Friday's News

Happy Friday!

Hope everyone has had a great week.  It's sure been a busy one for us.  

First of all I (Libby) am involved in a fitness online group.  It's been a great start and they have helped motivate me to run no matter what....even when the weather isn't the best. 

This week we have started cursive writing.  I use the document camera to show the students how to write each letter. We are doing one letter a day. 

Then, students go to their desk to practice the letter of the day. 

Next, Jeff has been working hard to put out a new social studies unit.  

His Ancient Civilization Unit is huge... It's got everything....

-20 lessons with extended activities to build upon student learning
-3 forms of assessments including rubrics 
-1 PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation project
-Extension activities 
-1 Quiz

As well as one set of extension activities that can be used cross curricular for Art, Language, Media, and Oral participation.

Ok, time to share your news...

An InLinkz Link-up

Ancient Civilizations

In all my teaching so far my absolute favourite unit to teach is grade 4 ancient civilizations. In Ontario, the curriculum changed last year however you where allowed to teach the old curriculum. My teaching partners and I, last year elected to take on the new curriculum of comparing ancient civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome and compared them to present day Canada. At first we thought we might have bitten off a little more than we can handle amongst our three classes. However, it proved to be really awesome. We did some mini-lessons and then allowed the kids to become experts and then make a media presentation about an ancient civilization and compare it to present day Canada. We also took the liberties of recreating some of the Ancient Civilizations in our portables. Here are some pictures of my portable as Ancient Rome.

The sign welcoming all visitors to Ancient Rome

The Colosseum

The great Aquaducts bringing water down to the city from the moutains

The statue of Fortuna

A chariot before it gets ready to enter the Colosseum and compete in Gladitor events

With this being the inspiration I spent some time creating a full unit adding to some of the ideas of things that we covered and also adding a bunch more. In our store you can find our new package of "Ancient Civilizations" which includes 20 lessons, 3 assessments, rubrics, extension activities, and explanation pages. Hopefully, you will enjoy this unit as much as I have in the past.