I think that the unit went great. I learned a lot about historical fiction writing and writing diary entries from a different point of view was very fun. I can’t wait for the next writing unit.
Category Archives: 4th Grade
Learning from our differences reflection
I liked the program because it explains how everyone can be unique and you shouldn’t make fun of someone just by the way they look. I learned that there are many different types of cranial facial differences, not just the one that Auggie had and disliked in the book Wonder. This topic is important to learn about because a lot of people make fun of people with cranial facial differences and it is really rude.
How does motion energy change in a collision
When an object is higher up and rolls, it moves faster. In other words, the faster an object moves, the more energy it carries. Faster objects have more energy. The faster the object is, the farther it goes.
Different surfaces have different amounts of friction so that affects how far an object goes.
We can protect our brains in a collision by wearing something on our heads like a helmet while biking.
I loved working in groups. What worked well for me was that it was way more fun working in a group because you get to interact with other people and share your ideas. What didn’t work well for me was that we argued a lot and disagreed about many ideas.
I liked using materials because it’s fun to work with stuff. For science, it was like figuring out an easy puzzle. I would add tinfoil and a foam material like packing peanuts. Even a spongy material would work very well.
I think that my favorite lesson was the egg drop lessons. I learned that motion energy moves and changes and that it can produce heat, light, sound, and motion.
Ignite
The day I was getting my weather group, I was super excited. I had Jason, Jenna, and Willow in my group. The first thing we did was figure out our subtopics. I chose effects, Jenna chose causes, Jason chose how they are measured and Willow chose prevention and safety.
We started researching our topics for 20 minutes after we figured out our subtopics. I was not doing very well. I didn’t have that much research. It was stressful for me but I realized that it was only the first day that we were researching. The second day was better. I got 2 full pages of research. I felt great. I was doing a pretty good job in terms of what I had. It was also good for my script because I had a bunch of sentences that I knew I was probably going to use. By the third day of research I was using epic for info and I didn’t get as much as I expected. Then, I tried Kiddle and got a ton of stuff. It was like gold. It was really cool to learn all of this information that I didn’t know. I had learned about how roads could lift all the way to cities collapsing. By the fourth I had tons of research and was still building up. I had 5 pages and there were so many websites still to be looked at. By the fifth day I had 7 pages and still going. I used Pebble go Next and got 2 full pages of research. I realized that 9 pages was more than enough so for the entire second, (and last) week of researching, I helped other people in my group.
After research, we worked on our narrative with Mr. Casal. My narrative started out very short. I only had 3 sentences. But I built up. I used tons of research and put it into my narrative. I had a ton of research and I realized that I would have to cut a ton of that out of my script. I had to cut out a lot of important stuff but I still put the most important stuff in. There was a lot of waiting and thinking involved in the process and I thought I was running out of time. I realized I wasn’t when I finished my narrative and asked if there was enough time, Mrs. Rickard told me I had more than enough time to finish my script. I had thought that my narrative was perfect but it turned out that there was still a ton of punctuation and technological stuff that needed to be finished. I still had plenty of time for my script even after all of the extra stuff was done.
When I started my script I wasn’t nervous because I had already gone through the process of doing it before with my Wevideo. It was a little different this time because I only had 2 slides. Each of my slides was 15 seconds so I had to cut out a lot of words from my narrative to make a reasonable amount of time for me to say my words. My script work was harder than I expected because I only had 2 slides to fit my most important sentences. I had to cut out so much stuff so I was really mad. I still pushed through and figured out the best way to make my words make sense. Once my script was done I had to start figuring out the timing part.
My timing was super off at first, it was 38 seconds in total. When I tried to do just one slide, it was 26 seconds alone. I was super angry but I realized it was part of the process. I took a lot more out after that and I was very surprised that it still made sense. I was happy too so I tried to time myself again and it was 14.95 seconds for one slide and 15.06 for the other slide. I was so relieved because I could finally make my personal slideshow. Once I made my personal slideshow, I had to start practicing using auto-play for 15 seconds on my personal slideshow. It was pretty decent on that but I had only memorized a couple of sentences. The next day I memorized an entire slide but I was still stumbling on my words so the timing was very off because of my stumbling. By the time I stopped stumbling on my words, I was mumbling. No one could understand what I was saying. Once I fixed that problem I realized that I still had a whole other slide to do. I finished a couple of slides and I was doing great. I was super happy because by the time I finished memorizing my entire script, I still had a week and a half to help other people in my group.
Now I was in the timing process with my personal slideshow. Since I had memorized everything I was going to say, I got to practice without having a second tab on my screen that had my script on it. I was doing well but I still had to help people when I was finished timing myself on my personal slideshow. I was finished with timing myself on my slideshow so I took the time I had, which was a week and a half to help the other people in my group.
We went back to the computer lab and Mr. Casal had to make a slideshow for my entire group to combine all of our stuff. Before we did that, we put pictures in our personal slideshow. They had to be Put in our slideshow in a specific way, luckily it was easy enough. We started practicing as a group once we had our group slideshow and we put our pictures in. We did that for a couple of days and it started out very rough. We weren’t doing that well, but luckily we progressed after a few days. After about 3 days, Mrs. Rickard said that individual groups should start practicing with the group slideshows on the smart-board. We weren’t great but we all made an improvement since we started practicing on my chrome-book. The days passed and we were getting better and better. After about 3 and a half weeks since the project started we went to the computer lab for the 4th time. We practiced in front of Mr. Casal with a tripod and he said that we were amazing. We went back to the classroom and practiced again. This time, Mrs. Rickard said we were awesome and that we just had a couple more things we had to perfect. The week went by and then another. By the day of the real Ignite I was super excited and very confident. All of the group slideshows had been turned into a slideshow with everyone’s stuff combined. We walked to the new multi-purpose room and the parents walked in a couple of minutes after we did. We started the presentation a couple minutes later. Everything went perfect. Every group was awesome. It was really cool. The best part about it was that I did not feel any pressure and I loved it. It was easy all the way. I thought the overall project was very fun. I would not change anything in the process.
Tsunami/Earthquake Venn Diagram
It was very fun learning about a new weather event. I learned about the effects of Tsunamis. I used the info I already had on Earthquakes and used it to help me with the venn diagram. I only chose the most important info on both topics like I did with the narrative for Earthquakes. I did that with Tsunamis too. It was strange to research Tsunamis for only 2 days but I managed to get enough information. After this and the Ignite, I’m hoping that the next project will be a blast.
Animal Senses Movie
I think that my Animal Senses movie was a big success. I am very happy with how I did even though my audio got glitched out when I finished it. I don’t care about that. Everything else I did was great and after this I’m looking forward to the next project.