It's happened...that seemingly magical transformation that always seems to happen around this time of year in 4th grade. The students have begun to realise how capable they all are. It is in this discovery that 4L students have grown to need me less as they seek independence in their learning. It's a delightful shift to witness and has kept me grinning from ear to ear all week! Here's the learning we've been up to. In Unit, last week we completed our research of a real animal. We worked in groups of 3 to share our "animal's story"- this is the zoomed out version of our animal. Using our knowledge of habitat, diet, and predators, we analysed how the features/behaviors our animal has promote its survival. We synthesised our thinking into a graphic or mind map and then shared these in small rotating groups of 3.
We continued to tie our real animal research into our work with our imaginary creatures as reality gave way to fantasy. We applied our new understanding and knowledge to complete an animal story for our imaginary creatures. We went back into our notes, thought about what we had learned through our own research and from our classmates to revise our work. The goal was to ensure that the features we had given our imaginary creatures did, in fact, support survival in the habitat we had imagined for it.
Steven thinks develops his imaginary creature's animal story
Rojus and Antanas build their animal story referring to notes and drafts
After the revision process, we created a final image of our creature and labeled it. We decided to share these with the whole class so that everyone could take notes and prepare for how their creatures might interact/survive in the event that they were forced into the same habitat.
Eva develops the 'Limbo' while Migle works on the 'Taco Bug'
Nora refers to notes as she creates a final diagram of 'Cloudy' the dragon, while Rojus labels his creature 'Friger'
Antanas shares about 'Greenbug' as his classmates listen, ask questions and take notes
Having this firm understanding of our creatures allowed us to go to the next step of our writing process, which is drafting. We used RAFT writing again and this time completed diary entries written in the first person from our creature's perspective. Our first diary entry was about our diet. Some students wrote exciting narratives about catching and killing prey. Our more peaceful creatures wrote about their leisurely morning spent in a field eating flowers.
Aleksandras begins to draft a diary entry about how his creature 'Sasquack' finds its food
Gerda drafts her entry about the 'Reester's' predator attack
We then moved onto to write an entry about getting chased/caught by our predators. Some of our classmates volunteered to share their process with us so we could hear examples. These entries were exciting, dramatic and more action packed. We spent a bit of time figuring out how we could go about creating the appropriate amount of tension and suspense for these entries. We agreed that the reader should feel like they're on a roller coaster as they read this entry. The suspense should take us up the tall hill and just as the creature gets caught or escapes narrowly (climax- or peak of the roller coaster), the coaster should begin to slowly ease us back down the hill to safety.
Migle shares a diary entry with her classmates about how the 'Taco Bug' escapes Benas' creature the 'Sibertron'
Elena shares a diary entry about a narrow escape and newfound adaptation for her creature the 'Elemental Griffin' which leaves us on the edge of our seats!
In mathematics, we began unit 3 by taking a pre-assessment. (Find our Math Unit 3 Letter and Online Practice on the Mathematics page of our blog.) With the varying levels of understanding, we agreed to try something new during math. The students will choose their level of understanding depending on the concept being studied and will group themselves accordingly. We decided to group ourselves like this:
Deep Thinkers - like a fair bit of time to work through new concepts, like to work through examples with support, like having peers or a teacher close to give feedback or support
Questioners - like to try working with the new concept on their own first, like to ask questions only when they get "stuck", enjoy getting feedback from peers
Independents - like to work through the concept on their own and only check in with teacher once they've completed the task, like to grapple with challenges independently or using their reference book/math wall for support
Antanas works through a multiplication problem utilising counters to help him visualise the problem
Steven utilises his white board to break down factors and problem solve
We began multiplication number talks. The value of multiplication number talks is that it demystifies the process of what's actually happening when we multiply. Though there is some value in memorising our basic times table facts, there is no proof that this is a necessary step for successful problem solving. It may save time but what we've quickly realised is that some of us who have memorised facts struggle to manipulate information mathematically without being told what to "plug and chug" into an algorithm. It is necessary for good mathematicians to be able to break problems down into steps and to truly understand WHY they are doing what they do. The students have also grown more independent in choosing which mathematical tools best help them during problem solving and have concluded that there is nothing shameful about using our fingers when we need them!
Students work on a multiplication number talk using various tools as needed
There has been a lot of discussion about which strategies are better for mental math vs. paper/pencil algorithms. Both are necessary and most often the situation in life will dictate which is used. We have been practicing with two main strategies this week.
1) Break apart one of the factors
2) Round one of the factors and then add or subtract as necessary
Some strategies include repeated addition which we then formulate into multiplication number sentences
Shourya's thinking utilises the estimation strategy and Steven's thinking demonstrates the factor break-down strategy. Eva and Antanas' strategies are similar in the use of repeated addition formulated into multiplication number models
We had the pleasure of spending time together with 4A at the park this week. Our favourite activities this week were: climbing the big hill, playing "Hunger Games" and "Harry Potter", and observing the ducks and their interesting new winter behaviours.
Veronika and Yelyzaveta enjoy some time in 4th grader's favourite tree in Tymo Park
Shourya, Basel and Yigit engage in a serious game of "Harry Potter"
Friends pitch in to help each other climb the big hill!
Some students discover that sturdy sticks work like Nordic walking sticks to propel them up the hill
Benas discovers that the ducks have mostly left the pond for this newly cleared space with a tiny creek...and what ARE they digging for in the mud, anyway?
Throughout the week, the students finalised their Genius Hour Passion Projects. They committed to an objective/outcome, began to think about how they would document their learning process, and thought through the steps they'd follow to achieve their goal. On Friday, the students were busy with various types of inquiry. While some were deeply invested in online research, others were jumping in and getting their hands on their tasks. Our goal is to understand that research happens differently for each of us depending upon which kind of learner we are. Some students determined that they could not begin anything without doing the proper amount of research for guidance. Others, however, decided that their instinct was to jump right in and try and then research when they got stuck. The students each named some "experts" they could refer to for help during this process. The goal here is to help them realise that "GOOGLE" does not always know best and that skill of multi-disciplinary thinking we're trying to achieve will mean reaching out to a real person who could offer guidance or input. We are not sure how this first round of Passion Projects will turn out but before we began this journey, we unanimously agreed that going through the process will help guide us in future endeavours and that we are willing to make some mistakes in order to grow!
Benas and Rojus investigate gaming software as they begin their journey to coding, Elena illustrates new game characters based on her previous research, Basel creates a Harry Potter wand prop for his play, Yigit inquires with Aleksandras about how to shoot a video of his new dance moves
Krista uses a teddy bear as her model for dog clothes, Antanas begins his stuffed animal creation, Veronika researches programs for stop-motion animation and Steven watches videos of football tricks to get ideas for his own trick creation
Finally, we had the pleasure of celebrating our friend Benas' birthday together!
Benas with his very cool (and tasty) Minecraft cupcakes made by Mom!
It was another fabulous week in 4L. As the students have decided that they'd like to begin documenting their learning on their own individual blogs, I will now be the sole contributor to this one. We will begin setting up their blogs next week. Hooray for student independence!
In language arts, we began to investigate how RAFT writing plays a role in what we read and how we write.
To explore this idea and get some practice with it, we read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. This helped us understand how telling a story from a different perspective might change the way it's told as well as how it's understood or perceived.
Nora adds characteristics to our RAFT brainstorm/plan
Aleksandras and Rojus; Nora and Elena draft letters to Mack from Julia from "The One and Only Ivan"
We investigated Line of Inquiry 1: Different types of adaptations as we completed some simple research to find and label animal adaptations. We then went to the book we've been reading together as a class called The One and Only Ivan. This story is told from a Gorilla's point of view in the form of diary entries of sort. Since we are well acquainted with each character, we completed a shared writing and a pair writing where we changed the Role, Audience, Format and Topic to see how the writing changes. This will tie in with our writing when we begin to write about our imaginary creatures in their imaginary habitats.
Polar bear adaptations research
Platypus adaptation research
We then began to dig a little deeper and realized we needed to move toward Line 2, which is Adaptations support survival. We understood that we can't fully understand why animals need their adaptations unless we get the big picture or understand the "story" of our animal. Therefore, we zoomed out a bit and began to gather information on our animal's diet, habitat and predators and make connections between adaptations and each of these factors.
We then connect these adaptations to other parts of our research to get the bigger picture
Zooming out- we seek to tell the whole animal story by digging deeper into diet, predators and habitat
Finally, we synthesise this information and create one graphic/mind map showing what we've learned
All of our research will support us as we move on to build our animal habitats in art and write about different interactions and survival of our imaginary creatures.
In math, we continued to work with data handling finding landmarks in our data. We then began to analyze how we use this information and why it might be helpful considering a certain set of data. The students also moved from mental subtraction to completing subtraction problems on paper. We concluded our work with number talks on subtraction, however that does not mean they cannot still work on these with you at home. If you've never had a number talk with your child, I encourage you to ask them to complete one with you. They are pretty amazing problem solvers!
Shourya celebrates that he has discovered a new strategy for subtraction that pushes him to think more deeply
Basel demonstrates his favorite strategy for subtraction that he has found works in both Number Talks and on paper!
Number talks have expanded to include two problems so we can challenge ourselves accordingly
Students organize themselves by head size so we may begin to analyse the data we have collected
We also got to spend time in the park with 4A this week. This week we discovered a great climbing hill! We also enjoyed throwing rocks to crack the ice and puzzled over many of the strange effects our actions had on the ice layer and the water below. Several of the students spent time observing the ducks and applied their newly acquired knowledge from research as they analysed different adaptations and behaviours that have changed since the pond has frozen over.
Shourya, Yigit and Rafael show off the big hunk of snow they found!
Migle and Eva make their way up the big hill so they can turn around and slide back down again through the leaves
Sofija chips away at ice on the pond as she explores the changes in our environment as seasons have changed. Many students felt compelled to break up the ice to create more opportunities for the ducks to search for food
Finally, on Friday, we had our creativity time. We presented some of the creative projects we've been working on at home.
Migle's newspaper basket- she was inspired by a clip we watched together before break
Krista shows off her passion for fashion as she displays the many fashions she's sewed and created for Barbie (with a little help from Grandma)
Gerda shows how her passion for Harry Potter shines through in an artistic cup she has decorated to look like Harry himself!
Elena mixes two of her passions: art and gaming, to create a mask of one of her favorite characters
As we continue to seek inspiration and develop our 21st skills, we have changed the way we will carry out this time in class. We began by watching Kid President's "Pep Talk". We summarised the big ideas we took away from his message.
We then referred back to the Adaptable Mind video we watched a couple of weeks back to see if what we were working on at home truly covered those 5 skills we deemed important:
creativity
multi-disciplinary thinking
empathy
curiosity
initiative
We asked ourselves whether what we were creating could tick off all the boxes here. We decided that although following a DIY project plan is fun, it does not really show much... other than the fact that we know how to follow directions!
Therefore, we will move our Friday homeroom time over to something similar to a model that Google uses called Genius Hour. We will follow these three guidelines:
You must begin with a DRIVING QUESTION
You must complete RESEARCH and share the resources you used
You must SHARE your project with the class (or the world, no big deal!)
We realised that we needed to find a good place to begin. Therefore, we looked inward and began to think about our own passions in life. These are the things we LOVE learning about. These are the things we'd do all day if we didn't have other obligations and duties. I told the students they could have the weekend to think about their passions, but several of them did not need another minute. They posted their ideas on our board.
Next week we will begin formulating "thick" questions that will drive our research and project building. The students will have 7 weeks to complete this project and will plan to present it before we leave for Christmas Break in December. They will be encouraged to seek advice and participation from parents as this is a wonderful activity that families can do together!
This week during Monday at writing we discussed the writing process that authors have to go through. We improved our writing about the drama creature since probably everyone missed something that was mentioned in the writing process.The drama creature is an animal that we imagined at drama. We had to create a habitat that it lives in and the specific details that explained how it was adaptable to nature, also adding character traits.In drama we created groups that were connected to our creatures, we acted out what the creatures would do if they met each other in the same habitat, also we presented what we did.
Yigit works on details of building his character and planning his writing.
Elena revises a sketch of her creature and begins to jot ideas and plans below her sketch
We logged on to google docs and studied the habitat our creature lived in, we looked for images that were similar to our creatures and wrote facts, we also revised and checked if what we wrote made sense.We watched how wolves saved the food chain and how the wolves changed the river. The river changed because of the roots of the trees, which were also fixed because of the wolves.
Veronika, Shourya, Aleksandras and Nora watch a video on trophic cascades and consider: how they can connect this information to previous learning, extend their thinking and what ideas have challenged them or left them with questions
Our class connections, extensions and challenges
by: Basel and Elena
It was our last week before the holiday but grade 4L were focused and learning in full-force this week!
In math we continued to explore large numbers. We focused on reading and writing large numbers, as well as determining the value of each digit in a large number depending on its place. We also practiced gathering data and analyzing it. We used tally marks and line plots to find data landmarks like: maximum, minimum, range, mode and median. Those who are working on challenging themselves also read a math essay on how to determine the mean of the data.
Rojus, Shourya, Krista and Veronika use the math wall resource while working with data handling
We learned a new subtraction strategy for Number Talks called "Add Up". Many students found this method was a good fit for them and suited their mathematical thinking process.
Finally, we played math games to practice skills we independently determined we need to work on.
Gerda and Sofia play High Number Toss and practice reading large numbers and identifying the value of different digits
Our 2nd unit of inquiry is extremely transdisciplinary as we have found authentic collaboration between language arts, unit of inquiry, art and drama.
We began our thinking by imagining a creature in drama.
4L then discussed the process they believe writers must use to create a good piece of writing.
Grade 4L's feedback on the writing process
We used this process and began with step one: Planning.
Summary of 4L's thinking in a graphic
Several students shared how they like to plan before writing.
Benas shares how he constantly revises (even in the planning stage) and leaves only things he's absolutely sure about in bold black pen
Nora shares how she likes to create a T chart when planning out her characters and setting
We used the topic of our drama creature and began building a plan using any strategy we found helpful.
Antanas shares his planning process showing a graphic and a chart where he has collected thoughts and initial ideas
Eva shares her planning which involves a drawing with labels that stretch over to the next page to include more detail
Next, we read interviews with famous authors who described how they create believable characters. We used their insight and began to research real animals and habitats so that we could develop our imaginary ones.
Sofia and Antanas research information on different habitats and take notes to help guide their writing
In art, we used our research and combined it with our imagination to draft artworks of our creature's habitat.
Nora and Migle bring their ideas to life in art
Veronika shares her creature's habitat
Gerda references her creature as she imagines the habitat and begins to sketch her ideas
As we begin to zoom out and see the big picture of our fantasy creature and world, we realise there is a need to revise and refine our thinking. Though our work is based on fantasy, we have begun to build an understanding of the central idea of our 2nd unit: "Living things need to change in order to survive." We also enjoyed giving back to our larger community by raking leaves together with grade 10 students in Bernardinai Park.
We celebrated Student Council's "Moustache Day" in style. Here you see us channeling our new moustachioed alter egos!
Finally, we had the chance to celebrate our friend Nora's 9th birthday together.
