Dearest Grade 4 parents, 

North Star alert!  At OJCS, our students own their own learning, which means learning to goal-set is of paramount importance to their growth and development – now and throughout their lives.  Our conferencing opportunity to sit together with you and your child to discuss personalized goals is swiftly approaching on Thursday, November 2nd & Friday, 3rd, we are sending along some much-needed information to support you and your child through this growth process. 

Here is a helpful timeline so you understand the flow of the Goal-Setting Conferences:

A grade-level appropriate lesson has been taught to help your child understand the benefits of setting personal goals (whether academic, social skills-related, social-emotional and/or spiritual).

• Our teachers are currently meeting individually with each student to help them think about what goals would be most beneficial for them at this time. You will receive a blank goal template ahead of time, ready to discuss on the day/night. This is a part of your child’s homework this week. You are encouraged to discuss your own goals for your child with them and bring these ideas with you to Goal-Setting Conferences to add with the teacher.
• You will book your Goal-Setting Conference with Ellie so that you can meet with the classroom teachers to have a meaningful discussion about the goals selected and to make a plan to help invite success.

This is a new process we are piloting in response to student, parent and teacher feedback.  We believe strongly that it will help everyone more easily connect the dots with regard to what should be prioritized for your child, with their voice and yours a part of the conversation.

Thanks in advance for the time you will be taking to discuss goals with your children.

With excitement,

The Grade-4-Team

Hello Grade 4 families,

We need your recycled goods!

We are beginning to collect items for the OJCS Global Maker Day, on Tuesday, October 17th. We are looking for wine bottle corks, popsicle sticks, cereal/cracker boxes, toilet paper tubes, paint stir sticks, popsicle sticks, and plastic tubs/lids (think yogurt pots, sour cream tubs – clean please!) items to help with our creativity. 

Thank you for your continued support!

To end our unit on Ma Famille, grade 4 students in Madame Sylvie’s class presented their family to the class “en français” with great pride. In addition to practicing the vocabulary learned in class, they showed their computer expertise and creativity. Creating their family tree entailed listening to a short Youtube video before attempting to follow the intricate steps on their own. The end results were quite impressive coming from such a young audience. Hearing them speak French when presenting their family tree projects made me incredibly proud of them. Félicitations les quatrième année – Madame Sylvie est fière de vous tous!

Upcoming Events:

• Generations Day – Monday, May 15th
• Oren’s dress down day on Wednesday, May 17th – Wear something ‘ crazy’
• Menchies are being served on Mondays and Wednesdays after school. $4 per cup and all money raised goes towards the grade 8 grad trip.
• No school Monday, May 22nd for Victoria Day
• N0 School Friday, May 26th for Shavout.

Homework:

• Practice your speech, using Verbal and nonverbal cues. Please see the homework board for Ms.M’s Slides.

What’s happening in Grade 4:

We had a great night out for Grades 4/5 night at Fun Haven. I managed to get one snap before Lazer tag!

We have started self-directed science. Please my blog post to find out more about the whys and hows surrounding student choices in curriculum planning! Here are some snaps of students working on their projects:

Alongside their self-directed learning, there are teacher-led lessons. We ventured outdoors to collect, classify and test the rocks and minerals we found on the school grounds.

We also have students bringing their rock collections to class. This is a wonderful extension of their learning. This week we have Mr.S and Mr. G showcase:

Memorial Days in our class

In the last two weeks, we had important and significant commemorative events.

On Holocaust Day – students shared a little about their family memories at that time. And thanks and appreciation to Ari and Emma for bringing their family story to the class, writing it and presenting it to the class! Thank you very much for sharing these sad and important stories.

On the day of remembrance of fallen Israeli soldiers – we learned about a soldier – named Amit who was killed in one of the battles. We learned about his features and created a micrograph from his name and character traits.

Hello Grade 4 and Grade 4 families,

I know this event is a big one in terms of the Grade 4 journey into Public Speaking! When I say big, I mean BIG EMOTIONAL responses to it! For some public speaking sparks excitement, apprehension, butterflies-in-the-stomach, for others dread, terror, sick-to-the-stomach and the final group… complete indifference! With this in mind and as per Ms Gordon’s email, we are switching the format to relieve some of the pressure on Grade 4 students. Students will write their speech and present in class to their peers. I will mark it and then the top three marks in each class will be awarded 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. At a later date they will present to the Grade 3 class.

What can you do at home to help?

Most of the written work will be completed in class. Each student has received a planning pack to chunk down the planning with sentence starters and key vocabulary. We use the PEEL paragraph structure to build our points with evidence and students will be typing their essays on Google Docs so feel free to take a peak!

I will be encouraging students to present at home to practise their verbal and non verbal speaking skills. Here is some resources you could use at home: