Carter Current Vol. 6 Issue 11

Hey, I wanted to start off this week with a public apology for not mentioning Brady, Brian, or Keith in my list of names from the Veteran’s Day program. I knew even as I was typing that I was going to leave someone out, and sure enough, I did. Each of them got up there and spoke to the school in honor of our country’s heroes, and I’m thankful to them for it.

Science
Well, I wish I had better news about our plants. Inexplicably, however, they died. And they died before we got to our pollination project. So much for the Wisconsin Fast Plants. We did manage to have a quiz this week over the diagrams, and next week I’m going to bring in a few plants, I believe, and we’ll do the pollination process with them.

English and Social Studies
This week for Caesar’s English, we’re doing two lessons instead of just one. What’s new is that we’re going to do two lessons every two weeks. That way the kids get a lesson with stems and roots as well as the words each time. We’ll try it this way and see how it works. In Social Studies, the kids did biographies on governors of Indiana. They wrote their rough drafts and drew their pictures this week, and next week we’ll be going to the computer lab to type them up. I'd like to thank Mr. Heldt for coming in a couple weeks ago and sharing about his trip to New Harmony and some of its history. It was really great of him to pay us a visit like that, and the kids learned a lot from it. Thanks, Mr. Heldt!

Math
We had a test yesterday on percentages and fractions. Now we’ve moved on to Geometry. This is pretty easy material for students who have struggled with past subject matter. It can be a bit more difficult for the kids who find the other stuff simple. It’s a bit trickier than just “know your shapes”. There are a lot of concepts in this unit that the kids will use well into the future.

Bits of Business
·I’d also like to thank Laura and Brian for bringing in stickers for me. Thanks, guys!
The kids are hard at work on the musical, It’s Saturday. They’ll put it on Thursday, December 14th, at 7:30.

“What we ever hope to do with ease, we must first do with diligence.”
--Samuel Johnson

Have a terrific weekend!
--Mr. C

Playing Catch-Up

Man, I've been awfully remiss in not having the kids write anything on here for awhile now. To be fair, it's only been two days. And last Wednesday we didn't do much that was truly educational with the exception of the Caesar's English test. We did do some Social Studies, where I dressed up as a pioneer schoolmaster and led the kids through a day in my "strict" classroom. I felt kind of like Miss Nelson in Miss Nelson is Missing. I think the kids appreciated me a little bit more after that. Then after that, we did some karate. I just showed the kids how to do a couple of punches, when a bully situation exists (and it's in very rare circumstances, by the way), and I showed them all of my weapons and what they were used for back in the olden days, back when they were farm tools. Finally, we had a party thanks to Mrs. Alexander and Mrs. McGinnis. And Mrs. Heldt brought some stuff in for us also. Thanks, ladies!

As for this week, we're having a test in Science on Thursday over the diagrams they received a few weeks ago showing the parts of a flower and a bee. I'm trying to figure out what to do for Science right now, because our plants died. I was in every day over the weekend, honest! Anyway, any experiments in pollination may be pretty interesting from here on out. I'm trying to figure out how we're going to pull it off.

The second test this week is in Math. The kids received their study guide today, which is due tomorrow. It has everything about percentages and fractions on it. That's on Thursday too. Man, am I a meanie or what? The Science test is really more of a quiz, though.

I'm trying something new with Caesar's English. We're going to take a quiz/test (call this one whatever you want) next week on the next two lessons. This contains both the words and the roots. It's not until December 8, however, so you guys have plenty of time to study it.

Lastly, on Friday we will be having poetry day. The kids are to write a poem (reminder: go over this tomorrow, Carter!) as well as bring one in from an author other than Shel Silverstein. There are plenty of other poets out there, and they can choose one of them. Otherwise, I'm going to have one non-Silverstein, and the rest of them would all be from Where the Sidewalk Ends.

That's it. You should see one of the kiddos doing this tomorrow. Luckily, they're a lot less long-winded than I am.

Percentages

In math today we went over how get a fraction of a number for the second time. We also did percents of numbers and how to multiply to get them. We had done this before but some people didn't quite get it. Now I think everybody got the hang of it. Mr. Carter has taught us quite a few ways to do it, but I think the way he does it is the best.

-Evan

Superheroes

Today we made superheroes to put on the outside wall. It was a pretty cool project. All of us thought about what their superpowers will be, and then we drew what they looked like in their "secret identity". We wrote a paragraph on how they got their powers, what their costume is, and what they were called and why. We all put their secret identity, occupation (besides superhero), and what their weakness and arch enemy is. We took a bunch of brightly colored construction paper and made all of our superheroes, in costume, out of that. They all looked AWESOME!!! I saw some called Jet, The Ignited Flame, and The Swallow. I made Poof. She had the powers of invisibility and flight. It was a cool idea for a project, and I think everyone had a good time. I know I did. I think it's cool to get to do projects like this in class. It was really fun, and we enjoyed getting to be creative. Superheroes is always a cool thing to do, and I'm glad we did!

-Laura

New Harmony

Today Mr. Heldt came in to talk to us about New Harmony. The class learned a lot from that even though we've been studying it for social studies. After that we took our spelling test. Our words of the day were puppy and kitten. When we were done with that we started to grade DOLs. After finishing grading we had free reading time until 4th grade goes to lunch.

- Brady

S-P-E-L-L

I can't wait! Tonight is the Spell Bowl competition! I am totally psyched! Last night I was quizzed on pretty much the entire list, which is 750 words. Afterwards I went up to my bedroom, where I did chin-ups on my bunk bed, singing Eye of the Tiger the whole time. This is going to be one slick night.

Plant Science

Today, we worked on science. Currently my class is working on growing Wisconsin Fast Plants. One of the first things we did was change a variable for the plant ( like using different water). But what we actually did today was take two plants and transplant them into another foam container (we can't change the variables anymore). Nobody knows how this will turn out, but most people hope they won't die (or at least more than the already have).

Natalie

Hello. My Name is Eric

I'm Eric, and I'm proud to be the very first student contributor to Mr. Carter's Dojo. As I said to Mr. Carter, this is kind of like an online Carter Current. I can't wait for the posts to fill up! This is going to be so sweet! This whole blog thing is pretty slick. I mean, come on! Every student gets to post on here! This is one of Mr. Carter's best ideas yet.

Welcome to My Dojo

Here's my first foray into classroom publishing. My class will be able to post to this as they wish, but I will be editing it in case they get out of hand. (Not that any of them ever would.) This should tell you what's going on in my classroom, what we're doing in the various subject areas. I'm going to leave it up to the kids now.

The name of the blog, by the way, is an allusion to the fact that I also teach karate. It's pretty fun, but I doubt you'll be seeing any of my karate students posting here. But who knows?