May Book Share

May Book Presentation

May is the month of “FREE CHOICE.”  That means that you may choose any type of book you would like.  The restrictions are:  1.You must not have read the book before, and  2.  it must be at an appropriate reading level, and 3. it cannot be a graphic novel.  Once you’ve picked the book, get it approved, then read and enjoy!

On the date of your presentation, you will give a regular presentation according to the rubric we have been working with all year.  Then, you must read a selection from the book aloud to the class.  Choose a part which you feel is interesting, funny, descriptive, scary, well-written, suspenseful, or otherwise grabs your attention.

Before your presentation, practice reading your selection out loud many times.  Use your parents or your siblings as a practice audience.  Be sure you can pronounce all words and names correctly.  Practice putting feeling into what you say.  No one wants to hear a mumbling, monotone reader!

Before you start your read-aloud, set the scene and tell us what has already happened, so that we can appreciate what we hear!  Don’t forget to tell us WHY you chose this particular passage!  Finish with a closing statement.

Volume 30: 24 April 2017

Our understanding of poetry deepens as we continue to explore different elements poets use to bring ideas and things alive. We looked at two types of poems: Found poems and Change poems. Found poems are made from one, or two, sentences. You take the sentences and keep the words in the same order, but use the poetic concept of "lines" and "stanzas" to help you create new meaning - perhaps to just put emphasis on certain words to make a new point. Change poems take the concept of change, or the evolving state of one thing to something different. For example, we looked at how the classroom changes from 7:45 a.m. to 3:20 p.m.

There was one interesting element of poetry, or lesson, that Ms. Magda did. We looked at how a Polish poet talked about kids. We realized that adults always seem to have a lot to say, but what about kids? Kids have a lot to say, too. So, we asked "What do the children say?" Here is what our children said:

We are the reflection of our parents.  The little kids.  For example if your parents don’t litter, you won’t either.

It’s like you’re the mini version of your parents.

I want to say to Korean parents, “We are not a studying robot.”

 I think that the parents should tell us everything because it’s sort of bad when they hide secrets because we want to know everything. Because that’s hiding information.

Children are also might think more of stereotyping and the unfairness in the world than grown-ups do.

When we’re gonna bike to school my dad says wear a helmet better to be safe than sorry but then he never wears a helmet.

I don’t think a child is the same as adults.  They have different opinions, I think a child thinks more than adults.  About the problems.  Adults worry too much.

 I think children dream more because adults are so focused on work and children drae4m of everything.

 I don’t really think adults should scream at their kids, I just makes them scream at their kid when they get their own kids.

Kids are more capable then you think.

Adults are lazier than children.

 Children are the future of the earth.  They think more about pollution than adults do.  Adults don’t do anything about it.  Children are going to grow up to save the planet.

 I think that there are some things that parents can’t tell kids.

We like to move our bodies a lot.

 Don’t treat your child badly because they are going to do the same to others.  Sometimes people get treated badly in school and they are going to make bad decisions because no one cares about them.

To all parents who don’t have time to sit down and talk to their kids we have dreams, we are alive, sit down and talk to us.

Some parents are so busy that they forget what really matters.

Parents usually do everything for our learning and for our life and they always work the whole day and they do their best just for me.

We try, we learn, and we do things that parents/adults might not have had the opportunity to do it when they were our age.

Children are the growth of the family.  It’s with every species living on earth.

Parents help us so we should help them back.

for Chinese/Korean parents from what I’ve heard:  if you make us do homework, we will make our children do  homework and their children will make their children do homework.  If this carries on, no one will know how to have fun and play.

Your parents might give you stuff but you give them more.

It reminds me of a parent thing: my dad was really angry at me because I fought with my brother.  He was like “You ruined the whole day for me.”  But I thought, “You have a lot of days left.”

Our Geometry Safari brought shapes, angles, lines, and solid figures to the forefront of our minds, as we sought them out in the world around us. Students took pictures on their iPads of real objects and then created Explain Everything videos that use the image and text to describe the features of different shapes, like rectangles and so on. They needed to include the number of faces, vertices, and edges for three-dimensional shapes.

"Why do we need fractions?" asked a student. Pointed and relevant to our transition into studying what fractions are, how they are used by mathematicians, how they are used in every day events, and beyond. We decided to put the concept of fractions in real-life and began with a questionnaire, whereby, students walked around the room recording answers to questions like "How many girls are left-handed?" As we discussed the answers, students began building their understanding of what a fraction is - a number less than 1 and it is "broken" into equal pieces. Deciding how many equal pieces can be the tricky part. More to develop as this fractional story unfolds...

May Book Share guidelines are up. Please read them carefully and enjoy!

Homework

Monday: Fraction Safari: Illustrate it in your home!

Tuesday: Mix and Match Fractions

Wednesday: IXL Grade 4 Fraction Review P.1

Thursday: Fraction Word Problems

Friday: Read and dance the hokie-pokie. 

Book share

Can you guess who our special guests were?

Poetry

Found Poem

Found Poem work with a dash of fun

Poetry work: Poetic devices

Finding Poetic Devices: Assonance, Consonance, Stanzas, Couplets

It takes more than one to find those devices:)

Book share

Ms. Magda and Polish poets

Geometry Safari

Explain Everything

Finding perpendicular angles

Fraction questionnaire: Sometimes velcro gets stuck in our hair.

Chocolate ice cream?

How old are you?

Artifacts: What is our definition of value? How do we value things?

Volume 29: 17 April 2017

Haiku, cinquains, limerick, rhyming couplets, and free verse are some of the types of poetry we examined and experimented with. Inspired by poems written by our resident poet, Ms. Tina and Mr. Mike and numerous works by other poets, students took to creating their own poems - fun, challenging, inspiring, and witty. As we shared our poems, we found this to be one of the ways by which we express ourselves.

This connected to our study of How We Express Ourselves through the examination of artifacts. One of the initially challenging questions we faced was "What is an artifact?" As we shared ideas and built consensus, a few themes came up: Objects/Artifacts have some history to them, can be from the past/present/future, can be old, can be made in a factory, can not be made in a factory, and are possibly rare - or not widely available and/or easily found in everyday life.

Well, our ideas were everywhere and we needed to come to an agreement. It seemed that how an object is made was the idea we kept coming back to. So, we defined an "artifact as something that is human-made, and it does not occur naturally in the world." With this definition, we were on our way to looking back at our drinking vessels and seeing if they were in fact artifacts; it turns out, none of them were! They were all made in a factory, which we agreed is now not an artifact (for our unit's purpose, study, and focus.)

We revised our drinking vessel descriptions, which are like the plaques in a museum using the five ways of talking about objects. The descriptions had to include ideas and specific details that connected to the drinking vessel's function, physical features, construction, value, and design. These revised descriptions were put into an Artifact Museum we created in our very own room! Students have and continue to bring in different artifacts they want to share. Some stay in the museum for a day, and some longer. The option is the owners, or in this the case, the care-taker.

In the spirit of artifacts, we decided why not create some of our very own! Ms. Magda organized and brought in eggs, fabric, beets, and onions. What? Why beets and onions? Well, we wanted to use natural dyes to create patterns and designs unique to the person. Students created their own artifacts and had a blast doing it. During this activity, we have been reminding ourselves of how to use the glossary, table of contents, index, highlighted and bold-faced words, and other conventions of non-fiction texts to help us find the meaning of words that relate to artifacts. What fun!

Our study of Geometry is deepening as we explore measuring and creating angles, triangles, and quadrilaterals with a protractor. Using our knowledge of the types of triangles: scalene, isosceles, equilateral, acute, right, and obtuse we have written equations to help find the measurement of unknown angles and unknown sides. Totally cool stuff! A lot of Geometry, we have found is memorizing vocabulary - like the names of polygons, angles, triangles, and lines. At home, if you want to use IXL to help create flashcards for memorizing this vocabulary, I would strongly suggest it. After all, practice makes perfect.

One last note: We have our MAP Reading Math tests this and next week. Please keep this in mind and ensure your child has plenty of rest, eats a breakfast that isn't too small or too large, but just right. The dates are in the weekly blog update email. Enjoy the week!

Homework

Read 20 minutes each night, practice memorizing your triangles and quadrilaterals, and... 

Monday: Adding Whole Numbers and Money
Tuesday: Factory vs. Hand-made Scavenger Hunt at home!
Wednesday: IXL Math Grade 4 Section X1-X5 Triangles and Quadrilaterals
Thursday: Mixed Addition & Subtracting Across Zeros
Friday: Ride a unicycle with a bear, while chewing on a cookie, reciting a haiku about reading a biographical book. Oh, and run around the entire world in 3 days.