What We're Up To in Room 209 - Monday, November 17th-Thursday, November 20th

Language 
-students are continuing to work on their 40 book challenge and are encouraged to select books from different genres
-we received emails from our friends Genevieve and Alison and wrote collaborative replies to them
-we wrote about a time when we were brave and how it felt to be worried or nervous and how it felt to do something that we knew was right
-students are practicing creating and working on collaborative documents on the Google Drive
-we are learning about the details that are important to include in a news story: the 5Ws and 1 H and thinking about our audience
-we can't tell you much about it, but "The Book with No Pictures" may make its way to your home soon!
-students are looking through their work to find words that they have used "temporary spelling" for and are creating their own, individual spelling lists to practice
-we are learning about end punctuation: periods, question marks and exclamation marks
-we are building up our stamina in the Read to Self portion of our ECLIPSE language program
-we are learning about how to use homonyms to understand and create puns and punny jokes

Art 
-we are practicing drawing "Brave Bots"

Math
-we are talking about measurement, and focusing on length
-we are practicing using both standard and non-standard units of measurement
-students are relying on estimation skills and using tools to check their thinking
-we are learning about how mm cm and m are related
-we are continuing to practice telling time
-we are collecting non-perishable food items to measure their mass
-we did the Francis Fractions slideshow and talked about how fractions are meaningless if you don't know the size of the whole and that a fraction is about comparing the numerator and denominator

Science 
-Hitchbot Jr is heading to Toronto for a Mini Maker Faire with our friend Alison from Maker Junior! We have built and dressed him and created prototypes for his instructions and notebook. He will meet Hitchbot and be tested in Toronto so we can make new iterations.
-we learned about a boy who has no eyes but can "see" with echolocation, like a bat!
-Scientists in the Schools came in and worked with the grade 4s on sound and the grade 3s on forces acting on structures and mechanisms
-Skype wasn't working, but we were planning to have a call with our friend Sofika from Copernicus Education about being an Imagineer. We'll do that next week.

Social Studies
-we are continuing to discuss the Learning Skills (Responsibility, Organization, Independent Work, Collaboration, Initiative and Self Regulation) and how we can demonstrate them in school

Phys Ed
-along with Gillian's grade 2s, we are learning traditional Scottish folk dances

Health
-we are modelling for our friends in the Mighty Minions how to eat mindfully (silent, still, hats off, stay in seat, enjoy your food using your senses)
-we are discussing

Tree Families
-our theme this month is empathy and our big idea is to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
-we shared the book "The English Roses" and discussed the message and big idea, and how we can connect to the story in our own lives, in the world around us and in other texts