Friday, December 15, 2006

Documents

This week was very busy. The fifth graders have been working hard on our musical 'It's Saturday', which just ended last night. It was about a regular kid's Saturday and how it is ruined by chores, piano lessons, and football practice. Today, we had a spelling test and worked on stuff about primary documents (the 1787 Northwest Ordinance to be exact). It's kind of difficult to understand, so my two partners and I started off by decoding it.We didn't get very far, but we have more time on Monday.

-Emma :)

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Play

Our 5th grade is having a play. It is called "It's Saturday!". The play is about kids who are doing their Saturday activities but their mom wants them to play piano and do chores. But when they are all done and finally just want to play football, but their mom is the coach! And their piano teacher is a hip boogie woogie ougie piano teach'n man. He's one hip dude played by Ian. But at the end of the day, they finally have a sleep-over.

Aaron

Monday, December 11, 2006

Carter Current Vol.6 Issue 12

Science
In Science I went and bought a couple of potted flowers so that the kids could use their bee wands to pollinate them. They still have yet to produce seeds, but in the meantime, we’ve learned a few lessons about what should happen and the processes that take place.

English
We continued with our Grammar Voyage and Caesar’s English this week, although we had to have the test today. Events of Friday only allowed us to do the Spelling Test.

Reading
In Reading we‘re taking a double route right now. We’re going to be reading a nonfiction book, Immigrant Kids, in class. It’s a good one, and it shows the kids another side of the immigration-heavy days of the early 20th century. Second of all, during the first part of this week, we’ll be doing another story out of the Junior Great Books, “Ghost Cat.” This is a very interesting story, and I look forward to hearing the feedback from the kids on it.

Math
We’re doing Geometry in Math right now. I’ve been really happy with how well the kids have taken to concepts like complementary angles, supplementary angles, transversals, and several other rules of Geometry.
On Friday, the kids took the make-up test if they chose to. This helped out their grades quite a bit in most cases.

Bits of Business
· I apologize for the information on the blog in last week’s newsletter. There should be no “www” in the website title. It’s http://mrcartersdojo.
blogspot.com . We’ve been a little bit remiss in keeping it updated, but hopefully we’ll be better in the future.
·If it seems like we didn’t get as much work finished this week, it‘s partially true. However, we did several things in the meantime that are worthwhile. First of all, the fourth and fifth graders both had Everybody Counts, where they learned about what it’s like to have a disability and try to get by. The fourth graders learned about physical disabilities, and the fifth graders were educated on learning disabilities. They found out that it’s not too easy to have either one. A huge thanks goes out to Paula Baugh, who coordinated our program this year, as well as all of the other moms who helped out with the program.
·Second of all, the fifth graders have been working hard on their musical, “It’s Saturday”. I’d have to say this is the furthest along I’ve ever seen one of the musicals at this point in the game. I’ve been pretty impressed with
seeing some of the kids get up their and sing and do their lines. We have a pretty talented class if I may say so.
·Lastly, the choir is in the midst of their travel season. On Friday, they went to Lakeview and Carmel Care Nursing Homes. They have more trips over the next couple of weeks.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
--Albert Einstein

Friday, December 8, 2006

Every Day Counts

Well, this week turned out a little busier than I'd hoped. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of valuable stuff in there, like Everybody Counts, for instance, but we didn't get nearly as much stuff finished as I wanted to. During the next week, I'm really hoping to get some of this stuff finished or up and running:

-I truly hope we have some seeds on our plants. If we don't, that's okay, but it's a lot more fun to learn about stuff if you can actually see it!
-We need to be able to do some Grammar Voyage exercises. We went over this yesterday, but we need to have some exercises under our belts before we can move on with the school year.
-We need to do subsequent readings of our Junior Great Books story. We will do that this week.
-We also need to read our nonfiction books, Immigrant Kids. I passed them out to the kids, but we didn't get started on them.
-We also need to do our Caesar's English test and grade DOLs on Monday.

We'll do our best!

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Complimentary Jazz

Today in math we learned about supplimentary and complimentary angles. A complimentary angle is when two or more angles equal ninety degrees. A supplimentary angle is when two angles equal 180 degrees.

Today we made Christmas ornaments, and we also listened to jazz.

Jake

Monday, December 4, 2006

Kalanchoes

Today in science we used our "bee wands" to pollenate some Kalanchoes (a type of flower). We also talked about rotting and the circle of life. Now we've pollenated the Kalanchoes, I think they will grow seed.

Brian