April 22-26

This week we centered a good portion of our learning and inquiry around Earth Day and its focus on Planet vs Plastics. We focussed on the concerns over single use plastics and how we as a community can be proactive in this work. We also focussed on the book Thank you Earth, A Love Letter to Our Planet, by April Pulley Sayre. This was a springboard for us to consider all those gifts that Earth provides for us. Students were challenged with developing their own love letter to Earth that was written in letter format with a greeting, body and sign off. The other success criteria we established were to include 1-3 alliterations (words with a repetition of the same sound) with connecting ideas such as  - marvelous monkeys and gigantic giraffes. Students next steps were to create post cards with their letters, a sending address, stamp and pictures. Here is a glimpse at some of their amazing and thoughtful work!




We also examined the book, The Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom and considered how our community would be affected if we had polluted water around us and water that was not clean to drink. To show reciprocity and our commitment to our Earth we headed out as a grade team to participate in a community clean up. 


 A big thank you to our grade 3 and 4 classes for their beautifully thoughtful and informative assembly. We loved every minute!

Math - This week we moved onto subtraction with regrouping using the vertical algorithm. 
This traditional procedure for subtracting whole numbers involves takeaway thinking. For two-digit subtraction, first the ones of the smaller number are taken from the ones of the greater number, and then the tens of the smaller number are taken from the tens of the greater one.
Sometimes, though, there are not enough ones in the greater number to take from, so you regroup: trade 1 ten from the greater number for 10 ones. For example, when you subtract 52 – 38, there are not enough ones in 52 to remove 8 of them. 
(please see our class blog for this information and practice questions students can do at home).










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