Hi Everyone,
In the last few weeks we had Book Chat in school. Book Chat is something that we do and we do it because it helps us have an open mind about reading. After a four week period, we come together and talk about our books that we read. I am reading ‘Toad Rage’. It is about a little toad called Limpy who occasionally goes out on the highway and looks for his relatives. The strange thing is, is that his relatives have been squashed by cars. Everyday, he goes out and peels his smushed family off the road. Limpy portrays courage and bravery throughout the book.
So far, I don’t particularly love it, but I don’t mind it. I just think that I should’ve chosen a bigger book to read.
I enjoy reading graphic novels (Comics). My favourite comics are the ones by Raina Telgemeier. I like comics because they have pictures on every page and you easily know which characters are talking at what time. My favourite graphic novel is probably ‘Smile’ by Raina Telgemeier. Smile is about one girl called Raina. She falls while trying to grab her friends hoodie but misses, falls and one of her front teeth come out. Then she needs to get braces and heaps of other things happen along the way.
These are photos of Toad Rage and Smile:
Bye, Izzy 🙂
Dear Future Year 4’s,
In 2020 next year, you are going to love Year 4.
Here’s three things you need:
- A positive attitude so you can enjoy a lot of things.
- Perseverance because you may get something wrong but you need to use perseverance so you can try again.
- Imagination so you can come up with new things to do in group activities.
Two things to look forward to are:
- Camp at Mount Evelyn because you get to try a bunch of new and fun activities. Some of the activities are: Bikers Ed, Giant Swing, Wildlife Encounter and also a Scavenger Hunt.
- The Nativity Play because you get to audition for a part that you want to be. If you don’t get your first preference, then you can always be something else.
A time that I laughed was when we started the Nativity and some people did some really funny things to make everyone laugh.
A time I was challenged was when we started to do the 3 minute times tables practice and it was pretty challenging but it was still really fun.
I am proud of how much I tried in the activities at camp and
I always remember Mrs Haines and Mrs Burns saying, try. I assume that they always say try because if you don’t try then you can’t get anything correct.
This Term, we have been focusing on The Nativity. We were told to write a nativity play with a partner. After we chose a partner to do our scene with, we chose what scene we were going to write. My partner and I chose to write scene 3. Scene 3 is the scene when Mary goes to tell her cousin Elizabeth that she is pregnant with Jesus. My partner and I thoroughly enjoyed writing the scene, we really liked the scene that we chose and it was really interesting writing it.
After we wrote the script we auditioned to get different roles in the play. I auditioned for Elizabeth but instead I got to be a Narrator and a Civilian. I still really like my role so I don’t really mind.
After we got our roles, we started to practise. First we figured out what we wanted to say and then we figured out what stage we went on and off of (Stage Left and Stage Right). I loved practising it was so much fun to do the different scenes in the play and I just loved it.
When most of us nearly memorised our lines, we started coming up with costume ideas. For homework, we had to discuss with our parents about what to wear. For a Civilian I wore a white robe and a head piece. For a Narrator, I wore just a black t-shirt and shorts.
The Nativity Play was probably my highlight of the year because we had so much fun exploring and investigating the Christmas Story.
Hi Followers!
This term in library we have been evaluating information books for the CBCA awards, (Children’s Book Council of Australia). A good information book includes a clear layout so the reader can see everything clearly and easily. You also need to make sure that you don’t have too many words on the page so the reader doesn’t get bored. The last thing that is very important is that the book needs to be up to date and interesting. First we read 6 information books, they are called Our Birds, Make Believe, The Happiness Box, Sorry Day, Bouncing Back and Waves.
This is a photo of my judging sheet with the book that I voted for which was Make Believe by Kate Ryan and M.C Escher. I voted for Make Believe because it was really detailed and it had lots of information and pictures. The book is mostly about M.C Escher’s artwork and how to draw his drawings. For the visuals in Make Believe I gave it a 10 because it was very detailed and clear and it gave really good steps on how to draw those pictures. For the layout, I gave it another 10 because the fonts were very clear and easy to read. Lastly, I gave the information a 9 because it was very detailed but there could’ve been a tiny bit more writing and more descriptive words.
Bye!!! 👋
Hey Guys!
On Tuesday Liz and I conducted an experiment. The experiment helped us see which different materials dropped the fastest. It didn’t take very long to do everything because we only had 4 different materials. They were a cork, a tennis ball, a big marble and a plastic lid.
To drop our materials, we had to go onto the middle school balcony. Liz went up and I stayed at the bottom. I filmed Liz while she dropped each of the materials. Liz dropped each of the materials from the balcony.
I predicted that the marble would drop the fastest because it is pretty heavy and dense. I also predicted that the cork would drop the fastest because it is kind of light and it might catch the wind. My prediction was right, the cork ended up dropping the slowest and the marble ended up dropping the fastest.
After we did the experiment we had to get an A3 poster and write down the method. After that we made a Keynote with the method, results, hypothesis, the title etc. my favourite part of the experiment was probably making the A3 poster it was really fun because you got to write down the method and then you got to do the all these pictures and decorate the page.
Something that didn’t go very successfully was the morning of our experiment when I forgot to bring a bag and aluminium foil ball but luckily Liz was there for me and she brought a plastic lid and a tennis ball and also a bag, she was very prepared.
A PLA that I used was imagination because as I told you guys before, I forgot the bag and the aluminium ball. But me and Liz kept going and used our imagination and got the other materials that Liz luckily brought for us to use. Have you ever done an experiment?
Bye! 😜
Below there is a video of my science experiment trailer. I hope you enjoy it!!
Hi Everyone,
On Friday the 17th of August Peter from the Salvation Army came to 
collect all of the blankets that Year 4 made. He was very excited to see all of the blankets.
On that day, I felt very nice and fuzzy feeling in my heart that made me feel really happy. To know that I made 1 of those blankets for the less fortunate people who have no home and no where to live.
Something that I found a little bit challenging was learning how to do blanket stitch and not get upset about getting poked with a needle which happened quite a lot. I’m actually really surprised that I didn’t bleed.
My favourite part of the project was learning how to do the blanket stitch because after I learnt how to do it, I felt really good for all of the stitches that I did and I felt really because I knew that all of these blankets that have been sewn, will help a lot of people to be warm in winter.
To determine the size of the blankets, we went into pairs or groups of 3 and the teacher gave us a strip of paper and we went around the junior school to find 2 teachers that are tall. My partner was Liz. After everybody found 2 teachers, we came back to the classroom and talked about what the average height of men and women were. We came down to a size of 2.1 meters and we added 30 extra centimetres so they could have extra room to tuck your toes in. Comment down below if you like tucking your toes in under the edge of the blanket.
Bye! 👍
Hi Everyone, 
On the 19th of August an author called Oliver Phommavanh came to visit and tell us about how to write a good quality narrative.
1st, we started off with writing a 14 word autobiography. An autobiography is a biography but you writing it about yourself. It was a little bit tricky to only make it 14 words but in the end I did it.
2nd, we started writing about your life. We did a fun game called 2 truths and a lie. Mine were, 1. I saw Zac Efron in Hollywood
2. I have 7 cousins in France
3. I have 3 different Nancy’s in my family and that they live in France and Italy. Can you guess which one is the lie? If so, leave a comment down below!!
Next, we did a short story called “That New Kid Bob”. To come with ideas of how Bob would look, we drew 8 circles with 1 different emotion for each face. Each emotion was, happy, sad, scared, angry, evil, weird, nerd, and cool. Then we drew a face for each circle and labelled what emotion they had/were. Then we wrote, in the perspective of ourselves. Then we did “That New Kid Bob REMIX” That story was in Bob’s perspective.
This term we are focusing on making blankets for the homeless. We are doing this to help more homeless people be warm and comfortable throughout this winter.
Each student in Year 4 has chosen some extra chores to do to raise money to buy fabric for the blankets. We had 2 weeks to raise at least $20. For my extra chores I chose unloading the dishwasher which paid $5 each week, picking up dog poo, which was $1 each poo, and checking if the dog had food and water. In total I raised $30 in 2 weeks.
Some PLA’s that I used were courage because when I had to pick up dog poo it smelt terrible and the dog food stunk as well. Each time my dog pooped my dad said “Max dropped another dollar for you!”
A week before we started raising money, Peter from the Salvation Army came to talk to us about homeless people. One thing that he said was no one tries to get homeless, sometimes it just happens. Like if you can’t afford to pay your rent, you wouldn’t have anywhere to live and you would become homeless. So what Peter was trying to say us is that homelessness can happen to anyone.
Recently, we conducted an experiment called leak, soak or repel. We used 4 different fabrics. They were, cotton, wool, fleece and neoprene. In case you didn’t know, neoprene is the material that people make wetsuits out of. First we got 4 plastic cups and put a piece of fabric over it and then secured it with and elastic band. Then we had to get a dropper and drop a drop of water on each piece of fabric. But just before that, we set a timer for thirty seconds and as soon as we started the timer we dropped a drop of water on each piece of fabric. After the thirty seconds, we got the results. I thought that the wool would soak up the water and the neoprene would repel the water, but I was wrong. The neoprene actually soaked up the water and the wool repelled the water. The cotton ended up leaking and the fleece soaked up the water.
Hi Everyone,
Yesterday we conducted an experiment called ‘Leak, Soak or Repel’. The materials that we used were cotton, neoprene, wool and fleece. First, we had to put each fabric on top of a plastic cup and secure it with an amazing lasting band. Then we had a timer set to 30 seconds, and finally we put a drop of water on each piece of material. The aim of the experiment was to see which fabric would repel the water, soak the water up and to see if the water would leak through the fabric.
I thought that neoprene would repel the water but surprisingly wool ended up reopening the water. Fleece ended up soaking up the water, but surprisingly, we ended up choosing fleece because even though it soaks up water, it dries very fast, about 5 minutes.
I was fascinated by the cotton because I thought that it would leak and I was right but I found that because we had blue water it would be easier to see but the water l leaked through the cotton but when it went through, you couldn’t see the colour.
Do any of you have a theory to why that happened?
I was trembling. Would I learn, or not? I started to push, but I couldn’t do it. I tried again, and again, and again. I wanted to give up. But I was determined, so I kept trying. One more time, I thought to myself. I pushed off and I finally got my other foot on the pedal, I kept pushing, and pushing. I could ride!! I was so proud of myself. When I got home, I knew I had to tell my parents. I was filled with adrenaline. I opened the door and blurted out the BIG news. I ran up to my parents and hugged them until they would pop! I felt absolutely amazing.
