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.
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