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My Quad-Blogging Reflection

Quad-Blogging is where we connect with different classes around the world, and comment on posts and make posts for our partners to comment on.   The Quad-Blogging lasts four weeks, the first week we commented, the second week we wrote our post, and the last two weeks we commented again.  During Quad-Blogging I had two 4th graders, Elly and Reiss from Illinois, two 6th graders, Isabella and Symran from Port of Spain Trinidad, and two 4th graders, MasterBuilder and Warrior30 from Wisconsin as my partners. I really enjoyed this activity, and I will tell you a little about this amazing experience.

I learned about commenting policies during this activity.   Commenting policies are the rules that you have for the comments that get posted on your blog.  Here is a link to my commenting policy.  I also think that I improved my writing.  Here is an example of one of my comments:

Hi Reiss,

I am from Mrs. Hernandez’s fourth grade class. I think my favorite paragraph was the last one. I really like how you described what you planted in the garden. I like how you said your favorite foods from the garden, and guess what? I also enjoy raspberries. I think my favorite thing about my school is that we learn two different languages. The first one of course is English, and the second one is Hebrew. Have you ever heard of Israel? One of the languages that they speak in Israel is Hebrew. I have a safety patrol at my school, and also like you it is for the fifth graders. I will have to wait until next year to be a safety patrol, but at the end of this year the fifth graders will train my class and me to be safety patrols. I think it is really cool to have ducks living in your courtyard every year. I would love to go to school during the summer to get fruits and veggtables from school. Do you ever get fruits and veggtables from your school garden? If you would like to go to my blog press this link: http//:MJGDS.org/students/elianam/ .

Your Quad Blooging Partner,
Eliana

During Quad-Blogging, I really learned about how others write.  When I was commenting, I noticed posts that weren’t capitalized, were two sentences, or just about things that I thought were very hard to comment on.  Although, other posts were well written, used correct punctuation and correct capitalization, and I thought that they were definitely quality blog posts.

 

One of my partners that really stood out to me was my partner Reiss from Ms. Thompson’s class in Illinois.  She is a very good writer, writes very sweet and definitely quality comments, and her posts are really easy to comment on.  I think she will be a great writer when she gets older.

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UNF Field Trip

Today we went to one of the University of North Florida’s (UNF) nature trails.  We went to the nature trails because today is Tu B’shvat טו בשבת.  That means that to day is the trees’ birthday.  This field trip connects to the holiday because the holiday is about nature, and we learned a lot about nature today.  The people is charge of the nature walks names’ are Ranger Jake, Ranger Justin, and Ranger Treeana.  When we got off the bus we went into a pavilion to talk about the rules of the walk.  We also talked about what plants give us, like medicine, food, oxegion, and a lot more.  The study of plants is called botany.

When we were on the trails we had little booklets to fill out.  There were two main things in the booklet, flowers, and carnivorous plants.  For flowers we stopped off at a little garden a few paces away from the beginning of the trail, and talked about flowers.  We learned the five parts of the top of a flower.  The parts are called:  pollen, stamens, pistils, petals, and the ovary.  We learned that bugs see the the flowers in brighter colors than humans.  The petals of a flower are dull on the tip of the petals, but it gets brighter as the color spreads up the flower.

We saw the oldest tree in the preserve, it was six hundred one year’s old. The tree is a cypress trees. Treeana found a poisinous centipede and a white moth. The moth was dead when she found it though.  We saw a sweet gum tree and learned that some woodpeckers peck in the tree, the bugs are attracted and get stuck, and the bird comes back to eat them. We saw two carnivorous plants. We saw a Sundew and a Pitcher Plant. A Pitcher Plant is shaped like a tube, smells good, and is vividly colored to bugs.  The bugs clime up the stalk, fall down the tube, and get caught in a sticky goop.  The sundew is like a little flower and eats little bugs.  The bugs crawl on the flower and the petals close, and the Sundew eats the bug.

After that we walked to lunch and ate in a clearing.  The rangers could do some bird calls.  After lunch, we played capture the flag boys versus girls the first time, then rangers versus kids.  The first game it was a tie, and the second time the kids won.  I really enjoyed myself on this field trip.