Here we go: Spring Break! I hope you all have a fantastic time with family and friends and come back refreshed for the final push.

In math this week, we continued work on multiplication, division, as well as our Array City project. Our blueprints are finally finished and on the wall, and now we'll begin the next step of re-creating them on a larger scale for our hallway.

One of our students chose the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia; it turns out, his father used to work in the right-hand tower! A very nice personal connection.

As well in math, we have introduced division. Our grade 4s (and some of our grade 3s) are beginning to learn the long division algorithm. We also continue with multiplication, weaving the two together. Number fluency and number sense continue to be a primary focus. I'm finding many of the students can learn the algorithms well enough, but are still developing some of that number fluency and number sense that is required to truly understand what math is about. So, although automaticity, recall, efficient and quick use of algorithms are important for success, we still need to build our number sense in general. 

Also, each week our principal, Mrs. Wickland, gives the entire school a math challenge. You can find her challenges on our school website (here's a link). This week, we worked on the challenge together, and then each student applied their personal learning to it and wrote about it. Here's the challenge, and some of the work below. 

It was also a chance to talk about other concepts, such as parallel lines, lines of symmetry, angles, etc. 

In science we continued building and designing simple machines, focusing this week on levers and a catapult challenge with the other grade 3-4 classes. Students worked individually or in groups and experimented with the length of load arms, resistance arms, fulcrum size, different materials (rubber bands, popsicle sticks, lego, meter sticks) to create a powerful catapult. 

We tested our designs in the hallway before we had our final competition in the gym. 

In social studies, we continued with our study of India, and learned about elephants. We then engaged in an art project, drawing and then painting elephants and decorating them as we discussed the festival of Holi, which occurred March 21st. Some of our students participated in Holi celebrations, and we were lucky enough to have them share some of their pictures and memories.

Have a fantastic break and see you all in April.

Hello, again!

A very exciting and engaging week. We continued our design/blueprint-drawing/investigating/array-building examination of skyscrapers in math. We have some really nice drawings now, and several groups are beginning to transfer those drawings to our hallway wall. Below are some of those drawings, and some of the calculations and measurements the students made in order to create their scale drawings. It also allowed us to introduce new ideas and examine new ways of solving problems, such as division and long-division. 

In language arts, we finally have started to present our Rats of NIMH projects. Some unavoidable technological issues put this on the back burner for a while. Students showed their learning by creating slide shows on Google slides. They had to create a thesis and present evidence to back up their arguments. The groups did fantastic jobs on creating visually exciting presentations. They're also learning how to keep text to a minimum to ensure better engagement with their audience. 

In science, we continued with pulleys in our simple machines unit. After discussing some different configurations pulleys can take, such as block-and-tackle arrangements, we gave the students space to explore and build their pulley contraptions. Students really engaged with this hands-on activity, especially as we approached it like engineers and tried to come up with designs that could be useable (on a larger scale, of course). Below is a video of one such design. This student started with one fixed and one moveable pulley, but quickly realized he could alter his design to increase its efficiency. Another student was able to point out how this new design created a greater mechanical advantage, as her current understanding had it. It was so much fun to watch them talk about it. 

On Thursday, we had Teacher's Pet visit us for an in-class 'field trip'. Our presenter guided our students through building a specific type of electronic circuit, slowly adding pieces and having them build upon their previous work. After this, students played and explored through building, discovering different ways the circuits could work...or not work.

After working together to build similar circuits, each group was then given a challenge to build. Below is one team explaining their invention to solve a potential real-life problem. 

Hello again!

This week in math, we worked on our 'array city'. As mentioned, we decided to use real buildings and include them in our city. Each group researched and chose a skyscraper or tower and began the process of creating a scaled drawing of it. They had to figure out a scale that would work and that would allow them to produce an appropriately sized blueprint. We looked at real blueprints on-line and noted the size of the scale and the paper used by architects and designers. Using this information, the groups realized that reproducing a skyscraper on a single 8x11 sheet of grid paper would not allow for enough detail and would be difficult to work with. In the end, most groups decided on a scale of one grid line representing 5m. This meant that had to carefully tape multiple pieces of 8x11 grid paper together to create a large enough sheet to reproduce the building.

Strategies used by the groups to determine the proper scale included dividing the height of the building by 5 (the 5m scale they wanted) to determine the number of squares needed. Other groups chose 5m and then skip counted by 5s until they reached the height of the building. Other groups chose 10m increments and then realized their building would be too small, and then experimented with different increments.

None of the buildings chosen were perfectly divisible by 5s so the groups then had to decide on whether they would round up or down to the nearest five or if they wanted to further subdivide their grids.

The project is still on-going. Once the blueprints are complete, each group will then have to re-scale again to create our array city on our hallway wall. They'll also need to come together and decide on the scale we will use as a group in order to preserve the accuracy of our building relations on the wall.

Some groups decided that, because they're called blueprints, they should be blue. We may have to redo a couple of these :).

In this investigation, we have also delved into the science behind skyscrapers as part of our study of simple machines, and have hit many other grade 3 and 4 science curriculum outcomes, such as Building with a variety of Materials (we learned how experts do it: switching from stone to concrete, for example, as height increases and pressure grows). We looked at the innovations that made these giant buildings possible. For example, we looked at the elevator, its use of pulleys, and the invention of the safety elevator which allowed the first "skyscrapers" to be built. We discussed design-thinking and how architecture has to take so many different considerations into account (such as how to get people up to the top, thickness of walls and interior space, cost, and safety).

Our hallway wall will eventually be covered in blueprints, an array city of to-scale buildings, and our research about skyscrapers, such as how many people can work/live in them, how long to build, etc.

This has been a challenging task, and I'm very proud of how the students are engaging with it. We're probably a week or two away from this being completed, and I'll be sure to post more videos and photos as we go.

In science, we continued our work on wheels and axles and had our weekly contest with the other grade 3-4 classes. After looking at the principles behind wheels and axles, and investigating how changing the diameter of a wheel affects the distance travelled in relation to the axle size, many students chose to construct vehicles with larger wheels. Some did not. Below are some videos of our competition this morning.

Students also experimented with the slope of the inclined plane they wanted to use, the weights of their vehicles. They tried to limit the friction their wheels experienced.

We, of course, tested our cars in class. Here's a blooper of one of our tests :). 

Our class worked with our grade 1-2 buddies this week. We led our buddies in a math card game I've described in earlier blogs: make 10. Our students were very helpful showing their buddies different ways to make ten and helping further master their skills. 

In social, we are now safely in India. Mrs. Wilson gave our classes a bit of a scavenger hunt. Students were given a series of questions, and then had to research those on our school tablets and in atlases. They learned about the geography of India, including the oceans it borders, many of the regions and provinces, and cities. 

Overall, a fun and productive week!

Hello! We had a fun week, and it was nice to get outside again for recess.

In math, we started a new project that we've been talking about. We will be building an 'array city'. We decided on this as a way to decorate our hallway, engage in some art, and to use the opportunity to present some of our math learning.

Instead, however, of simply cutting out building shapes and posting them with arrays, we will be working with real buildings (Empire State building, etc) and scaling them down properly, before reproducing them on our hallway wall. We'll be looking at proportion, ratios, scaling, multiplication, division. We'll be thinking like architects, and deciding on proper scales for our blueprints. It should be fun and a challenge, and we'll be working on this for the next little while. Below is an example of a fairly simplistic array city. Ours should be quite interesting, and I'm excited to see what we can do.

In social studies, we are wrapping up our trip to Tunisia. Mrs. Wilson had the children create large-scale postcards that demonstrated what they learned about Tunisia. This authentic task allowed students to write and share in a way that they would actually do in their everyday lives. Students used the computers to help them research their ideas, as well as to find pictures that they could refer to for the picture side of their postcard. They also researched Tunisian stamps so they could have proper "mail" their postcard to family and friends.

In physical education, Mr. Ellice has us well into basketball. We have worked on dribbling with both hands, passing (both bounce and chest), and are now onto shooting.