You Are Your Words

This is a cool new thing to do in your spare time. Upload your picture, some words, and you have a picture of yourself written in your own words.  Click here to get to the website and make your own.

I think we should make these for the biographies that we are writing!  What a great way to show show a picture of the person we are writing about!

In Writing: Biographies

In righting class we are doing a Biography on a person that we thought wood be really cool. Rielynn is doing Taylor Swift, Desirae is doing Martin Luther King, Dalton is doing Michel Jackson,  Kyler is doing Mr. Wiley, Keeaunna is doing Rosa Parks, Daykotta is doing Justin Beiber, Jordan is doing a dude that sings the song I Wish I Had a Storm Warning.  His name is Rascall Flatts.

Written by Rielynn

Off to Hunt and Marven of the Great North Woods

K. and J. Construction want to share the following:  (1) There is a lot of farming, hunting, and lumber in the Midwest; (2) The Mississippi River is great for fishing, shipping, boating, kayaking, and there are lots of bridges and railroads that go over it; (3) The Mississippi River is near Cabela's Hunting Store; (4) The Midwest has many famous parks; (5) There are several good restaurants, stores, including the Farm and Home Store in the Midwest; (6) Marven is a little dude, whose family has influenza, so they send him out into the forest to work with the lumber jacks; (7) Marven's two jobs are to wake up the lumber jacks and to pay them; (8) "Off to Hunt" is a story about a boy named Hunter and a boy named Swift Eagle and a boy named Crying Owl

R, D, and D share the following about what we have been learning:
A boy named Marven got sent to a lumberjack camp because his sisters go because they were girls.  Marven went by himself.  His job was to wake up the lumberjacks on the fourth bell.  He paid the lumberjacks with their signature or sign.  He met Jean Louis and they became good friends.  He went back home afraid that his family wasn't going to be at the train stop waiting for him because the influenza may have killed them.  Then he got off the train and they were all there waiting for him and they all greeted them with hugs and kisses.  His sister kissed his ear.  Grody!

Our question is:  If you have to wake a sleeping lumberjack who is tough as a rock and mean as a grizzly bear would you poke him or knock him out of bed?  We answer, say, "Leve toi!"  Which means wake up in French.

Today we learned about this kid named Crying Owl and his brother named Brave Brother.  He was telling a story about this kid named Hunter and he was afraid of riding a horse and catching a Bison.  It turned out that Hunter was Brave Brother.

Watch for Flash Cards to Come Home!

We are studying the following Greek and Latin roots:

phon: sound

photo: light

spec: see

vid:  see 

sign:  mark

graph: write

mot:  move

Flashcards will be coming home to practice these roots.  

Iowa Assessments Are Done!

We have completed all of our Iowa Assessments.  Students took tests on Reading, Written Expression, Math, Science, Vocabulary, Spelling, Capitalization, Punctuation, and Computation.  I think all would say they breathed a sigh of relief as they finished taking them and that they really tried to knock my socks off!

Great job to these Inquiring Kids!

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a great and FREE website where people can watch videos to learn concepts and then practice those concepts to check their understanding.  We've been working on adding fractions with unlike denominators.  You can click here to be taken to a video at Khan Academy to work on this skill.

Have Fun!

BB KING

We've been learning about the Central Region in the United States, also known as America's Heartland.  There are 2 regions in the Central Region, the Midwest and the South Central Region.

One of our reading selections mentions B.B. King, the great blues artist. The music he played became associated with the Central Region, especially in the Chicago area, where they have Blues Festivals. Here is a video of BB King playing a song called Blues Boys Tune.

<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4Ny5ajCn0xw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Murals for Unit 5 Inquiry Project

We are looking at murals because it will be our next inquiry project. We've even seen reverse murals, which are dirty walls that are "painted" by cleaning up the dirt.   See the examples above.

Look under the Unit 5 America's Heartland tab to see examples of murals in Philadelphia.

This one really isn't a mural, but I found it while searching for Reverse Murals.  It is pictures drawn on the dusty glass of vehicles.

Multiplication Videos---We Love 'Em

Here are Mrs. Fraifeld's Multiplication Videos. CLICK HERE!

How to Be a Good Group Member-1st in a Series

Rielynn's Voki Talks About Space Hygiene

Neptune Moose

 We read a science fiction selection about a husband and wife team that spent 13 years in space flying to Neptune and back.  This had Konner thinking about what Neptune is like.  Here's what he found out:
 

How Many States Have You Been To?

We are reviewing methods for organizing data in math. Students have collected data on the number of states they've been in. After organizing the data, we will review common landmarks (minimum, maximum, range, mode, median, and mean). Once our data is collected, we will put the results on the blog, so stay tuned....

In literacy, we're reading our last story about space. It is a science fiction story set in 2152-2154. We continue to discuss how good readers ask and answer questions before, during, and after reading. Today we spent 10 minutes asking questions about three sentences we read. Those sentences were:  Voyager 2 followed this same route 175 years ago. But spaceships are much faster today. So we'll be back on Earth in just 12 years.  Amazing how three little sentences can lead to many things to discuss.

A picture of a scene from The Color of Justice, the play we will be seeing on Friday.

Field trip tomorrow!  We are going to see The Color of Justice at the Gallagher Bluedorn.  It is a play set in the 1950s and is about citizenship, fairness and respect.