Fourth Grade Home School

Students were asked to clip a newspaper article of their choice.  It could be a feature story, an editorial piece, a sports article, a cartoon, a breaking news story, etc.  Nigel Daly will be going over the articles with them, showing them the structure of a basic news story, with the lede, supporting paragraphs, etc.  

The students will present their poems in the library on Wednesday, April 9 at 1:30pm.  If time permits, they will also be reading their "This I Believe" essays.  Should be very exciting!

The students were asked to write essays for This I Believe, the essay series that is read on NPR every week and is based on something Edward R. Murrow used to.  They also have their own website with a full database of the hundreds upon hundreds of essays.

The children have come up with some wonderful ones.  Here are a few of them with more to come.


I believe in playing guitar.
by Julian Soltes

Guitar is really fun....

Guitar is fun and exercises your fingers. I also like it because it makes my fingers flexible. I can make really cool sounds with playing guitar.
I began playing music on the piano, which influenced me to go to a camp where I started getting interested in guitar. My guitar teacher's name is John. He is really nice and cool. I can communicate with playing guitar with another guitarists. It is pretty hard to explain in words why guitar is really fun, but I will try my best to describe it.

Jessica Wyrick-Solari was named the Grand Prize Winner for ICANN's Associates Child Abuse Prevention Month Poster Contest.  The prize is $100 for the student and for the teacher.  Jessica and Ms. Kim will be recognized by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors at their Board Meeting tomorrow, April 1.

Jessica is the winner and there are nine other winners chosen from the following list (congratulations to our other students who were named finalists!) and will receive $40, along with their teacher.  The project was spearheaded by Carla Hart who even waited until the very last day to make sure everyone had a chance to send in their posters.

Max Decker
Sofia Garrick
Dylan Jordan
Lily Rose Leatart
Daphne Lucas
Skylar Richardson
Daniel Royzman
Tyson Daily Soloman

And from Denise Lamoureaux's 5th Grade Class:
Kyung Joon Yang
Joanna Walsh
Carolyn Kwak
Emelia Lambros
Jennifer Garcia
Jake Holman

Emma Stone and Hayden Funk were named Room 21's Star Students for outstanding behavior this week.

To help our kids improve their spelling, they might like to try this site:

http://www.spinandspell.com/

 

If your child is stuck on poems, you might find this site, Instant Poetry, fun and useful. It gives templates for many different kinds of poems.  You simply fill in the blanks and it creates a whole poem for you.

The children were asked to write poems in class.  We'll eventually be compiling them into a book but here are a few of them - these are in no particular order:

Sphinx Moth
by Sofia Garrick

Dig dig dig all day long
Push push push
I need a song

....to fulfill my day
to get all this sand
out of my way!!
....and build my home,
my underground home.

Move move move
out of my way,
No no no a stick!!
Ahhh ahhh ahh a human
with a giant hand
trying to ruin my land
leave leave leave
or I will poke you back!!!!

Hand by hand
I will break
Through your skin
You'd better leave
...before I begin!!!

Honey of Sweet, Blood of Sour
by Hayden

Honey of sweet,
Blood of sour,
Flowers of thorns,
Each thorn another sore.

Sugar of sweet,
And blood of me,
Is not so sweet,
Very bad,
And very sad,
But the sugar of sweet
Is very neat.
The blood
Of you and me shall defeat.

Playing
by Dylan

A Basketball is like the sun,
Playing basketball is like shooting
The sun into a hoop.

Throwing a football is like
Throwing a bullet
when you catch it in the end zone
the crowd screams like crazy.

Your children have been studying for the Science Assessment test.  They will take it tomorrow in the morning.  

This is a test message.  We are trying to implement the first classroom blog.  Let's see how it goes.