Good Morning, Sunshine!
Today is National Great Poetry Reading Day. The beautiful sunshine and the singing birds this morning makes reading poetry outdoors a perfect fit.
Today is a "D" day, so here is a special "HELLO" to the students in these classes:
Ms Davis 3rd grade, Ms Hassemer 4th grade, Ms Cummings 5th grade, Ms. Blume Kindergarten, Ms Johnson 1st grade, and Ms Heath 2nd grade!
Do you have a favorite poem? Try reading a variety of poetry and see which one suits you! Here is a poem by one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes:
photo by Dreamstime
April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night -
And I love the rain.
Perhaps you could make your own poem? If you do, be sure to share it with others. A poem can say things that you feel but are unable to say out loud.
Just for Fun
Google's homepage again features a fun game - today's is a cricket game! Go to Google and click on the logo. Enjoy!
RADCAB
RADCAB is an acronym created to help you remember what to look for when you are doing research. Today we'll focus on R: Relevancy.
When you begin to do research, you want to make certain that the information you are looking at is relevant. Relevant is an adjective that means "having significant bearing on the matter at hand." Definition from Merriam-Webster.com
You do not want to waste a lot of time searching through information that is not related to your topic, so you use keywords and phrases when you look up information. Focus questions will also help. You most probably already do this, I know, but let me give you an example of using keywords and phrases:
This picture of the Cartwheel Galaxy made me wonder how NASA was able to find that galaxy. The description says that NASA used composite images viewed by the Chandra, GALEX, Hubble, and Spitzer space observatories. I had heard of the Hubble Telescope, but not the others. I went to Google and typed in the word "Chandra space observatory" and discovered several websites that focus only on the Chandra space observatory. If I had used "space observatory" only, it would have given me several options before I found Chandra.
Now that I found Chandra websites, what do I do? Well, we'll talk about that tomorrow! Meanwhile, you can watch the video "Internet Search" on BrainPop found in your CPS Portal. It is a fun refresher on how to use keywords.
Kindergartners and First Graders: interesting new animals is what we would focus on researching if we were in class. And what we need to know about Relevancy is that to find information about an animal, we would use keywords to start a search. Yesterday I heard that there is an animal with the name "Kinkajou". Well, what is that? My keyword for finding out information about this animal would be "Kinkajou". I found several websites about the Kinkajou when I did this. Which website do I choose? We'll talk about that tomorrow as well!
Whew! That is all for today! I'll see you tomorrow.
I miss you!
