Mrs.Cooper Grade3/4

Our field trip to Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation area was AMAZING! We learned that Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation Area is 4,800 acres of protected area that is “beautiful, “amazing” and “full of nature”. We pretended to go back in time to see how the land has changed and how humans have made an impact on the land. We call this our ecological footprint. Skyler described an ecological footprint as “the mark we leave on the Earth by doing stuff in our everyday lives”. Max said that to him an ecological footprint is “how we are changing the world, taking away natural places like cutting trees, wasting paper or using gas.” We also learned that our ecological footprint is bigger now than it was when the Indigenous People lived off the land. Enayah explained that this is because “they used nature a different way than us.” Harrison also added that “they didn’t have cars,” and Zen shared that, “the Indigenous People killed bison or buffalo. They used every part of it. They didn’t want t...

Wow! Another busy week! We are building board games in social studies to show our understanding and to teach others some new information. The grade threes have been exploring the question “How does daily life and access to services reflect the quality of life in various communities?” After discussing what things contribute to a good quality of life and what things contribute to a poorer quality of life, each group looked at daily life and services in one of the four countries we are studying.   Some of us have built games where we move forward or get points if we land on a part of daily life that adds to a good quality of life. Others are making maps and adding things that represent what daily life is like in that country.  The grade fours are exploring how diverse and culturally rich Alberta is while exploring the question “How does Alberta’s fossil heritage make Alberta unique?” Their games are going to teach others about the fossils in Alberta, and what you should do if you...

O ne highlight from our week was mission impossible. We took all of our skills that we learned in gymnastics and used them to move through the Mission Impossible course. During gymnastics we learned about controlled body movements, balances, working through progressively hard movements and trying difficult things. Specifically we looked at the learning intentions: I can participate in risk-taking and adventurous play activities that promote well-being. I can participate in physical activities that increase in complexity. I can identify and implement personal strategies to overcome challenges in a variety of physical activities.  It was also support staff appreciation week. We did a caring project where we made a small gift to thank all the support staff in our school. We loved delivering them and telling all our special school staff what we appreciate about them! Another highlight was our work with Ms. Sharon. We were using spiral patterns in nature, particularly the Fibo...

W hen we look at the calendar we cannot believe that we are approaching the end of April!! It feels like our year is going so fast. However when Mrs. Cooper looks at the growth in our reading, writing, math and critical thinking skills, she can really tell how much work we have put in this year. The focus of our writing this week was on procedural writing with a continued emphasis on making our writing clear and interesting for our readers. We explored the use of various transition words to make our writing flow together and to make sure that it was interesting. We talked a lot about how writing should sound the way that we speak with interesting word choices and making sure it doesn’t sound like a list. Finally, we made sure that we had a topic sentence that introduced our paragraph, and then a concluding sentence that wrapped up our ideas. Another big focus of our week was developing healthy relationships and how to deal with “healthy conflict”. We talked about how conflict is no...

We are so excited about how our pysanky eggs turned out and we cannot wait to bring them home! When doing them we learned that it was harder than we thought it would be, that there are many steps to this process and that in the Ukrainian culture, each symbol has it’s own meaning. Did you know that a spiral means defense or protection, a ladder means prosperity, and roses mean love and caring? Before we decorated our own eggs, we did a pencil sketch plan using the symbols that represent us or our family, or wishes that we want for the future. Our eggs will come home this week, and Mrs. Cooper will send another message, however she wants to remind everyone that our eggs are raw and full! This means that each family has a few choices about what they want to do with the eggs: You can visit Pysanky Info: Emptying Eggs to learn how to hollow out the eggs. This is common in the Ukrainian culture (and what Mrs. Cooper’s family does). A slight warning, there is a possibility that the eggs c...

Happy Early Easter to those in our class who celebrate. A reminder that tomorrow, Friday April 7 is Good Friday so there is no school. Monday is also a learning day for teachers so we hope everyone enjoys and extra long weekend! We wanted to share that room 6 and room 5 are learning how to make psyanky eggs in Social Studies. Pysanky eggs are Ukrainian Easter eggs and they are part of their culture. This week we read three legends to explain why Psyanky is so important to the Ukrainian culture. The three legends were different, but also similar in some ways. All of them shared the message that it is important to spread love and kindness to friends, family and nature. We were lucky enough to share what we know about psyanky eggs with our kindergarten buddies on Thursday, and help them explore patterns while we decorated paper psyanky eggs with them. We also learned that we would be making our own pysanky eggs next week. Ms. Bouchard and Mrs. Cooper told us that if we are going to carry ...

Happy Spring Break to everyone! Before we share a bit about our week, a reminder that the week of March 27-31 is Spring Break for the Calgary Board of Education so there is no school next week. This week was another full one however, the highlight of our week had to be Science! We finished our Leprechaun Launchers this week, being sure to use the design process:   When designing, building and testing our designs, the grade threes were working on being able to say "I can apply procedures to test different designs" and "I can identify and apply methods for making a structure stronger and more stable". The focus for the grade fours was to be able to say "I can construct models of levers and explain how levers are involved in such devices" and "I can use simple forces to power or propel a device" Both grades were focusing on the following process learning intentions: I can evaluate a design and make adjustments. I can work cooperativel...