Dear Grade 4 Parents,
Thanks so much to those of you who made it out to our Open House this evening. As requested, we’ve embedded the presentation we spoke to below. Additionally, for those looking for the resource site discussed, it is here.
1st Week of Grade 4: Video Reflection
Students were asked to record their answers to three prompts regarding their first week in fourth grade:
– The week in two words
– Something I’ll always remember
– A hope for this year
The Great 4JR Tower Challenge
The beginning of the school year are the first steps in cultivating a powerful learning community. To nurture this, we spend a lot of time and energy in community-building explorations. What could be a better community-builder than tower construction? Each team got the same resources, had 10 minutes of planning time and then 30 minutes of construction time. As the students suggested, success would require teamwork, communication, creativity and construction skills! Have a look at the way things turned out in this slideshow!
The Great 4JR Tower Challenge on PhotoPeach
The Gods and Goddesses Bake-Off!
When 4R were presented with the idea of an assembly based on Greek Theatre, an extension of our exploration of Ancient Civilization, we immediately started thinking about a parody. And why not? Parodies had been popular in the class lately, and what better way to show your understanding of something than to satirize it? (And by the way, does the word satire come from satyrs?)
With a class who are so active in local community theatre, this seemed like a good opportunity to give the students real control of their production. So, we assigned roles, chose a director and a tech supervisor and began adapting the script to suit our purposes.
Within two weeks, we were onstage, including a delicately-timed guest appearance from Teagan, online direct from Seattle, where she’d moved only a week before. Enjoy!
greek myth play
on friday the 23third third may 2014 4r are doing a greek myth play it is going to be good be there.
p.s. Other classes are not doing the same as us we are the best.
p.p.s the other classes are doing a different play
p.p.p.s greek is the world.
BY CAI AND MATT
BEFORE PLAY part one
Malaria is killing young children!
Most kids in Tanzania are getting malaria from mosquito’s. Some children are dying because of the malaria. Malaria Kills a large number of kids in one day so make sure you wear mosquito repellent every day and if you can sleep under a mosquito net. By Ursula
The tree is falling down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There was rain, and thunder.Thunder lighting very very frighting.Then BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!! the tree fell down but we found out about it in the morning.
By Cai and Matt
Online Newspapers
In class this week we got asked by the yearbook people what we wanted to put on the year book page everyone wanted to put things that are unique to 4R.
Nearly everyone wanted to make some online newspapers. That is what Mr. Jamie thought of, so he also made some and photo shopped them all on a pile for our yearbook. Now look what it looks like(under).
By Andreas and Thjom
Google Hangout: Virtual Field Trip with Solar Impulse
Today 4R experienced our first Google Hangout, a Virtual Field Trip with the team behind the Solar Impulse, the first solar-powered plane designed to circle the world. Read more about the project in this previous post.
[AFG_gallery id=’3′]
We set up our classroom theater-style and waited as slowly the other classes, from Airbus school in Toulouse, France and Tsung Ting Primary School from Hong Kong came online. Eventually, we were all together and we were joined by Bertrand and Andre, the pilots and project leaders of the Solar Impulse. They walked us around the plane and took us into the cockpit, while answering questions from students in the three classes.
Afterwards students reflected that it really was a powerful way to learn about something because:
- “Unlike a book or movie, you and ask a question and immediately be answered or even taken to a place and shown something.”
- “You can connect with people in all different parts of the world.”
They also reflected that it could be challenging when:
- “Your internet connection created problems in video or audio.”
- “It wasn’t clear who was supposed to be speaking when.”
We concluded that for a Virtual Field Trip to work well, it really needed to be moderated. We felt the need for someone to direct the conversation and tell people when it was their turn to speak.
As the first, of hopefully many similar experiences to come, it was a great event. The Solar Impulse is a fascinating project. As the pilot told us, “At the moment, we aren’t building a commercial plane for passengers. We’re building a plane to carry a dream.”
What’s the Point of a Yearbook?
This week 4R were asked had a look at our section of this year’s yearbook. We checked the spelling of our names, made sure everyone was included in the images and noted a big, empty white space in the print proof, right under our class picture. What’s that all about?
This was the space for text. A half page to somehow come to grips with a year of learning, growing and exploring together. We had a range of ideas. Some suggested things they’d seen in other yearbooks, a word cloud of important ideas, a collectively composed poem, important quotes from books we’d read, samples of writing or other work… Or, the year in headlines.
With this situation, we were decided. If we were writing headlines about the year in 4R, what would they say? The class decided that rather than focusing on the things that might be considered the most important events of the year, they would prefer to think about headlines on subjects that would be unique to 4R.
A list began to build: Having our own blog, designing our own classroom, Genius Hour and… Parties! We explored a few newspaper generators to see how we could design a stack of papers to share some of the things that make us different.
After a quick process, we were ready to publish!
