The Westing Game

By Safe Jassani

Mrs. Karabinus’s 4th-5th class started reading the book called the The West-

ing Game in October 2011. The book is a mystery about heirs who play a game to

figure out which one of them is the murderer of a man named Samuel Westing. To

help us solve the mystery, Mrs. Karabinus bought us notebooks to write down the

clues to the mystery. On every page we will write a character’s name and the mys-

terious things that happen to the characters. Sometimes we listen to the recording

of the book and sometimes Mrs. Karabinus assigns some of us a character and we

will read their part.

Mrs. Karabinus gave each one of us

a character to draw a portrait, which we

hung up in the classroom to remind us of

the characters. We all got partners to as-

sist us with drawing the details of the

character we were assigned.

I asked Alex some questions about

The Westing Game, he said “I like The

Westing Game because it is very interest-

ing and there are many mysteries that go

along with it.” He also said, “I have a

feeling that the murderer is _______ or

_______.”

I also asked Aidan some questions.

“I definitely like the book because it’s

very interesting”. There is a movie called

The Westing Game, but there are many

differences from the book..

Our Biomes Project

By Alyssa Belko

During October, Mrs. Karabinus’s class spent a couple of weeks doing a

project on biomes. Each student partnered up and did research on their assigned

biome during our computer lab time. Our class did the project for two reasons.

The first rea-

son for the

project was

because we

were doing a

unit on food

webs and

food chains.

The other

reason was

for the peo-

ple who

don’t have

much experi-

ence with

active-

inspire to

learn about

this soft-

ware.

The flipcharts we made contained facts on endangered animals, plant and

animal adaptations, precipitation and temperature, and a food chain the audience

could try to do themselves and then the answers on the next slide for the present-

ers check to see if they’re right. After about 3 weeks of research, we presented

them to the rest of our class. Lilly Horschke and Emma Hirsch did a flipchart on

the Temperate Deciduous Forest.

“My favorite part was getting the pictures off the internet.” Lilly said. “The

most interesting fact to me about my biome is that we’re living in a temperate de-

ciduous forest.”

Safe Jassani and Aurora Piotrowski were partners. “My favorite fact is that

coral grows three centimeters each year.” Safe said. “I was nervous about present-

ing it because I was afraid something would go wrong.”

Moldy Log Observation

Experiment

By: Aurora Piotrowski

Mrs. Karabinus’s class

dissected moldy logs in the

art room in October with a

hammer, chisel and gloves.

On our logs we found lots of

insects, decomposers, fungi

and other living and non-

living things that make a rot-

ting log their home. We dis-

sected moldy decaying logs

for our unit in science. Our

unit in science was about

food chains and food webs.

In a food chain or web the

arrows go the direction of the flow of energy. A food chain would consist of:

Sun→Grass→Bug→Lizard→Snake→Hawk→Decomposer

A food web is a bunch of food chains strung together. There can be many organ-

isms living on and in a rotten log. Those organisms feed off the decaying log and

make it into fertilizers for other plants so they can grow (I really don’t want to

into how they

do that

though). De-

composers

usually are

fungi, fungus,

worms, certain

insects and

mold.

Track and Field Day by Violet Jouriles

On October 7th, the students of Emerson School had Track and Field Day

outside on the baseball field and black top. The games we played were: Titanic,

Guard the Castle, Capture the Flag, Kickball, Three Man Dodge Ball, and obsta-

cle courses. This year we had it in

October because we wouldn’t be

having gym with Mr. Harter in

the spring. It will be replaced by

art class. Everyone knows that

there can’t be Track and Field

Day without Mr. Harter! My fa-

vorite game was kick ball because

it gave everyone a chance to run

around and have fun.

“My favorite game was

Three Man Dodge Ball because I

was paired with my friends.” Ai-

dan said.

Emma said, “My favorite

game was the Obstacle Courses

because it was fun and involved

running and endurance.”

I was very excited about the turn out and hope it’s this fun next year also!

Courtyard Fix Up By: Michael Ferrone

During the year of 2011-12 Emerson Elementary is trying to fix up our very

own courtyard to make more room for classes to do work on nice days. We are

moving the garden to the side of the courtyard and then filling up the hole with

concrete to make more rooms for classes to do work.

In 2010 Mrs. Karabinus class planted this garden to make the courtyard

more of a habitat; we planted plants that were brightly colored so they could at-

tract butterflies and humming birds.

Mrs. Dunn was the one that started moving it. She removed the rocks,

loosened the soil, and then she moved the plants with the help of two of our stu-

dents. Sophia Ashby was one of the people who helped Mrs. Dunn with the soil.

“What we did was get all rocks and clay out of the soil so the plants could grow.”

Alice King was another helper and said that “It was fun we took the clay out of

the courtyard to the classroom, it was hard work.”

Mr. Shields and many other people are trying to get benches for the court-

yard to make it so you don’t have to sit on the ground if it’s damp.

OHIO STOCK MARKET

CHALLENGE

By Riley Geyer

The kids in Mrs. Karabi-

nus’s class are taking the Ohio

Stock Market Challenge. It

started on October 3rd and is

going to end on December 9th.

The Ohio Stock Market Chal-

lenge is a game that is played

on the computer. In this game

you receive a hundred thousand

dollars to buy stocks with. The

goal is to make the most money off of the stocks. Lots of students from Ohio enter

the challenge. Even students in high school have entered the Stock Market Chal-

lenge.

Mrs. Karabinus separated the students into four groups named, Karabinus-

1, Karabinus-2, Karabinus-3 and Karbinus-4. The groups worked together to find

stocks to buy and sell. We are taking the Stock Market Challenge because we are

studying economics and stocks.

“I am very happy with the stocks we have now and I am very pleased with

how we are doing.” said Aurora Piotrowski.

Zearatus Perry said, “I like buying stocks because it gives you a chance to

get money.”

“I think it is a fun chal-

lenge. We have to agree

on the stocks that we are

going to buy or sell be-

cause we are in a group

together.” Michael

Ferrone said

Trip to the Zoo

By Alice King

Mrs. Karabinus’s class and Mrs. Gerg’s class went to the zoo on Monday,

October 24 , 2011. We were split into groups for the trip. The group sizes were 4-

6 kids. We saw a lot of animals, including elephants, lions, monkeys, and birds.

First, we started in the elephant exhibit. “It was fun seeing the elephants be-

cause we haven’t seen them for such a

long time,’’ said Violet.

A lot of first graders chose to

write about something they found in

there. After that, we had some lunch.

From there, the groups were allowed to

go wherever the groups wanted to go.

In school, before we went on our

zoo trip, we picked a book from a bin

and did a page about the animal in our

zoo book. The zoo book is a packet of

paper the first graders fill out with in-

formation about an animal as well as

put a picture of the animal on the side.

OH DEER! By: Eliza Richardson On

November 2nd our class went outside to play

a game called “Oh Deer”. Oh Deer is a game

to represent what happens to the population

of deer when there is too many deer and not

enough shelter, water and food. Our class

concluded that when there are too many deer

and not many habitat components some deer

will not find what they are looking for and

the deer will die. When the deer die they

will eventually decay and turn in to more

habitat components. Since there will be less

deer and more habitat components the sur-

viving deer will have enough food, water

and shelter and produce more deer. The cy-

cle will repeat over and over again.

The game was played by starting out

with 6 deer and the rest of us were habitat components. We performed the cycle

by picking a habitat component and the deer would run over and pick a person

that had the same habitat component and if there was no more people with the

same habitat component the deer would die.

Riley said that, “ She liked the game but it got boring after a while.”

Violet said, ”I think the game was very fun because we don’t often play games

like that in school.” After we finished the game we

went back inside and graphed how many deer we had after each round out of 9

rounds. When we were done graphing we noticed that the number of deer popu-

lation was more, then less, more, less, more, less, more, less, more, less. The

point of this game was to realize that the population in nature is not balanced, it

goes up and down.

Survival How-To

By Lillian Horschke

Our class wrote articles

about outdoor survival. We did

this in our classroom because we

were reading the book, Hatchet,

by Gary Paulsen, where the main

character was lost in the Canadian

wilderness. We turned the com-

pleted articles into a book that

each student’s parents will receive

at conferences.

The articles are about how

to tell your direction, how to get

clean water, how to signal for

help, how to make a shelter and how to cross water safely.

Tully Worron wrote an article about direction. I asked her what she thought

was cool about it. “I think it’s cool because when you’re in a place where you

don’t know your direction there are so many ways to find it.” she said.

Riley Geyer wrote her article about making a tepee out of a parachute, and

Zearatus Perry wrote his about how to make a compass. Lots of people wrote

about dif-

ferent

things, so

this book

can teach

you lots of

things. We

hope you

enjoy the

book!

Hermit Crabs By: Aidan Bohac

The students of Mrs. Karabinus’s

class and their first grade buddies

from Mrs. Gerg’s class were doing

research about hermit crabs. They

were doing this because Mrs. Gerg’s

class was going to get a hermit crab

for their classroom pet. The pairs had

questions to answer and put in Power

Points. Some of the groups had the

same questions, but the Power Points

were very different. Some of the

questions were: What do hermit

crabs eat? Why are there empty

shells in the tank? When do we clean the aquarium? and Where do hermit crabs

get their shells?

The pairs put together a PowerPoint to present to the two classes. The stu-

dents met 4-5 times to: find answers, to make are Power Points, to practice read-

ing the PowerPoint’s. A PowerPoint about the Power Points will be presented to

our principal and other buddy classes to encourage them to do other things than

just read together. Michael Ferrone said “I have one of my own (hermit crab). So

when I was helping it was a lot easier than it would be if I did not have one of my

own.” We used a

program called

Read Please to

read are answers.

The program

read and high-

lighted the word

at the same time.

Eventually we

read the Power

Points to the two

classes after all

that hard work.

How To Register To Vote By Nate Bilski

You have to have certain qualifications to vote. You must be a resident of

the U.S.A to vote and at least be 18 years old. You must be a resident of the state

in which you’re voting. You must have lived in your area for at least 30 days to

vote. You only need to register once in your life. Those are the qualifications to

vote.

Here are your directions on how to register to vote. Contact the Board of

Elections in your state either by calling or through the internet. Next, you may get

a form from them or places like the post office or library. Certain states have

deadlines for when the form is supposed to be turned in before the election. Now,

mail the form to the Board of Elections. Finally, you should get a voters card in

the mail. In most states you don’t need a voter’s card but it does tell you where to

vote. You do need to bring a form of I.D. to vote. Now you know how to start vot-

ing.

Special Research Report:

Published by Zearatus and Emma

Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs By Evan Bell

On November 6 and 7, our class compared and contrasted Tho-

mas Edison and Steve Jobs. We used Venn diagrams, biogra-

phies, and the smart board to help us. We did this to learn more

about these world-changing people.

“What we had to do was fun and interesting!” Sophia Ashby

said.

Mrs. Marshall gave us Steve Jobs quotes to think about, such as, “You can’t

do a great job if you don’t love what you do.” We realized that what Steve Jobs

did would not be possible without Thomas Edison. Afterwards we did a paper

and had to choose whether we would go to Thomas Edison’s or Steve Job's house

and what gift we might bring. Some common examples are bringing Steve Jobs

apples or things made of apples, and giving Thomas Edison light bulbs. One of

the more inventive examples was Alice’s, she went to Edison’s house and brought

flowers because they would last longer than other gifts and looked very nice in a

unique way.