Poetry!

A Few Reminders: 

Education Week

We have details on our website:

https://rbes.blackgold.ca/calendar/activities/

On Tuesday May 8th, we are getting our group class pictures taken! 

Grade 4's have the Transition Day at RMS on May 9th. 

Poetry  

We have been knees deep in some poetry the past couple of weeks! Students have read various forms of poetry, discussed the elements and worked with some figurative language! 

 The 5 Elements of Poetry we discussed were: Imagery, Figurative Language, Voice, Word Choice and Ideas & Content. 

Imagery - Good writers use their words to paint pictures in the reader's mind.

We worked with this by doing a senses poem. Students used their senses to write a poem about 1 of the four seasons, describing colours, smells, tastes, touches and sounds.


Figurative Language - Good writers use words or phrases to add detail, interest, and voice to their poems.

The first technique we looked at was alliteration. This is when 2 or more words have the same beginning sounds. This can be back to back, or within a phrase. Students practiced their alliteration skills writing an Animal Alliteration Poem! This is always so much fun!

 Each student chose a letter, or two, and then had to write a line with alliteration, following the rule: Adjective, Animal, Verb.

 They did an awesome job, and this is an easy game to play at home too!




Similes and Metaphors were up next! These two figurative language techniques are comparison statements. Similes are comparison of two objects using the words "like" or "as", such as "Ms. Potter is as sweet as candy". 

Where as a metaphor is a comparison of two objects to show how alike or different they are. Such as, "Ms. Potter is a fish in the water". 

Students worked in pairs to create some Partner similes! They wrote similes about each other and drew pictures of what they would look like!

To venture with different forms, right before Earth Day (April 22) we created some Acrostic Earth Poems! 

As a class, we brainstormed 

Math

We have moved onto to Perimeter (Gr 3 & 4) and Area (Gr 4) in math. 

Students have been working on these skills in their workbooks on practice questions, and creating some interesting "Dream Backyards" on grid paper. Using grid paper, they made shapes of things  you might find in their yard, such as pools, gardens, sheds, etc. They then found the perimeter of each shapes/object.

Celebration of Arts Week!

WHOA WHOA WHOA! 

This was a wonderful jam packed week full of activities, performances and ART! 

Celebration of Arts 

Monday

We were so lucky to have Kym Simon come to our school for our very own private performance! She is a country music singer and the kids had so much fun getting up and dancing and singing along with her. 

Tuesday a local drummer came and had the students working with different types of drums! 

Wednesday we had some lovely ladies from Arabesque Rhythmic Gymnastics come out an show us a few cool moves! 

Thursday high school students from JMS did a few numbers from Newsies! A play we will get to attend later in spring!

This was also our day to wear #JerseysforHumboldt! Jerseys were all over the school and it was so great to be part of such a thoughtful day.

Friday RBES students performed what they have been working on in Music class. Mrs. Stanski did an amazing job teaching students different folk dances, instruments, and songs!
Our class did not have a performance, but really enjoyed watching their peers!






We really enjoyed putting our own art and hard work into the celebration as well!

Poetry!
It is poetry month! We have been discussing poetry as an art, its different aspects, and history. Did you know the first poet was a woman?

We talked about what we know about poetry and some questions we might have. Then we looked at the form of poems, possible rhyme schemes, and responded to them.

Next week we will begin to look at the elements of poetry and start creating some of our own master pieces!

Math
This week in math we talked about the different units of measurement and how they are related. We did some practice converting mm to cm, cm to m, and even mm to m. Some students are still a bit confused with the converting of mm to m, but are really getting the hang of it!

To introduce metres, we measure out a piece of string to be one metre. We knew that 1 m = 100 cm. We created a reference of 20 centimetres, and if we went the length of it 5 times (5 x 20) we would have 100 cm!

Students then ventured around the school finding things that were more than 1 metre, less 1 metre and about 1 metre.

Science 4 
This week, students had time learn and explore! We were learning all about gears and different drive systems. The four different drive systems we talked about were:

• Gear to Gear drive system
• simple and compound 
• Perpendicular drive system
• Belt Drive system
• Chain Drive system 

Students then worked in groups to create these using Kinex and gears. 

Grade 4's will be starting their building devices unit. We are calling for some supplies! 

Social 4 

This week we learned all about Tunisia's food, celebrations and religion. 

To explore food, students made google drawings of what a dinner plate would look like in each country! 

Next, they were off to one of Tunisia's celebrations - The Sahara Festival! This is a festival that takes place in December and involves camel races, hunting, Arabian horse riding and attracts over 50, 000 people. 

They got to instagram all about their day!

EXCITING NEWS! 

House Cup!

Congratulation Hufflepuff on your House Cup! 

These kiddos house lead the class in participation points, quiet transitions and overall teamwork!

We had a lovely afternoon crafting some golden snitches, snacking and drinking back some Polyjuice potion!

ELA:

We had a big week of writing! Students spent a lot of time and effort working on their Spring Break Personal Narratives. This was a chance for us to put all our writing techniques we've worked on over the year into one piece. 

Students thought of spring break as their big watermelon, and chose one little seed to expand on. While they wrote they were encouraged to use various sentence starters, transitional words (first, next, then, and finally) and creating visuals by showing, not telling. 

Time was also spent going back over our work each day, seeing which way we could stretch sentences and ensuring we have the proper punctuation and capitalization. 

When we were writing, we had to think about Author's purpose. As we write our narratives we are the authors of our own story, and we need to ensure we know why we;re writing and what strategies we can use to ensure our purpose is fulfilled. 

So we talked all about Author P.I.E!

During grammar, students worked in pairs to place quotation marks in text, as well as, write their own dialogue using quotations marks. 

Math:

Thank you to LG and his daily joke calendar, we started the week of with a fun problem solving lesson! 

Here is the joke - can you figure it out?

I put the numbers into two groups on the board and asked students to see if they could figure out the differences/similarities or a pattern. 

Some of their ideas were great! They could find growing patterns, but then one number didn't fit the pattern. "They're all even or odd," ahh but again, one or two numbers seem to break that rule! 

So I began to have them tell me what multiplication sentences create each number, and then they started to see the relationship! 

This opened up a big conversation about factors, prime numbers and how they relate to each other. It was so fun!

We are all about measuring! It is important to understand the difference between standard and non standard units of measurement, and why they are needed in our world today. As a class, we brainstormed all the different types meausrements we use, how they relate to each and can be converted. We are on the metric system which works in the powers of ten, and can easily be converted. However, the Unites States uses imperial which is a bit more complicated. 

We also discussed what each unit measures (mass, volume, distance). 

To warm up our brains we spent time practicing measuring in centimetres. This is a skill that will be needed when we move onto area in the coming units. Using rulers and listening skills, we did some measurement art! I would tell the stuednts a word problem and they would use rulers (cm and mm) to measure out the clues! 

Then they wrote their own growing pattern word problem. 

Science 4: 

Students looked at the simple machine - the pulley - this week. In partners they looked up the 3 different types of pulleys, how they work and where we can find them in our environment. 

Social 3:

This week we learned about the languages spoken in Tunisia and practiced some Arabic. Students used google translate to see how their names would be written in the Arabic alphabet. Did you know when writing in Arabic they start from the right and go left! Once the students had their names we looked at all the similarities and tried to find the letters/symbol matches for each name. 

 They also got to learn how to count and write to 10!

Have a great weekend!