Blogging with K Buddies

In one of our final buddy activities, the students got together and wrote on the 4th grade students Kidblogs.  Reflecting on all that they've done together, the students took turns writing about what they enjoyed doing together.  It was a great reflection tool and it was fun to see the students working collaboratively to create a written piece together.  You can find our writing on the link below:

Blogging with K Buddies

Kidblog - Free Write

During one of our language arts pods this morning, students went on to their kidblogs and wrote a new post.  Today, their post was a free write entry, meaning they could choose any thing they wanted to write about.  Feel free to read and comment on their writing!

Free Writes

Time with Tech

On Wednesday mornings, 4th grade purple has the computer cart for the first couple of hours of the day and we utilize it to our full extent.

First, during pods the students participate in two out of four pods with the laptops.  Usually one of these two pods is based on reading, while the other is writing.  This is when we get to practice our writing skills on Kidblog and our reading skills with RAZ Kids, Into the Book, or another online reading program.

After our pods, we will often use the computers for another language arts based activity.  Today, it was to help us start our next writing project: an expository essay based on an endangered animal.  The students visited a website listing various endangered animals, choose one, and then using the research sites tab, and subsequent links on the page, began researching different facets about their animal.

Comprehension response

Read to Someone - IPC incorporation with ELA

Kidblog free write

RAZ Kids

Città dei Bambini Field Trip

Students in 4th grade went on a field trip today that involved elements and topics from our last unit: Inventions That Changed the World.  We boarded Cairo Car and headed to Città dei Bambini.  Here, the students were separated into two groups: one group did a workshop on Leonardo da Vinci, an inventor we studied in our former IPC unit, and the other group got to explore the science based activities in the centre.  After an hour, the groups switched so that students could participate in all aspects of the trip.  It was a great day!  The students seemed to have a lot of fun and were very well behaved.  I am a proud teacher! :)

The students blogged about their trip on Kidblog this afternoon.  Feel free to peruse our writing to see all that we did and learned today.

Città dei Bambini blogging

Proper Commenting

Responding to other students' work is a skill that is important in today's society.  Being able to read, critically and concisely respond with statements and questions (as opposed to one or two word phrases) and give feedback are some of the things 4th Grade Purple is working on.  Today, students read each other's blogs and practiced good commenting skills.  It's always nice when we can read responses to our writing, knowing that we have an audience for our work.

Rainbow Poems

With St. Patrick's Day right around the corner, 4th Grade Purple is thinking about things green, leprechauns, pots of gold, rainbows, and more!

Today during one of our language arts pods, and then continuing into some of our writing time, students wrote a colour poem using the colours of the rainbow.  We discussed what good grade 4 writing (sentences) look and sound like, using adjectives and extending with detail.  Those with time to spare recalled how to upload an image into their post (or utilized the help of many of their classmates).

We hope you enjoy our poems --> Rainbow Poems

Our Favourite Inventions

In our IPC unit, the students have studied a variety of inventions thus far.  Keeping these in consideration, students choose one and wrote about it today during language arts.  They told which invention they liked, why they liked it, if it's a useful invention and why, and what changes they'd make to that invention if they were an inventor and had the opportunity to do so.  Feel free to click on the link below and check these out. :)

Our Favourite Inventions

Ski Week Extravaganza

Interested to hear how we spent our ski week? The students started their morning off by blogging about their activities.  It was great to see how engaged they were in sharing this information, and of course doing so in different colours. ;)

Ski Week Extravaganza!

Inventions

As we study inventions, the students are starting to get into the mindset of what invention they would create if they could invent anything they wanted.  We decided to share these via Kidblog.  We'd love to share our wonderful, imaginative creations with you.

Inventions

Double Upload

The other day students learned how to save and upload a picture into Kidblog, followed by writing about their image.  This week students showed that they could complete this process again while also doing a second upload into the same post.  There were many days in between the first and second times uploading photos so it was great to see the collaborative process students had in helping each other when processes were forgotten.

Here a student shares how we do this:

Our blogs, where many of us had time for the second upload, can be viewed here:

Kidblog Posts

I Want to Learn

As part of our reflection, the students today thought of something new they'd like to learn to do.  This could be a whole new area of interest for them, or learning to do something new in a field they are already participating in (ex. If they already know how to play guitar maybe they want to learn a new song on the guitar).  They blogged these new items of interest on their Kidblogs AND learned how to upload a picture to accompany their writing.  I was super proud of how quickly they learned to do this.  Well done 4th Purple!! :)

(Click on the link below to read want we want to learn to do.)

I Want to Learn Posts

Using Quotation Marks

We've been taking a close look at quotation marks in class.  Some things we are noticing are how they are written in text (the correct punctuation used), their purpose (to show speaking out loud), and who is speaking.

Today as authors we started to use quotation marks in our own writing.  On Kidblog, we wrote single, independent sentences that used quotations at the beginning or end of the sentence.  Along with this we discussed how the punctuation would change (location and style) if the quote was a statement, question or exclamation.

In doing this, we also "put said to bed" meaning we came up with a variety of other words to use instead of said.  Words that would make our writing more colourful and create better pictures for our readers.  Enjoy!

Using Quotation Marks (Kidblog Link)

Reading Response via Tech

Incorporating technology into our language arts program is very important to 4th Grade Purple.  One way we try to do this is by using our kidblogs to post our thoughts and responses.  Today students did a reading response telling what they know about the main character in their novel.   Please check them out if you'd like to know more about our characters.

KidBlogs - Character Reading Response

Multiplication Problems

One way to see how well concepts are understood is to write word problems about them.  Today 4th grade purple took to writing multiplication word problems to show their understanding of this concept.  In doing so, we decided to publish our word problems on Kidblog for all to see and solve. :)  Good luck!

Multiplication Word Problems

What Am I?

With Halloween just around the corner, students' thoughts have turned to what they will wear and the activities they'll participate in on Thursday.  Today, we decided to share a little about our Halloween costumes.

Using Kidblog, students wrote clues about their Halloween costumes.  This endeavour allowed them to utilize their descriptive writing skills that we've been honing over the last few weeks.

Think you can guess what or who we'll be?  Go ahead.  We dare you ;)  Muah-ha-ha

What Am I?

Changing the World

During one of our language arts pods this morning, students took to kidblog to write about how they would change the world.  Would you like to know what we'd do?  Please read our blogs and check it out. :)

Changing the World

Reading Response

Reading responses are a great way for students to share their thoughts, voice their opinions, respond to text in meaningful ways, take time to examine literature from various points of view, and learn to provide reasoning.

Today our Because of Winn-Dixie crew discussed characters at length.  Instead of just doing so in their reading notebooks, we incorporated tech into our daily learning and responding and wrote a character kidblog post.  We invite you to check them out.  Just click on the link below. :)

Character Kidblog Post

Connecting

Utilizing our reading strategy of "connecting" (how the story is similar to either something in your life, something in the world or to another book) students noted their connections to Because of Winn-Dixie via Kidblog today.

Connections

Addition Problems

Writing word problems for an operation can be quite the task.  4th Grade Purple took on this task this morning and wrote word problems via Kidblog using addition, and sometimes subtraction.  Can you solve them?

Addition Word Problems

Math Riddles

Some of the students in 4th grade purple wrote math riddles for 5 digit numbers.  We invite all guests to check these out on our Kidblogs (see link below) and see if you can guess our numbers.  Good luck!!

Math Puzzlers