thursday Memory Verse

Just a reminder that I will be having students say their memory verses to me on Thursday. Memory verses are in their planners.

Field Trip Permission Forms

Our upcoming field trip is approaching quickly! Please be sure to return your child’s permission form as soon as possible. Students will not be able to attend without a signed form, so thank you for helping us get these in promptly.

Allergy Reminder – No Nuts

A friendly but important reminder: we have students in our class with peanut allergies. For everyone’s safety, please ensure that no snacks or lunches contain peanuts, peanut butter, Nutella, or other nut products. Thank you for helping us keep our classroom safe.

Math – Perseverance and Multiplication Facts

In Math, we’ve been digging into the big question: What is a mathematician? Students have been discovering that being a mathematician is not just about solving equations quickly, but about approaching problems with curiosity, patience, and creativity. We’ve emphasized that mathematicians often make mistakes, but those mistakes help us see new strategies and deepen our understanding.

A big focus has been on perseverance and resiliency—continuing to try even when a problem feels difficult. We’ve talked about how God designed us with the ability to see and recognize patterns, and how those patterns are the building blocks of math. This helps us see that we are all “born mathematicians.”

Alongside this, we are working on strengthening math fluency with multiplication facts. Knowing these facts by heart gives students confidence and frees up their thinking for more complex problem solving. At home, even a few minutes of practice each day—whether through flashcards, quick oral review, or fun online games—can really boost your child’s speed and accuracy.

Reading – Building Strong Responses

In Reading, we continue to grow as thoughtful responders to text. Over the past couple of weeks, students have been practicing how to clearly and fully answer comprehension questions. We use a step-by-step approach:

• Restating the question so their answers are clear and focused.

• Writing a complete response that truly addresses the question.

• Adding text evidence to back up their ideas with proof directly from what they’ve read.

We’ve already noticed that students are beginning to push themselves to write more complete and precise answers. This skill not only helps with comprehension but also prepares them for future assessments and, more importantly, helps them develop into critical thinkers who can explain their reasoning.

Mentor Sentences – Growing Grammar Skills

Our Mentor Sentences program continues to be a valuable tool for learning grammar and writing. Each week, we take one strong sentence from our reading and examine it closely—identifying its parts, discussing why it works well, and even imitating its structure in our own writing.

This hands-on approach to grammar shows students that grammar is not just about rules; it’s about crafting sentences that communicate clearly and beautifully. Recently, we have zeroed in on adjectives and how they can enrich writing by adding vivid description. We’ve also practiced the proper use of commas, especially in lists and descriptive phrases. These small details are giving students confidence as they learn how to both construct and deconstruct sentences, making them stronger readers and writers.

Thank you, as always, for your continued support at home. Together, we are encouraging your children to be persistent learners, careful thinkers, and joyful creators.

You may have noticed – hopefully 🙂 – that we have started our bible memory verses. The verse we are working is glued to this week’s planner pages.

This week we are working on John 3:16 –

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

As part of our new Bible Curriculum, students are this verse as we work through our Introduction to Jesus unit. We have even learned the hand signs that go with the verse! Students will be expected to be able to recite the verses to me on the following Thursdays.

Bible Memory verses are graded for a mark on the report card. The entire department uses the scale which I have included below:

 

Hello Grade 4 families,

Here are a few quick updates for this week.

Photo Day — Tomorrow

Please send students in their best Highroad uniform items for photo day tomorrow. Thank you for helping them arrive looking sharp and ready. Our photo time will be just before lunch if all goes according to plan.

Staying Comfortable in a Cool Classroom

We’re fortunate to have A/C, and I tend to warm up a lot as I move around with lots of energy during lessons. Some students, however, get chilly, especially if they are sitting right next to the vents. If your child feels cold, please send a uniform zip-up hoodie or sweater for class.

Note: Non–zip-up Highroad hoodies are used only on Highroad Knights days.

Chromebooks — Action Needed

Before we can begin using Chromebooks, every family must sign the Chromebook Policy form. It was emailed to you, and you can also sign it here:
Sign the Chromebook Policy Form

Please take a moment to sign the form.

Thanks for your support and partnership!

Dear Grade 4 families,

What an excellent first few days! The class has settled in beautifully, and we’re already building strong routines and learning habits.

In the Classroom

Reading: We’ve jumped right into our reading unit, learning how to write clear, complete reading responses to support success on the Provincial Foundational Skills Assessments at the end of October. We’re using the RACE strategy:

• Restate the question

• Answer the question fully

• Cite evidence from two pieces of reading

• Explain how the evidence supports the answer

• (Finish with a brief summary)

This approach will really help students organize their thinking and communicate with clarity, especially in their reading!

Writing & Art: Students are crafting a short “summer adventure—with a twist!” piece. It’s a fun way to warm up our creative muscles while practicing planning, voice, and detail.

Bible: We have begun our new Bible program with a unit focused on Jesus. We’re excited to build understanding, and character through this new learning program.

So much happening already—and it’s only Day 3! It’s going to be a big year with so much growth and joy in learning. We will be doing a lot of work this year on building resilience and perseverence as we learn new things and take on new challenges!

Reminders & Requests

• First Highroad Knights Day (tomorrow): Students may wear Highroad Knights apparel with casual pants, or their regular uniform. Knights items are available for purchase at the office.

• Gym Clothes: Please send gym clothes as soon as possible if your child doesn’t have them yet. There will be grace for the first couple of weeks as items arrive.

• Bibles at School: Please check that your child has a Bible at school. If needed, Bibles can be purchased at the office.

• Chromebooks: Before we can use Chromebooks as a class, digital permission is required for all students. Please ensure you’ve completed the online permission form.

• 3D Printer: Our class 3D printer is already humming! We’ll be learning how to use it responsibly so each student can design and print some small projects this term.

• Memory Verses: Starting next week, we’ll typically send home a verse on Thursday with recitations the following Thursday. More details to come.

Thank you for your partnership as we begin this exciting year. If you have any questions or updates, please feel free to reach out. I appreciate your support in helping students arrive ready to learn, encouraging them to try new things, and showing kindness to one another.