Finally Friday

It’s finally Friday. Fridays are great because it’s the last day of the school week, we take the reading tests, and multiplication timed tests, and every Friday we get to read the Time for Kids!

The day started out with a Math Card test on our Palms like every Friday which helps us improve our times facts in math. After that was reviewed for the upcoming Midyear math test by taking notes in our notebook. Next we did pages 193,196, and 197 that had problems like the ones that will be on the test. I thought they were kind of easy.

Writing was next on our Friday list. In fun writing we wrote a story about three wishes that we want and why we want them. We also shared our groups’ blog tips. My group was doing photos tips. Ours were awesome!

Next was music. Music is all right, but can get boring some days, but not today. Today we shared our ragas. In my group I had Ryan, Drew, and Aaron. Our raga was unusual, ear ripping, and just plain loud.

Next on the agenda was reading. Today we had the reading test over the story Oceans. Oceans scare me fro some reason. Then it was time to read the week’s Time For Kids with friend. My buddy was Aaron. The TFK sheet afterward had questions over space, George W. Bush, and more.

My favorite subject was next. Guess what it is. It’s spelling. Today we studied spelling by writing our words on our Palms and then we did more studying with a friend. That’s it.

Lunch was finally here! I’m glad lunch came because I was so hungry. Today in lunch we had food well duh. I gorged it down in five minutes flat. When recess came I said goodbye to the scrumptious food and ran outside.

After silent reading we started Social studies. The rest of the class read their letters to friends they wrote. These letters were about living in the colonies. Next was a great surprise, units turned into Newsbowl. On my team I had Maggie, Erin, Kaleb, and I. My team got 390 points by answering questions like a homeless man was staying warm in his old high school, the hottest temperature in Nebraska was recorded at 110 degrees, and the coldest temperature in Nebraska was –47 degrees, brrrrr.

After a brief teacher read and studyhall Ms. Sanborn told us to line up. She signed our planners then we all ran out of the class like bunch of gorillas.

Fridays seem to fly by faster than all the other days because of the reading tests, math tests, and today because we got to play Newsbowl!

Yea! Art Enrichment Day

“Yea, it's finally Wednesday the 26th!” everybody screamed. That meant it was Multicultural Art Enrichment Day filled with cutting, weaving, and gluing. The only real classwork we had was a spelling pretest, but that happens every Wednesday.

For our am assignment we had to clean our tote trays. We also had to edit #3 in our editing book. This week we were doing editing over the story Summer of Fire.

At nine o'clock sharp we went to the gym for our first all class art activity. The activity was a Chinese art activity. We had to make hats. On those hats we had to make two sides of an animal. The way we chose that animal is by the year that we were born. Let me explain. There are twelve animals on a sheet of paper. Under each animal there was a list of years people were born. Then you check which animal's over the year you were born and that's the animal you draw. Most people did dogs because most people were born in 1994 just like me.

After the first hour was up we split and it was time for African art. We were making African masks. It is very easy. All you had to do was grab a paper plate and then make holes in it. Then you could either paint it or use markers. After that you decorated it with different types of things.

On the last rotation we got to do a Mexican project. We were doing something called God's Eyes. It was where we take two twigs almost the same size and then you take yarn and wrap it around until it looks like a small diamond of yarn wrapped around two twigs. Then you take a different color of yarn and do the same except you do it around the first diamond. When you’re finished you have to tie it. If you finished you got to do another one. Most people did do two. Once we got finished we got to draw Indian symbols on paper tepees or read Indian books.

Soon we had to do our spelling pretest. The spelling rule was words ending with ent and ant. Not many people did well, but that's okay. Soon after the pretest we got free work time.

After that of course we had lunch and recess. For lunch they served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but I had cold lunch. Then at recess I played football and so did many other kids. It was fourth graders vs. fifth graders.

Finally it was time for the assembly we always have on Enrichment Day. We got to see different types of cultural clothing and hear kids say have a good afternoon in different languages. We also got to watch an I Movie that Mr. Vincent put together about all the things we did today. It was fun to see what other people were doing.

In conclusion I had a great Enrichment Day. I learned and made Chinese, African, Mexican, and Indian art. I will always remember the masks, hats, and God’s Eyes, but mostly I’ll remember we didn’t have to have a normal day in the classroom.

Rough Day
I got whipped for giving my mom a kiss, a man was killed for stealing a silver spoon, someone else had to wear a dunce cap, and all we had to eat was corn! I bet you thought I was talking about myself, but actually that would be a daily Blog for a colonial kid in the 1700’s if Ms. S made them blog back then. It sounds a little harsh to me, but it was interesting to learn about all of that in social studies today.

Sanborn's Super Students 2005 started their day by working on their morning assignment. The assignment was about an Opera premier. That was tough because you had to reread over and over to answer the questions.

"Sharpen your pencils and get out your pens because we're checking our study guides,” Ms. Sanborn announced. Moans and groans filled the air, but we had to check it whether we liked it or not. The kids in HAL math couldn’t check a study guide because they went to the computer lab. Many people did not want to check it, but we had to. I had made some silly mistakes on mine and missed a few. When that was finally over, we did page 210 in our journals. My favorite part was multiplying with thousands. If you finished that early, you could study with a buddy. Right when I sat down with my buddy Andrew, it was 10:10 and time for writing.

Writing made the day a whole lot more enjoyable. We listed applications and categories we use on our Palms. From there we signed up for groups that we will be in on Thursday. We got to choose the categories or applications that we felt comfortable enough to talk to technology visitors about. Some of the categories were Games, Blogging, the ELMO and many others. The people in my group are Aaron, Andrew, Madison, and I. When we were done picking groups, we added some adjectives, nouns, adverbs, verbs, and prepositional phrases to our Silly Sentences word lists. When we were done adding the parts of speech, the Palm put together some really silly sentences. They were INSANE! One sentence was, "The stripped plastic car stared unhappily at the tiger." That was awesome!

Next was music. We practiced our Raga's and got them ready for next Tuesday. Ragas are patterns of melody used in Indian music. I think Raga's are exciting because you get to use so many instruments.

Reading was fun today because we got to read and learn about oceans. We even listed 10 facts about them. An interesting fact I read was that tides are generated by the moon and sun’s gravitational pull.

During spelling and editing time we edited the second sentence of Summer of Fire. There were so many mistakes we had to correct. When we were finished, we took our weekly spelling test. I thought the words were easy because the words were homophones. The bonus word was Massachusetts. I hope no one looked on the wall because the word Massachusetts was on the wall. When we completed that, we shared our Sketchys we made to learn our homophones. All the people who shared did great.

When lunch came many people got hot dogs, but others got Crispitos. I had cold lunch. Recess was great because almost everybody played football. My team lost, but it was fun anyway.

Silent reading came and I was reading The Ghost Next Door. The part where I am is when Hannah, the main character, sees this kid named Danny, but she thinks he's a ghost. He moved next door and she didn't even notice. It's a great book.

It’s time for social studies so we presented our poster of research notes about colonial living. My group and I shared about schools in the colonial times. When we were done sharing, we wrote a letter to a friend pretending we were actually living in the colonial times. In my letter I said that our family ran out of corn, I had to wear the Dunce cap at school and I wanted a sling shot for my birthday. I was mad we had to write in cursive, but I guess it is still a lot better to live now then back then!

After that, Ms. Sanborn read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. We read the part where she sees a red robin mark and a pistol in the crew’s room. This book is amazing!

After that it is simply filling out assignment books, completing work, and cleaning up.

Everyday my day at school begins at 8:35 a.m. and as you can see, I have very busy days. We have math, writing, music, reading, spelling, social studies, and teacher read! They all
make a fun day. When the bell rings at 3:30, I can always look back on my day and think about all the people and subjects I learned from.

Busy, Busy Monday
Here we are again back to school on a dreary Monday morning. Luckily we did some fun things in class today like make webs, write tips, share journals, and play volleyball.

Our day started as everyone checked in, sat down in their seats, and began the morning assignment. Today’s morning assignment was to edit the first sentence about Summer of Fire in our editing books.

“Oh no!” I thought to myself! Next was the worst subject of them all! Math! But it wasn’t too bad today. First we checked a link we did a couple of days ago, then we checked a Math Box in our math journals. We were assigned the Unit 6 Study guide to complete to help prepare us for the upcoming math test. It was too hard.

"Clear off your desks and meet me on the floor with your writing journals," called Ms. Sanborn.
Everyone ran to the floor with his or her writing journals. Usually the girls got the comfortable spot against the wall, but not today. Today it was us boys. We shared our entries about our fantasy birthday party plans. We answered questions like; who would you invite? Where would we go? What would you eat? What would you do? I think Dylan's was the funniest because he wanted to buy the places that he went to, not just rent them for the day. After reading our stories we did a free write in our writing journal. I can’t wait to share those tomorrow.

Wo,Whoo! It’s the best time of the day. Gym! To start gym we ran eight laps around the gym. That wasn't too bad. Then we had to bump the volleyball around to try to beat our record of 26. We only got up to 23. Oh darn! That was the end of gym.

When we got back into the classroom it was time for reading. We first webbed about the Ocean. It had to have five sub-categories and five examples in each. We also had to ask ten questions we had about the ocean. I bet the next story we are reading is about the Ocean. We also went over the vocabulary words for the story we’ll read tomorrow as well as listened to Ms. Sanborn read a poem about a drop of water.

“Spelling time!” Ms. Sanborn handed out a spelling sheet that in my opinion was really easy. We are studying homophones. Since it didn’t take anyone very long we had time for people to share their Homophone Sketchys on the ELMO. Some were really cool.

After spelling it was time for my lunch! For lunch today we only had two choices. Our A choice was a turkey sandwich. Our B choice was cheese pizza. When we got into the lunchroom I saw that a lot of the people were having cold lunch. I wonder why? After the delicious lunch we went out to recess everyone threw off their coats and started playing in t-shirts because it was sooo warm outside in January!

After reading in the library Ms. Sanborn wrote some colonial questions on the board and drew sticks from the stick cup. After the students’ names were drawn and the groups were made everyone worked together to find and take notes on the answers to the questions.

After almost forty-five minutes of research time, Ms. Sanborn asked everyone to clear off their desks and meet her on the floor." Man does she ever stop saying that? It was time for teacher read. We are reading a book about a girl who is stuck on a ship with men.

At three o’clock we took out our assignment notebooks and filled them out. After that we had study hall for thirty minutes. Finally the day had ended, Ms. S. signed us out, and we were out of there!

It was a busy Monday. We had done a lot of work, especially in groups. We learned about the oceans, colonial living, and everyone’s fantasy birthday party plans! How did we even have time for lunch?

Today was a wonderful day because it was Friday and Ms. Sanborn's birthday! That meant we got floats for birthday treats, the weekend to look forward to, and Ms. S. was in a good mood!

Today there was no morning assignment so we started math early. First we took a times test on our handhelds. Then we checked someone's Study Link about fractions with common denominators. Only a few students got 100%. Great job! Good thing we kept our pens out because we checked a friend's Math Box next. Most of us missed two or less. Our math assignment was to do three whole pages! We did pages 198 and 199 about adding and subtracting fractions. Our third page was a Math Box.

After math it was time for writing. In writing, since it was Ms. Sanborn's birthday, we wrote about what we would plan to have birthday party of our dreams. Money didn’t matter, but it could only last three days. Then we went over a new Roving Reporter rubric. Next, with a group of four, we wrote out tips for one topic of the rubric like Word Choice and Organization. Each group had to have at least eight tips.

After our hands got really tired and we were sick or writing it was finally time for music. In music, we learned what a Raga is. A Raga is a type of Indian music that is usually ten to twenty notes long. After we got that down, we started making a Raga of our own in a group of three to four.

When we got back to the room, we checked someone's pink packet. Then we took out our green reading books for a test over the story Summer of Fire. While some of us were taking the test, the other reading group worked on their assignment. Mrs. Kelley came barreling into our room and we all said, "Hi Mrs. Kelley".
Mrs. Kelley gave us back our test of 25 spelling words that we took yesterday. After she left, we had to write the words that we missed in our personal spelling booklet. When we finished, we worked on our Homophone Sketchy for a few minutes.

I only had to hear my stomach growl for a few more seconds before I knew it was finally time for lunch. Most students either brought their lunch or ordered the chicken patty sandwich.

"Study your social studies," barked Ms. Sanborn as we walked back in the room after lunch. It was time to take a social studies test. After all of us were done, we watched a movie about colonial life.

After the video Ms. Sanborn passed out a questionnaire about what we thought about school. It was like taking a test. We had to use a number two pencil and fill in bubbles. They asked questions like does your teacher like teaching, is your school safe, do your parents look forward to the Friday Folder. I’m glad that asked my opinion.

When we finished the questionnaires, Ms. Sanborn told us a story about when her family would go visit her mom’s mom and her dad would make “Secrets” for all the cousins, but to you and I they are really just root beer or other pop floats. Since this was special to her she likes to bring and make them every year for her birthday treats. So we all got to have root beer floats, supplied by Ms. Sanborn, for her birthday!
"Thanks Ms. Sanborn," we all said after we had finished singing Happy Birthday to her.

At the end of the day, we all filled out our assignment books, finished our work, and the delicious floats, and then rushed out the door.

It was a Happy Birthday for Ms. Sanborn and a yummy birthday for us because of the floats!

A Big Day

Oh, no! We had a big District spelling test today and we were presenting our colony billboards. There was a lot of stress this Thursday in January inside Ms. Sanborn’s classroom.

First was our morning assignment. We had a green sheet that we had to put a word into a sentence, but since it had more than one definition we had to really read the sentence. I thought that was pretty easy and so did some other people.

After awhile, we had math. We checked math links 187 and 190 about common denominators and graphs. We also checked Math Box 204, which about Stem and Leaf graphs and some other math we have been learning about. Enough with the checking, I thought to myself! We did Math Boxes 206 and 208 about adding and subtracting fractions with and without common denominators. Math Box was 208 we also added and subtracted fractions, but now we had to measure and work with graphs. Boy, did we have an enormous amount of math to do.

Next was writing. In writing, we shared our Blog writings about what a Blog is, who should write Blogs and when. I never got to share my Blog writing piece, darn! Other people didn't either. Why you ask? It was because Mrs. Kelly, the principal came in and gave us the big spelling test! We were excited to hear it wasn’t going to count against our grade and that is good because I don't think I did too well. You're probably wondering why I think that, and it’s because they were hard words like typhoon, ventriloquist, and even nutritiously! Good thing this has spell check!

After the long hard spelling test, we had gym. In gym, we played volleyball. At the end of class we had to hit the ball over the net correctly without it hitting the floor. We complete with the other fifth grade classes to see who can do it the longest which meant we had to beat Ms. French's and Miss Everts' classes score. We did! We got 26 bumps! They only got 19 and 14. That means we are the champs so far!

When the champs came back from gym, we reread our story, Summer of Fire with a partner. My partner was Erica. After we reread the story, we had to do a vocabulary, sequence, and pronoun sheet about pronouns, of course!

Four subjects down, two to go! Next subject was spelling. In spelling, we had to make a sketchy of our spelling words. Just in case you're wondering, a sketchy is an animation on our handhelds.

Next we had lunch. For lunch we had Macaroni and Cheese, which I had. I forgot the other choices. When we heard "If you’re done you may be dismissed." We raced out the door.

Our last subject of the day was Social Studies. In Social Studies, we took some notes about our colonies then we did our group presentations with our billboards about our colonies. They were good.

"Get out your assignment notebooks and then join me down by the couch." Ms. Sanborn said in her cheery voice. That means teacher read.
"Laura lets buy the couch and sit with Ms. Sanborn," Rachel said.
"Ok!" I told her.
So we did. We are reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. It is about a girl named Charlotte Doyle who goes on a boat to get to the United States from England in the 1800s and she does not think she is supposed to be on the boat. That is all we have read so far.

Now it's was finally time to do some work in study hall. Study hall is where you can do whatever work you want or need to do. I worked on my link about common denominators.

And that was our day! We had a big spelling test, gave our presentations, and now I'm off to Student Council.

Fun Day

Today was a slamming day because it was Wednesday, a short day, we played Newsbowl, and had art! Wow! Isn't that awesome, three fun-filled activities in one day. That was so cool.
 
For our morning assignment today we had to clean our tote trays. That is always our morning assignment on Wednesdays. After we showed Ms. Sanborn our tote-trays, we got our second quarter stories and put them together to be bound because the covers we done being laminated.
 
After we did that, we had a spelling pretest. We had a different type of pretest today. We had sixteen words and the same words are going to be on our real test too, because they are homophones. So after we took the pretest, we copied all our words down.
 
Next, we had extra short writing time. All we did was discuss what an adverb was and went around the room telling three adverbs that we found. I didn't say any because I was sick yesterday. That is all we did.
 
Afterward we had art! One of the best activities in the whole day! For art we started making a 2-D snow globe. For my snow globe I drew one big snowman holding hands with two little snowmen. We worked on that for about forty-five minutes.
 
Next it was Gymsic. Gymsic is gym and music mixed together. We have Gymsic with a fourth grade class. For Gymsic we practiced a dance because the fourth graders were doing the dance with their parents at family night.
 
When we got back, we had about twenty more minutes of work time to work on our snow globes. After the twenty minutes of art, we practiced our billboard song or scene for the social studies presentations tomorrow. For your information our billboards were assigned to the four us. We had been assigned one colony from the thirteen colonies and we had to make a slogan and billboard to convince people to move there. My colony is Pennsylvania and the other people in my group are Alex, Farris, and Erica.
 
Later we had math. Some people, like me went to Math Olympiad and the other people went to the computer lab to work on Larsons Math. The people from Math Olympiad got back at about twelve twenty-five and went straight to the computer lab with the rest of the class. The people in Math Olympiad only did Larsons Math for about ten minutes. When we got back we caught up with some work.
 
"Line up cold lunch," Ms. Sanborn yelled out. So cold lunch rushed over to the line. Next was A, then B, and lastly C. The choices were pizza sticks, shaker salad, or cheeseburger. I chose cold lunch because I’m not a big fan of school lunches.
 
We all rushed out the door for recess. There wasn't as many kids at recess because some fifth graders had lost their recess because they did not cooperate in Gymsic. They missed a whole lot of fun.
 
When we came into the hallway, our class ran in because it was time for Newsbowl! As Ms. Sanborn called out the names for the groups, we wrote our names down on the score sheet. I had Erica, Willie, and Aaron in my group. Unfortunately, we only got 70 points. But you never know that may be enough to win!
 
We had a fun filled day with the coloring of snow globes, Newsbowl questions and even math, but too bad, since it was Wednesday it was time to go and it was only 2pm!

The Busiest, Craziest Day

Today was one of the busiest, craziest days ever because we played loud noises in music, played State tag on the map outside for recess, and we also learned a lot in all the subjects!

Today in math we learned something new. Can you guess what it was? Well, it was about clock fractions and how to add and subtract the fractions of the hour. It was a fun! We even had time to check page 189, learn the new clock adding trick and get a Math Box assignment on page 204. That page even had a review stem-and-leaf plot graph that we had learned earlier last week.

Writing was next. We first wrote the definition of adverbs then ten examples of adverbs from books we’re reading in our Writing notebooks. The next assignment was to do a Four Square and a writing piece about Blogging, it is due Thursday. Blogging you know is what I’m doing right now!

Then Ms. Sanborn walked us down to the music room. In Music we played many different instruments like we had done before. That was really crazy, because everyone was playing so loudly at the same time!

When we came back from Music, we had Reading. We previewed and predicted about the story called Summer of Fire. The story is about the fires that spread at Yellowstone National Park in 1988. After we were done reading out loud, we wrote a summary and three facts we learned from the story.

In Spelling we took our Spelling tests like we take every Tuesday. We have to write it in cursive. Cursive is very hard and complicated for me. The next assignment was to work on our cursive handwriting packet, the letter b.

Yea! Lunch and recess, a break! We even get to go outside since it’s warm enough again!

After reading silently for fifteen minutes we had Social Studies. The groups that we have been sitting in have been our groupsfor the upcoming colony presentations We have been working together on a billboard that we will present on Thursday! We also took notes over the thirteen colonies for the test on Friday.

After Ms. S. read from The True Confessions of Charolette Doyle and we worked hard in studyhall it was finally time to call it a day!

This was one of the busiest and craziest days here in our class because of the billboard work time, music loudness, the note taking, and of course all the learning.

Lots of Treats Day!

It was a cold, bitter day, but it was Friday! Everyone was looking forward to their upcoming three day weekend because of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day , it was also Drew and Micah’s half birthdays and today concluded this week’s editing, but some kids were mad because we had music.

Once everyone was in the classroom, Drew passed out donuts because today was his half birthday! As we ate we worked on our morning assignment drawing, coloring, and labeling three dreams. One was about ourselves, one was about your family, and the other was about the world.

Math was up next. In math we had a times test on our handhelds. After we gave Ms. Sanborn our scores, we recorded them in an application on our Palms called Sheets To Go. Then we switched our math journals in our table group. Then we checked the link 285 that was about number lines and what unit made sense with that number line. Everyone in my table group got 100% on the link. Next, we checked page 186 and Math Box page 187 and I got 100% on both pages. I got two pieces of candy because of it.
“Get out your S.R.B.s (Student Reference Book),” announced Ms.Sanborn.
Next, Ms.Sanborn assigned us math journal pages 189-192 about graphs.

“Get out your writing journals,” said Ms. Sanborn. Everyone knew what subject was up next. Writing. We had to write our second quarter goals and if we achieved or not achieved them in our writing journals. I thought it was pretty easy because we just copied them off our colored leaves (that’s where we had written them to remind us). Next we had to think of and write third quarter goals, why we chose them, and how we will achieve them. Lastly in writing we shared our introductions and conclusions we wrote about Wednesday and Tuesday and if they were good enough you could get one ticket, or two tickets, or a piece of tasty candy. I think sharing them aloud really helped. During writing Micah passed out brownies for his half birthday. We also had our snacks during writing.

Up next was music. In music we played instruments to the song “Everybody Loves Saturday Night.” I played the drums along with Kaleb and Ben. “This is fun,” said Ben when we were practicing.

When we got back from music there was an Everglades sheet on our desks that we checked. Good job to all those who got 100%. “Get in test mode,” said Ms.Sanborn. Then everyone remembered we had a test. We got to take off our shoes during the test. Drew, Micah, Alex, and Reanna didn’t have to take the test because they are in the advanced reading group, Classics. When everyone was done with their test we read Time For Kids with a partner. My partner was Drew. When we got done reading we got assigned a TFK (Time For Kids) sheet.

“Get out your editing and handwriting packets,” said Ms.Sanborn loudly. I didn’t have to do editing and neither did some other kids because we got 100% on last week’s editing. We also got assigned letter “s” in our handwriting packet.

For lunch the A choice was mini Corndogs, the B choice was Shaker Salad, and the C choice was Chicken Patty Sandwich. After we ate we had inside recess because it was six degrees below zero.

Then in units Ms.Sanborn quizzed us briefly on our colonies and helped us get ideas for our slogans (which helped) that would go on our billboards. Then we started making our billboards with our group.

Teacher read was the second to last item we did today. Ms.Sanborn is reading a book called True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. It is about a girl on a ship with many sailors and she has to survive across the ocean.

Finally after twenty-five minutes of study hall it was almost time to go home. We got everything we needed to take home and lined up to get signed then leave.

It was another great day although it was cold, but everyone was glad it was Friday. We are all looking forward to the three-day weekend and still full from all the snacks and food we had today. Most of us have a lot of homework (like me), but others have barely any. (Lucky ducks!)

The Coldest Day Ever

Today was the coolest day of the week! Do you want to know why? It was freezing outside, it was so cold we had to have indoor recess! We did do many cool things in class too though, we played with a beach ball in gym and had fun coming up with catchy phrases for our colonies in Social Studies.

The first assignment we had was a sheet on what our dreams would be and then why we thought Martin Luther King Jr. was famous.

Our next subject was math. In math we did math pages 186 and 187 which were about guessing what data went with which graph. Some of them were tricky. Those pages were pretty easy, but only one of them was graded.

After a fun filled math lesson and Math Box assignment it was time for writing. First in writing Ms. Sanborn told us how to make better beginnings and endings. Then with our groups we read an article from different magazines and highlighted the introductions and conclusions, and shared them using the Elmo. To practice we had to write our own different beginnings and endings for Tuesday and Wednesday‘s Blog.

Next it was time for gym. In gym we played a game where we had to hit the beach ball into the air with your group. Then we hit the ball over the net and the two teams on either side of the net hit the ball until it hit the ground. It was fun!

In reading we had to reread the story Everglades about the Florida Everglades, then do two blue sheets on it. I thought the story was okay, but the worksheets sure were boring.

Then it was time for spelling, editing and handwriting. In editing we edited sentence three. In handwriting we had to do the lowercase b page. In spelling we could either do sentences or definitions.

Finally it was time for lunch! For lunch today I had Oreos, a sandwich, and a drink. After lunch it was time for recess, but since it was so cold we had indoor recess.

When recess was over we read our books. I am reading a book called The Summer of Riley. It is about a boy who tries to save his dog from being killed because he attacked a neighbor ladies' horse.

Then it was time for units. In Social Studies we got in our groups and tried to come up with catchy phrases to try to get people to want to come to our colony. We are going to put these phrases on a billboard soon.

After that the counselor came. Today we joined new groups, but actually only some people changed groups. The counselor read part of a book to us, then we had to answer some questions. It made us think about different problems and solutions.

It was finally time for study hall, the last part of the day. After twenty-five minutes of that it was time to check out. When I was standing in line I thought to myself. “What is tomorrow going to be like?”

Today we did a lot and forgot how cold it was outside. We had a good math lesson, thought of some good phrases for units, and even had time to have the counselor.

Shining Art and More
Today is not only a shining day because of art, but because it was a short day where we looked at many good Sketchys!

Today for spelling we got out our spelling books and did a pretest. Some of the words were motorcycle, great-grandmother and intermission. It was a week jam packed with compound words.

Quickly we changed from spelling to the subjects of reading and writing. In these subjects we presented our notes and Sketchys. They both were on our Palms. We saw many cool Sketchys about Tsunamis and Tornados. We didn’t have time to see everyone’s today so I can’t wait until tomorrow,

Slowly we walked to Gymsic. Gymsic is Wednesday’s time where we have music and gym put together. In Gymsic we played a game, where we followed the leaders’ moves. It was fun, but short.

Afterward we were in the classroom doing art. We learned about the form of art called mosaic. Next we designed our own version of the American flag. Using small square pieces of paper we are filling in our designs to create our masterpieces. Some of us used shiny blue, silver, and gold wrapping paper along with the construction paper to make it cool.


Fast as lightning it was time for math. In math we checked Math Box 180. Afterwards we practiced multiplication and stem and leaf graphs on our dry erase boards. Then we did a worksheet. Some of us got out of math to go to orchestra at noon.

It was soon time for editing. We edited and rewrote sentence number three in our books. Then we practiced writing capital D in cursive in our handwriting book.

Next it was time for lunch. In lunch there was lunch choice A of a cheeseburger and B of a shaker salad. Then it was time for recess.

After recess it was Newsbowl, where we answer current event questions as a team. It was sure fun! My team got at least 100 points because we knew some answers.

Finally after Newsbowl we had to get ready quickly to get out on time. When the bell rang everyone was signed out and out of the door.

This short day was a cold one outside, but inside it was full of Sketchys, current event questions, and art!

Picture Day

Ah man! Today was picture day. Everyone was wearing either some nice clothes or just something that they wear any old day! We not only had pictures today, but we had a guest speaker, title writing, and we learned all about our own colony. Now, I hope you want to hear about the rest of my fantastic day.

Today in 6th Grade Math we had a special guest from Omaha State Bank. She taught us about banking. We learned about deposits. Most of us had some hard questions about banking and what is legal and what is not. We all have the opportunity to be a Savings Specialist at the Willowdale Branch of Omaha State Bank. I think that would be an interesting thing to do!

After math, we started writing. Today we explained our drawing of what we did over break. It seemed like everyone had a great break! Then Ms. Sanborn gave us the assignment to create titles for our drawings and for past Blogs. We learned and practiced these to help us improve our Blogs and make more people want to read our Blogs.

During most of music, students had to leave to get their pictures taken. I was in three group pictures, Ms. Sanborn's class, Safety Patrol, and Band. I hope everyone had a big smile on their face for their pictures! When we weren't getting our picture taken, we were listening to symphony music.

After music, we came back to the classroom and started reading. In reading we read the story My Brother Sam is Dead while the rest of the class read a story called Everglades. Afterward everyone in the class wrote a short summary over what they read. Because there was extra time many of us had time to make finishing touches on our Sketchys.

At 12:25 it was time for editing and handwriting. First the rest of the class edited sentence two on the overhead with Ms. S. while the rest of us got ready for handwriting. In handwriting we worked on a page called smoothness and size.

Lunchtime! Everyone was starving. Our choices for lunch today were a hot dog or cheese pizza. Those are both good lunches. When we went out for recess the weather was cold and wet, almost like a freezer.

When we came in from recess, everyone sat down and read quietly. I'm reading The Year Mom Won the Pennant. It's a good story. Can you guess what it's about?

Social Studies came next. We worked with our partners to find information on our colony. My colony is New Jersey and my partner is Reanna. We found the population and other colony facts such as who founded the colony.

Next, Ms. Sanborn entertained us by reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. So far it is a very fascinating book about a girl alone on a ship with many sailors. She has to survive all the way across the ocean.

Finally came study hall. All I did was finish unfinished homework. At the end of the day, Ms. Sanborn signed us out and we all left for home.

It was another great day at Willowdale Elementary from smiling for the camera to working with our partner to learn all about the colony we are in. I hope you read tomorrow's Daily Blog.

A Day of Bumping and Blogging
Yawn! Today was going to be the second school day back from winter break and everyone was as tired and still not use to the old routine but the two things that made it bearable was all the bumping of the volleyball we got to do in gym and all the new ideas we shared to improve the Blogs!
During math, we took notes on the definitions of the landmark words maximum, minimum, mean, median, mode, and range.
“Take out your math journals and switch with someone in your table,” Ms. Sanborn yelled trying to talk over all of our chattering. My table had to do a three-way-switch because Micah had to go to sixth grade math. I ended up with Farris’s math journal, which was great because it made my job easy because he got everything right. After a quick lesson where we collected data we worked on a new Math Box. Wow, it was already time for writing.

For writing we met on the floor in front of our fancy 70’s couch to share some of the stories we wrote Friday about our break. I wrote about the two snow days we had in a row! I wrote about how I made a snow fort had a snowball fight, and best of all: drank hot cocoa! Besides me only about six or seven shared then it was time for reading.

Normally reading is after gym, but today we are doing it before gym. We predicted what the story Everglades was going to be about and listened to
Ms. S. read two poems about the Everglades river to us.

Gym was next! It is the volleyball unit! We had to hit a balloon with a partner and see how many we could get. I was with Jessica and we did pretty well with about 19 hits. Everyone was running around the gigantic gym when Mrs. Lindeman blew her whistle. Tweeeeeeeet! Our next activity in gym was Mrs. Lindeman gave us groups and we had to see how many hits we could get with a beach ball! We conjoined with another team to see how many hits we could get across a “net”. We made 24 hits, but the highest was 65 hits on a different team.

Writing’s next! We discussed first in groups of four then as a class what we would add or subtract from the Roving Reporter Rubric for this quarter. Ms. Sanborn got on the Internet and we all read three other Blogs from across the country as well as our own. We told Drew what we thought was really good about his report. One thing that was good was that he used really good word choice and his voice. Way to go Drew! After those four we talked about how we could make our Blogs better.

Finally editing! I was really excited because Drew, Andrew, Alex, Ryan, and Devon and I did not have to do the page because we got a 100% the week before. Handwriting came next and we worked on shape and spacing of cursive letters. I do not think many people enjoyed it because our hands were aching!

“Cold lunch line up! “A” boys line up! “A” girls line up! And… everybody else,” cried Ms. Sanborn. Yummy! Pancakes for lunch. As I finished my delicious lunch, Mrs. Lindeman came around and said I was done which meant I could go outside to play. At recess Laura, Maddie, Kalyn and I walked, talked, and had a good time.

Monday is the Super Students’ library time. I checked out a book I had never heard of before. It is called Summer of the Swans. I just started reading it, so I can not really tell you what it is about, but it is a really good book so far.

Wahoo! A new unit in units! It is about the 13 original colonies. We took notes about the three regions and which colonies were in them. We also learned what they use to grow, jobs and other information like that.

Next came teacher read. We started a new book today about a girl who lived in England and has to cross the Atlantic Ocean to go to Rhode Island alone called The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.

“Study hall!” Time to get all of your work done. I got my link and my Math Box page finished.
“Five, four, three, two, one,” Laura counted down anxious to get out of the door.

Thinking about it I see it was a busy day and we really didn’t have time to be tired, but the best parts of the day were definitely the blogging and the volleyball.

The Return, Remembering, and Report Cards
Not a tough week when it starts and ends on the same day, which happens to be a Friday. Thanks to the two extra days of break due to the icy and snow packed roads today we were finally able to see each other, share what we did and received and lastly scurry home to share our grades we worked so hard for last quarter.

As expected and like the first day of every month the desks were in a new arrangement and the anticipation of who they might be sitting by was going through everyone's minds as they drew and colored the morning assignment. It was a picture that depicted what they did over break.

As everyone moved and positioned themselves into their new desks I decided that I wanted to know what the class already knew about adding fractions, data landmarks like minimum, maximum, and mode as well as, graphs, and averages so I pretested them. This will help with planning for Unit 6. As each student finished they worked diligently on their Math Box covering multiplying, rounding and changing improper fractions to mixed numbers.

After math time concluded we pushed the desks away and sat in a large circle. In this circle we played the game Categories. I named a category and each student said one (but or course there were those who couldn’t just name one) examples. For example the first category was "favorite present you received". It was a blast to hear the variety. They ranged from video games to clothes to cell phones. The other categories included favorite inside and outside activities, favorite movie viewed and more. What a fun time! As time ran down we spent the remainder of writing time journaling a personal narrative about a day or couple days of break.

Luckily eleven o'clock came and it was music time. That meant I could make my finishing touches on the last of my report cards.

As in math, I decided to pretest for the upcoming unit in reading, so after returning from music we answered different language and comprehension questions for the third theme in our green books, The Changing Earth. It is ironic to be studying weather phenomenon after the Tsunami disaster December 26th. After everyone finished pretesting we brainstormed different weather phenomena then received our assignment of researching and then creating a Sketchy on our Palms (handhelds). In these Sketchys we will draw, label, and animate the cause and effects to share on Wednesday.

Reading finally was over and after the excitement of researching what we were interested in was over, we moved onto something that was only met with moans and groans! Cursive handwriting review! You would have thought I had asked them to write a 1,000-word essay on energy or something. We reviewed how to sit, hold the pencil and even where to put our opposite hand. We also reviewed the five S’s of cursive shape, size, slant, spacing, and smoothness. Boy did some need that review!

By the time many hands were tired and many of our stomachs were growling it was time for the delightfully deceiving smelling school lunches. Due to the snowy roads and my empty fridge, I too at to partake in the delicious meals that our wonderful district provides for a small price. Luckily I didn’t have to suffer outside during frigid recess.

As many thawed out the students read silently from their self chosen chapter books, I on the other hand typed up our weekly newsletter.

Since it would be silly to start a new unit in Social Studies on a Friday, I decided to probe the students for information on what they knew about the events that occurred around the world in the past three weeks. To my surprise and delight, they knew bucket loads, as if glued to the TV and Internet the entire break! Many even knew details about the Tsunami and Iraq war details I wasn’t even aware of. We did have to squelch a couple of mixed up ideas of current events. After a lengthy discussion we played our weekly Newsbowl current events game in our already arranged teams of four. Wow, it was fun to not have only thirty minutes to play. They had questions from the seven categories that ranged from naming the seven quarterbacks playing in the Pro Bowl to the weight of the “monster sized” buck that just died at age seven—270 pounds by the weigh, I mean way! The team with the best score of 540 was the team of Erica, Farris, Micah, and Willie!

After answering all those current event questions we only had thirty more minutes to finish any work, research or start the Sketchys. As study hall came to a close and the report cards were slowly printed out; one by one each student received their second quarter report card. Many quiet cheers and disappointed sighs were heard as the twenty-four students lined up to leave and show mom and dad the good and bad news.

As you can see returning to school from a long break had both its good and bad advantages. Some of the good were that it was fun to see everyone again, get away from brothers and sisters that were driving us up the wall, but on the other hand, we were pretested to death and of course we had to wait until 1 pm to eat our lunches!