Monthly Archives: February 2017

Wen’s Visit to the Fourth Grade

Posted on by

An Immigrant Today

by Luc

LREI NY- On 2/8/17 the LREI fourth grade had a visitor. Her name is Wen. She is an immigrant from a village in China. Her village is called Xiapu. The fourth grade was very interested to hear her story. She said a lot of interesting things. This is is her story:

Wen came to NY in 1985 from Xiapu when she was 12 years old. The village she came from only had about 50 people. They were all friends. It was about the size of Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street. You could tell what village someone lived in by their last name. The village had no heat or electricity. The teachers knew how cold the kids were so they had recess after every class so they would run around and get warm. They would play a game where they stood in a line and tried to push each other out of the line.

That kept them warm because they were pushing against each other. The windows had no glass. Instead they used paper! The village would glue the paper to their windows with rice. They had rice for every meal. It may sound bad but they played with each other a lot. They would play hacky sacks and they played ping pong. They would take off their doors and use them as ping pong tables! Sometimes they went to a plastic factory near their village and played with rubber bands.

When Wen got to NYC she was shocked. She had never seen anyone who was not Chinese.

It was crazy for her. Wen’s mom and her worked at a sweatshop as seamstresses. Wen’s whole family worked there. She thought it was fun. “Looking back it wasn’t so safe.” Wen said. “The fire escapes were blocked, and there was no elevator. It was still better conditions than where I was from.” Wen said her boss was nice but had a temper. “She was stressed because of all the work,” said Wen. Wen s first American meal was chicken pot pie and she loved it.

Now Wen has her own clothing company. In the sweatshop she worked as she learned about clothes and she said that was a great experience for her. Now Wen lives better than she did before, in NYC USA.

Hidden Figures

Posted on by

Chase reports:

Our grade went on a field trip to see the movie “Hidden Figures.” We took the subway to a stop close to Penn Station. We walked about a block to the movie theater. When we entered the movie theater, my mouth dropped. The movie theater was bigger than the Great Hall in Ellis Island. We went up the escalator to the floor where our theater was. We got to that floor and walked to theater 8 where we would be seeing the movie.

Most field trips have a purpose. Some don’t. Did this field trip have a purpose? It sounds like it didn’t but it did. In reading, we read a book called Turning 15 On The Road To Freedom. It  is about a girl named Linda who marched on Bloody Sunday and on the march on Montgomery. The book involves one civil rights related subjects that Hidden Figures focused on – segregation. Segregation was a horrible thing.

I already saw the movie before we went on the field trip so it wasn’t as good as it was when I first saw it.  Some people who only watched the movie once think it’s one of those movies for entertainment. When you watch it twice, you’ll think something different. When I watched “Hidden Figures” for the second time, I understood why the producers made the movie and how and why the movie’s not just for entertainment. I mean you might be thinking, “Why would a class go to a movie in school?” That’s what I’m telling you. You learn that segregation is horrible and people are smarter than you think.

After school for homework, we had to write a journal entry pretending we were one of the main characters: Dorothy Vaughn, Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson.

It was a fun field trip.

Jasiri’s journal entry, written as Katherine Johnson.

Math Night!

Posted on by

Imogen reports:

The fourth graders all made math games to play at math night. They worked on them for a very long time. Parents, students, siblings, Debra (the math teacher),  Dan, Tara, and Deborah (the fourth grade teacher) were at family math night. Debra the Lower School Math Teacher has helped arrange the math night, like she has done many years in the past. Multiplication, Division, addition, subtraction, and fractions were incorporated into the math games. While making the math games we improved on our math facts.

A few days after math night we played each others games in our classrooms. We played games that we didn’t get the chance to play at math night. We went around and and played each others games. I was surprised that there were so many different ideas and not one was alike any other. The math games were educational as well as fun! Some math games were harder than others.

Some made board games others made ball games and some made card games. Some math games were, Math Bowling, Multiplication Chutes and Ladders, Math skeeball, and more! The fourth graders had two months to make the math game. I think the math games are a very important part of the 4th grade year.

For many pictures from Math Night, check here.