La rentrée

I love the smell of freshly sharpened pencils in the morning! Whether you love or hate back to school it's here!

So happy to get to meet all my new grade 4 immersion students this week. Of course, we are working on routines and getting to know each other so we can get the year off to a smooth start.

Here is our September newsletter but it should also have gone home with your student.
Don't forget out meet the teacher night on

Wrapping up "les civilisations anciennes"

We've spent a lot of time making catapults and building castles so we've moved on to inventions! As a final task, students are responsible for explaining an important invention from the medieval ages or ancient Egypt.



They should be able to explain:
how it was invented
what was it's purpose
what materials was it made of
who used it
what was its link to daily life
how was it influenced by the environment
what is it's legacy (what is its link to present-day life or inventions)

We have been working on presenting our learning in creative ways so I'm looking forward to something other than Google slides!

Some groups have chosen to talk about:
- medieval weaponry and knights
- castles and siege weaponry
- pyramid construction
- egyptian agricultural practices/tools

Volunteers needed

On June 7th we will be doing some hands-on learning with Scientist in the School. We are always in need of parent volunteers to help run some of the centres during these workshops. If you would be willing to volunteer that morning (9:15-11:45) Please send me an email or write a note in your child's agenda.

civlisations anciennes et créativité

Students have received their final evaluation of their work during out Inuit study unit. They can find it in their Social Studies folder under the title "critères de succès - civilisations anciennes". This week I will be conferencing with the students to go over their strengths and next steps as we continue on in our ancient civilisations unit.

The class decided last Thursday that they wanted to look at the medieval period as well as ancient Egypt. Students will choose one or the other to study. Throughout our unit we will be working on creativity! We noticed that we were being very creative with how we were documenting and presenting our learning last time (nothing but Google slides as far as the eye can see) So this time we will try new tools and think of innovative ways to document our learning journey. Students will also have the opportunity to collaborate with new people as we will often be joining forces with the grade 4s in Mme Geadah's class.

les Inuits

We have begun to study the first civilization in our ancient civilizations Social Studies units...les inuits!

We began by talking about how societies interact with the environment in order to meet our most basic needs but also our societal needs as a collective. We will use this chart (which is also in the students Social Studies Google drive folder) to guide our learning throughout the whole unit. This is great vocabulary to review at home. Instead of a padlet during this unit we have been using Hapara Workspace. Workspace is software that helps teachers use Google apps more efficiently with a classroom. The students access the workspace by clicking on the icon in the student portal. It has our learning goals as well as links to valuable resources (which could also be explored at home).

Students have learned a great deal about the Inuit already. Some have looked at their art, some are looking at their hunting tools and practices others are looking at how they build their igloos. All in all, we are very interested and engaged! Students proudly showed me today that they had borrowed books from the library on the Inuit. One student told me he had a relative who is a throat singer who has sung with Susan Aglukark in the past. One student told me he was going to call one of his relatives who is indigenous to ask him some questions. I love that the students are reaching out and making learning partnerships outside of the classroom.  

Le bus magique en voit de tout les couleurs!

Les civilisations anciennes

With March break upon us we are wrapping up our science unit, light and sound. We finished our unit with a fun drama activity where we acted out scenes from "le bus magique". A few groups even filmed their scenes in front of our green screen in order to really be in the Friz's classroom. Cool!

After the break we will be diving into our second (and last) Social Studies unit, "les civilisations anciennes." We will start by looking at the Inuit who arrived in Canada well before the Common Era (CE). Next, we will look at a second civilisation in order to compare. The students will decide democratically which time and place to study. We have a vast choice among the Maya, the Aztek, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, antique China, mediaeval times etc. Time permitting we might even study a third.

Here is the link to our padlet with curriculum expectations and a few links. More link will be added once we have a better idea of what era and place we are studying further.