ROOM 28 NEWS UPDATE WINTER 2017-2018 Written and Edited by Ms. Selhub’s Class
From Ms. Selhub Dear Fourth Grade Families,
Happy New Year!! I hope you had a restful and fun holiday break, followed by an extended weekend break! This is our first Newsletter of the year, written by the fabulous children of Room 28!
I wanted to first express to you that it has been such a pleasure working with your children! They are all kind, and hard working, and are blossoming so much this year! I am really proud of each and every one of them and how well they have been doing in class!
A big thank you to all of the fantastic parents who organized and participated all of our celebrations. They were so much fun!!! Also, thank you so much to the wonderful parents who chaperoned our field trip to Whipple Hill, and to the Harvard Peabody Museum. Both of the field trips were great experiences for the kids, made even better by the parents who lead it!
Pen pals
By Lottie and Harjot
Our pen pals are in 4th grade. Our pen pals go to Bridge, every month or so we receive letters from our pen pal. We ask questions about each other and tell about ourselves. They also ask us many questions. Some of the questions they ask are what we do for fun. They also ask if we have any pets, when is your birthday? Do you have any siblings? What do you look like?
Then the other person responds by writing another letter. Some people have one pen pal and others have two. Also a few people share pen pals. When we are finished with our letters, we put the letter in the mail and wait to get our next letter. Writing and reading letters are very fun!
Music
By Carli- Enna, Julia and Liam
In music, we are working on a concert with the whole 4th grade. Each and every fourth grade class has a song that they work on. Our class is working on the Chinese song, Gau-Shang-Ching. For music instruments we are using xylophone, wood blocks and cymbals. Some people are using recorders. They have to join and keep the beat. But, the hardest part is the xylophone. I think that because you have to do two notes extremely fast. They have to do the notes, low E and high E. The third hardest is the wood blocks. They have three taps over and over again. Tap, tap tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. The tapping gets annoying after time without the music playing along. The easiest job is probably the cymbals. They only are played 4 times in the song. The only kind of hard part of the cymbals are that you have to time your playing. Those are all the instruments of the orchestra. Also, in music with our teacher, Ms. London we have singing concerts in different languages too. Or sometimes in instruments at orchestra 4th graders play strings like: Violin, Viola, Cello, and Bass. In the 5th grade you get to play strings and trumpets and stuff like that. We also play xylophone and cymbals. In music we working on songs for our concert that are different languages and some that are English. In one of the songs we use instruments, we use xylophone, wood blocks, and cymbals.
Robotics
By Mahi and Enzo
Did you like Legos when you were a kid? Well we spent a good 45 minutes playing with Legos in our robotics unit. A unit is about types of robots, how to make them, and how to program them. But of course we used Legos instead of metal.
We even had cool projects like making them move using sensors, giving them classroom jobs and many more! The best part was that when we finished our projects early we had free time with the robots. Everybody loved robotics, some people even stayed in during recess to work on their robots. We learned a little too. The class was very creative with the robots. We used bars as pencil holders, flaps as bulldozer hands, and perimeter pieces as cups for a lot of pencils and tons more! If you would ask one of us, we would give you a 3 hour story about our projects.
Our robots.
Forget the projects, the robots used for the projects were even better. Some of ours were gigantic and some were tiny. Either way, they did big things. And again, this might just be a few lines of writing , but your child will give you a 2 hour story. In the end, everybody loved robotics. It sure was a great unit in science, with fun and learning!
Recess
By Hugo and Aori
So recess is an awesome part of the day, because you get to play for 40 minutes a day and its fun to play with other friends you don’t see in class because they are in a different class. It is really nice to take a break from learning. There are so many things to play like soccer, basketball or you can play on the playground. Girls play unicorns and family. Boys play lava tag, so the main things to do is the playground, there are slides and a network of monkey bars and a really bouncy bridge and…
Gym
By Liam, Aidan and Julian
In gym we are working on the volleyball unit. In this unit we are working on forearm passing and sets. We haven't started spikes yet. How to do a forearm pass is to make a fist with one hand and cover it with the other. Then you sing your arm/forearm up (not too high). If you swing your are too high, the ball will go either behind you or up really high and come crashing down on your head. Now I will teach you how to do a set pass. First you put your hands in the are above your head. Then you flatten your hands (with your hands above your head). Then you push up with the volleyball too. And thats what weve been doing. Now we are practicing doing real live games just with beach balls. I think the beach balls are easier than volleyballs. Now I will tell you about the gym schedule. So first when we get in we do some sort of running thing like rock, paper, scissors run or we run in a square. Then after that we do push-ups and crunches and sometimes we do yoga, not all the time. After that we do the volleyball unit.
Credits and Debits
By Matthew and Khile
We have a system called credits and debits. The way it works is if we do something good we get credits and if we do something bad we get debits. The better or worse the thing is, the more we get. So if we get debits we have to subtract it from our credits then we have less credits. We have credit and debit books. That’s where we put our credits and debits in. In our classroom we have something called the marble jar. Every time we get a marble everyone in the class gets 10 credits. To get marbles the entire class has to do something really good. Like being completely silent during a lesson. Some other ways we get credits are homework, reading and in specials.
Morning Meeting
By Matthew and Aori
We have Morning meeting at 8:45 AM every day. We talk about things we will do in class that day. We do a morning greeting where we greet each other. This is one way everyone got to know each other. We also share what we did over the weekend, or what we are planning on doing. Finally, we do a fun activity, like the Banana Dance, Splat, Captain’s Coming, and the Fast Food song. These activities energize us for the morning.
The Banana Dance
By Abhaya and Gianna
In school we learn, but who said we can’t have fun? So Ms.Selhub taught us the banana dance!!!! Followed by the mullet and the orange dance. What we do is, we barge into other fourth grade classes and then we do the banana dance or mullet or orange dance. Sometimes we team up with Miss Archibald’s class, and sometimes we banana her class! :) It’s awesome!!!!
Classroom Books
By Liam and Julia
Ms. Selhub is really protective about her books/babies and that is very good, because if she wasn’t protective of her books, then all her books would be trashed (she does not let anyone bend the books or dogear the books). Ms. Selhub’s book selection is also a really good bunch of books. She has tons of books for each genre. She has graphic novels, fantasy, fiction, non-fiction, sports, and more. For every genre she has about 50 books. In total Ms. Selhub probably has more than 500 books! (THAT'S A LOT OF BOOKS!!!!!!!!!) Ms. Selhub has lots of stuff for you to get you comfy enough to enjoy your reading experience.
Whipple Hill
By Abhaya and Gianna
At Whipple Hill, our class learned about rock & minerals. When we were on the top of a big rock we saw a rock called the”alien rock” which was a rock that did not belong there. Another thing we found a bent tree with a hole inside of the bend, which was bent by a rock it was very cool !!! We also saw lots of rocks and minerals during our walk. We learned about Thank you to all of the parents who came in to help make the celebrations so much fun!
Library
By Aidan, Carli-Enna and Aori
In Library, we are starting to do 3D printing. We are also checking out 4 books at a time. The library is a place where we can find lots of different books. We can find Nonfiction books, fiction books, and a lot more. We also use the computers, choose books by your grade if you’re in fourth grade you get four The things she has to keep you comfy and reading: Straight back chairs, comfy emoji pillows, and she has huge feather stuffed pillows. All of these deluxe, fancy, things are just the thing if you need somewhere to relax and read. The way you can find a book is you look on the computer and search up the title of your book or the author and a letters come up and so you can find the books. Also we do projects like scratch,3D printer and others. Or you can ask the ladies at the front desk. There are books all over the library it’s like everywhere you look there’s books and books! But when you first go to the rug. Then we sit down and the librarian Ms. Loof she teaches stuff like safety and other stuff.
Fall and Winter Celebrations
By Aidan and Brandon
The fall and winter celebrations were some of the really fun events that we had. When a season starts we have a celebration, and we play games that represent the season. Sometimes we play games and sometimes we make crafts in a fun way. We also switch stations. Most of the time it is two stations at a table.