Ms. Markovich's Grade 4 Class

This week we made groups and those groups were for our music class and we also had to pick an instrument for the research project . We had to use a sheet of paper that was all about our instrument. We also had another one for our group assessment. To complete our the sheet of paper we need to answer the questions like what is the timber of the instrument. We are doing this project because  our music teacher wanted to know how much we have learned in music. Our instrument is a ukelele and its one of the most famous Hawaiian instruments. Basically the ukelele is just a small guitar. But the ukelele is much easier than the guitar because the ukelele does not need notes to play it.

By, Enzo

In unit of inquiry we have decided on what every child should have or need in their life.We did a 4 corner activity to see which rights every child should have. The 4 corners were, corner 1 Strongly disagree, corner 2 Disagree, corner 3 Agree, and lastly corner 4 Strongly agree. A Lot were in Strongly agree or Agree.There was a lot of different opinions going on.Like Some people were in corner 4 and some were in corner 1. There are 12 different rights we came up with and they are:

The right to have fun.

The right to have nutritious food and clean water.

The right to family, friends and love.

The right to health care.

The right to clothes and shoes.

The right to a decent education.

The right to a good, happy life.

The right to protection from child abuse.

The right to decent shelter.

The right to a clean environment and nature.

The right to fresh air.

The right to freedom of religion.

All of these rights we agreed on.This will help us through our unit, Child Rights.Child rights are important because we can learn how to make the world a better place.You might want to take a look at Taku’s post because its about the guest speaker who came in to talk about the child right, health care. After we took a look at the UNICEF‘s child rights some were the same and most were different they had 42 Child rights.We have a lot more coming up so stay tuned at our blog.

Please write any questions or comments : )

By:Hollie : )

This week we went to the computer lab in the CMC because Mr. Steve wanted to show us a website where we can tell people what we are doing and the website is called www.twitter.com. We made a class account, and our username is @Dragonridersism. So if you make an account then you can follow us. When you press the home page button you can see what we wrote like: ‘Later today we will have math. 5 seconds ago’. So that’s what it looks like if you see our post on the home page, or if we retweet something someone said it will show on your home page. Retweeting is when you look what someone said and press retweet it will show on your profile. You can also comment and like a tweet by pressing the favorite button. But Ms. Markovich told us that we cannot follow celebrities that have twitter, only our favorite authors. This is important because if we tweet we can tell people like family, friends and even people we don’t know what we do and how we do it anytime. So you should make an account and follow us!

On Thursday our class went to a presentation from a person named Dr. Angie she is from the organization Kythe. Kythe is an organization who helps kids in Hospitals with deadly illnesses.

Dr. Angie told us about her work with kids in hospitals. She used to work with a kid named Gabriel, he had Leukemia. Gabriel was first scared of the Hospital.  He soon loved the hospital because when he was feeling ok he could play in the play area.

Dr. Angie  goes around hospitals  and also teaches the patients what’s going on inside their bodies. The children are very self directed on putting there masks on.

I learned that the hospital is not such a scary place to be.

On Friday, January 13,   we had our first assembly for 2012. It was about our new unit Child Rights. We had an activity to learn about child rights. First, we got assigned a number and each poster had numbers on them too. Then, we had to  go to the poster that has our number on it then we were given a paper and a pencil to fill out numbers from 1-4… Next,  we needed to read what the poster said then tick on the paper whether we strongly agree, strongly disagree, disagree or agree with the statement. Here are some examples of statements:

1. Boys are more important than girls. I chose number two
(disagree)

2. It’s okay for boys to play with girls. I chose 3 (agree).

There were 24 statements and we had to answer all of them.  We will be checking what we think again at the end of our unit.

Child rights is important because everyone deserves rights. Here are some rights they deserves—a home, some food, water, education, a family, a name, to have fun and safe from child abuse.

Needs and Wants
On Wednesday 18, 2012 we learned about people’s Needs and Wants.
Needs are things that we need to in order to survive, while Wants are the things that we don’t really need but make our lives comfortable.
Some of the things we need are clean water, clean air, health care, protection from abuse and neglect, decent shelter and Food. Some of the wants of people are own bedroom, clothes with the latest style, fast food, money to spend as you like, etc.
This is related to Child Rights because all kids deserve to have all these needs.
This is important because you can’t always get what you want. When we were discussing about whether this should be a need or a want we were kind of arguing about it, because everybody had different opinions about what people really need and want. The main thing we were discussing was clothes/shoes because some people thought it was only here in the Philippines that these are a need, but it is all around the world. Some people thought why you need clothes but someone thought what if it’s cold in that country.
By:Camila

COLOR POEMS AND LIMERICK

This week we worked on Color Poems and Limericks. A color
poem is a type of poem that the first 4 lines describe the color. Then we use
the next 5 lines for the 5 senses smell, taste, sound, feel and looks, to
describe the chosen color. After that you write what the color makes you do. Then
you start with the first line of the poem again to end it. Here’s an example:

Green

Green is the color of luck

Green is the grass
that disappears on the horizon

Green is the
world surrounding me

Green is the money
that waits to be spent

Green smells like trees of Mother
Nature

Green
taste like lettuce straight from the farm

Green sounds like the
cheering on Saint Patrick’s Day

Green looks like the pot of gold at the end
of a Rainbow shining above

Green feels like a
crocodile’s rough skin

Green lasts
forever

Limerick is a short poem that has 5 lines.
Line 1, 2 and 5 have to rhyme and line 3 and 4 have to rhyme. Here’s an example
of a limerick poem:

There once was a cheese

Who followed the weeze

And jumped over the great

Grape who said “give it a
break”

In the breeze

By sein

On January 12, 2012, Thursday, we made a toothpick bridge by using teamwork and by helping your teammates which is teamwork. We made it by making beams, then  straight line of toothpicks. We taped it all in that straight line then tape the beams under and that’s how we made it. We did this activity to show how well we work as a group and who we have to work with. Like me, Chris and Seba. We work pretty well together even were friends, because our bridge was actually pretty strong ours was only like that because we also put beams on the bottom of the bridge so there would be more balance and more strength or power so that it could hold heavier things and more things. This is important because this piece of work shows how good we work together and shows our teamwork it also can be lots of things like balance strength and etc.

By,Enzo

Over the weekend Ms.Markovich got really curios about her neighbors and took a bag of their trash and brought it to school. My class was detectives and were looking for clues of their personality and what they’re like. We found stuff like where they went, what they did and how they did it. Each table got papers, maps and clues about what they did and etc. We thought we were touching stinky and disgusting trash, but we were not. I thought I was touching stranger’s trash and garbage. I also thought it was food and very old stuff. It was important because doing stuff related to inference and when we were checking Ms.Markovich’s neighbors trash, we had to use this skill. I had so much fun looking for clues from trash. Inference means is like a prediction of what’s going to happen, using evidence and background knowledge.

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This week our class did holiday poems. It’s basically poems of what we did over the holidays. We did acrostic poems and Tanka Poems. To do a Tanka Poem, on the first sentence it has to be 5 syllables. The 2nd sentence it has to be 7 syllables. The next sentence is 5 syllables and the last 2 sentences are 7 syllables. We had to make a poem about our holidays. The next is Acrostic Poems. So you have to take something out of your holiday then in the side of your paper you write the first word then below it you put the next letter. You keep on going until you’re done with the word. It should look like this if my word was America (for example, you spent your holiday in America).

A
M
E
R
I
C
A

When you are done you have to write something about America but it has to start with the first word so it would look like this:

All of the stuff there is awesome
Me and my family went to Disneyland
Every time I have fun
Ready to do anything
I like to go to toysRus when I don’t know what to do
California is awesome
All of the fun times were worth it

Keep on continuing the word so the next word after A in America is M so you write something about America that starts with M. Then you keep doing the next letter until you finish the word.That was just an example of what it would look like after you’re done with your Acrostic Poem. The last poem that I am going to tell you is Concrete Poem. You just write a poem that is shaped like the item that you are going to use. So first you draw the item then you write a poem about it inside the item. It is really fun.
(Example)
As you can see the poem
Is shaped as a rainbow http://schools.pinellas.k12.fl.us/educators/tec/Tondreault/Kinds.html <– (link to example)
And if you read the rain-
-bow it explains about the rainbow. That’s what a concrete poem is.
Poems are fun to use if you are writing about your holiday or your life. So please write all kinds of poems when you don’t have anything to do or if you are bored. THE END