Welcome to the World of Language Arts!

Welcome Parents and Students!

I hope everyone is ready to get started with our new unit in language arts! We will be discovering new words every day and posting them on the board to help you with your journal entries.

The following curriculum expectation for language arts, is as follows and you can let your parents know what we will be covering:

Read a variety of texts from diverse cultures, including literacy texts (e.g. short stories, poetry, myths, legends, fantasies, novels, plays), graphic texts (e.g. graphic novels, advertisements, atlases, graphic organizers, charts, and tables), and informational texts, (e.g. biographies, textworks, and other non-fiction materials; articles and reports, print and online editorials, various electronic texts, webquest texts).

Now that we know the expectation, the following sites and information will help you in the classroom and with your homework.

The web site: www.grimmfairytales.com/en/man will help you discover a variety of stories with diverse cultures and different themes. You will see that there are different versions to the classical stories that you may know. Cinderella may be a story that you know but it is the Disney version. The Grimm's version of Cinderella is actually more of a "darker" theme. Grimm Fairy tales will take you on a journey where you will discover a variety of interesting information.

We all know about tongue-twisters so we are going to visit the following site that will help us with novels, myths, biographies and short articles. Tongue twisters will help you expand your vocabulary while having fun at the same time. You will discover tongue twisters in a different variety of texts that will be very interesting. Check it out at: http://www.indianchild.com/animated_tongue_twisters.html . This will assist you with speaking also when you practice reading out loud.

The last site will help you and your parents, learn new words with relation to your independent reading. You are all reading a novel presently and discoverisng new words. There are many different genres and even some of the graphic texts are a great resource in learning new words.

The following sites will help expand your vocabulary and you will also learn more about graphic texts at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/read-up-on-it/015020-100-e.html. The next site will help you expand your vocabulary and you will learn many new words: http:/dictionaryreference.com/.

Keep up the good work class and enjoy the activities.

Mrs. Lolua

Science and Technology in the Classroom

Hello Grade 4's!!!!!

Please let your parents know that the following curriculum expectation for science and technology related to habitats includes the following for students to know:

- be able to demonstrate an understanding of the concepts of habitat and community and identify the factors that could affect habitats and communities of plants and animals.

I hope everyone is working towards understanding different habitats of animals that live in Canada and throughout the world, and how the animals all live and survive in their community. In marshlands there are many types of animals that live in this environment. These include muskrats, beavers, ducks, geese and snakes among many others. The food chain consists of specific animals laying eggs and in turn the snake would eat these eggs to survive. This is called the circle of life. At the top of the food chain we have man and the food chain works down by humans eating meat which consists of many different kinds of animals. On your journey, you will discover the importance of how different animals depend upon one another and how they are all connected! Please check out this web site that is an interactive game relating to habitats and food webs in ponds and woodlands:

http://pbskids.org/eekoworld/index_flash.html.

Well, now that you have had some fun learning about animals, their habitats and food webs, let us move on to the following. Animals live everywhere on our earth- in every kind of terrain and every kind of climate. An animal's living place is called its habitat. The majority of animals are only adapted to live in one or two habitats. A rattlesnake could not live for very long in the arctic and a polar bear would not live long in Africa. Some animals migrate in the spring and then in the fall to find warmer habitats with food that will sustain them. Please check out the following site that will allow you to match animals to their habitat:

http://www.uen.org/utahlink/activities/view_activity.cgi?

Now that we have a better understanding of what habitat means and how animals live within their communities and rely on one another, we will now continue with food webs. We need to know about animals that are active in the daytime and at night. We have to understand that animals depend on each other for energy. We will also discover sources of energy needed for the animals to survive in their daily life. The following site will also help us list sources of food and shelter for animals. Have fun checking out this site and learning about different animals, their habitats and their sources of food and shelter that are needed for them to survive.

http://www.gould.edu.au/foodwebs/

We have covered a great deal of information with relation to habitats and foodwebs. Please enjoy your learning experience and let me know if the following sites helped you along with your discovery...................

Until next time!

Mrs Lolua

MATH IS FUN!!!!

Good to have you back, Grade 4's!

How is everyone enjoying our unit on Patterning and Algebra? There are many math games that we have used to help us learn about patterning. We made many patterns with numbers, shapes and using the alphabet. See, you can have fun with math. When I was your age, I found math to be a challenge but I never gave up and with the help of my friends and family, I started to enjoy math! I even took math in university and now I am helping you to have fun learning math and we are learning something new every day! Even all of you are coming up with your own set of problems and sharing them with your classmates. I am very impressed! All of you are even teaching me new things to help me learn. Imagine that? Keep up the good work class!

If you want your parents to help you out with your homework, why not let them check out the expectation that is in the math curriculum and the following websites that will help you out?

Math Expectation: Patterns and Relationships:

-create a number pattern involving addition, subtraction, or multiplication, given a pattern rule expressed in words.

Here are the websites:

http://www.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/wired_math/english/grade4.shtml.

The next website will help you learn while playing math games:

http://www.funbrain.com/linejump/index.html.

Last, but not least the next website will help you see different patterns and how you can relate them to your life.

http://www.mathleague.com/help/metric/metric.htm.

Have fun and let me know what you think.

Until next time, keep up the good work students, it will pay off in the end.


Mrs. Lolua

Medieval Times

Hello Grade 4 Class!

I hope everyone is enjoying our Social Studies unit! It is very exciting learning about castles, spinning wheels, freemasons, knights, games, jousting, kings and nobles.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be talking about Castles. In the Ontario curriculum for grade 4, the following expectation for castles, is as follows:

Describe characteristics of castles and aspects of castle life(e.g., design and building methods; community structure- lord, knights, squires, men-at-arms, workers; sports and entertainment; heraldry; justice; conflict and defence).

With this expectation in mind, please check out the following sites that will assist you with this expectation regarding castles. The following web site will help you learn about the parts of a castle, what they had inside them and the people that lived in them.
Check it out:

www.castles.org/kids_Section/Castle_Story/index.htm.

Another website to view regarding a beautifully designed and carefully researche site on castles for kids is:

www.castlesontheweb.com

The last site with regards to viewing castles of the world, where King Edwards takes you on a tour of his virtual castle is:

www.castles.org/kid/

Have fun checking out all of these wonderful sites to help you build and research castles in Medieval Times.

See you soon class!

Mrs. Lolua

Research Sources

Hello Girls and Boys!
I hope all of you are enjoying your studies and having fun at the same time! Is it not wonderful learning new things and going on adventures within the classroom? I am going to supply you with the following links to help in your studies at school, while having fun at the same time!

With regards to Math, you can go to mathFrogaand have Melvin match his equivalent fractions. This is a fun game for parents and students to print off.

If you need help with your Ancient Civilizations Project, you can check out the following sites at: www.mrdowling.com/index.html for help. This will help you finding famour Greek gods and goddesses that existed in Greece.

For the students doing research on Rome architecture, why not check out: http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/midhist.html. This will really help you learn about the culture in Rome while exploring the different types of architecture that existed during this time.

For general interest to both parents and students for when we will be discussing Ancient Egypt civilization, check out the following site before we start our unit on Ancient Egypt, at: www.historyforkids.org/index.htm. Here you will discover how they made and preserved "Mommies" during the time of ancient Egypt. You will definitely enjoy this activity.

Thanks for checking my blog out and see you all in school

Mrs. Lolua

Exploring Ancient World Cultures

Students, to help you with your Ancient Civilization Project visit the following site to assist you with your research: http://eawc.evansville.edu/index.html