Thanks for correcting me on our PODs this morning. I tell you, sometimes starting the week of on a Tuesday feeling like a Monday is a crazy way to start things. You all were great workers today, using your time in class very well! Once again I leave school feeling like the proudest teacher in school. If you all only know how much I brag about you! hahaha

Well, this week we will be reading the book Wump World, where the world of the Wumps is overtaken by the careless Pollutians. Our spelling list is made up of words from this story: giant, meadow, monster, planet, Earth, machine, world, river, water, zoom, spaceship, grass, munch, hero, sky. There will be no challenge words this week. Tomorrowwe will be testing in math on finding the mean of a group of data. We will also be testing on math fact families, solving for a divisor, and some logic story problems. Below are some practice problems for you to solve. Comment your answers in Club Geek or to this post if you want.


Practice Question 1:
There are 9 vehicles in the parking lot. Some are motorcycles and some are cars, Mr. M counts 30 tires. How many are motorcycles and how many are cars parked in the parking lot?

Practice Question 2:
Find the mean of these numbers: 3, 9, 7, 5, 8, 4

Here is a link to a topic in Club Geek to discuss these answers.

See you all tomorrow!

Have a good weekend and enjoy the nice weather. Here is our science video cast on why things go bang. Enjoy, and teach Mom, Dad, or a brother or sister a thing or two! See you on Tuesday (Remember that there is no school on Monday!!)

Kids, there was just a little bit of work that could become homework today. English was very short, math is spreading over into tomorrow, and there will not be a comprehension test tomorrow. Make sure to study your spelling words for tomorrow's test though. Please practice your spelling words in a creative way in Club Geek. Oh, and check out the Nadia model shots in the Media Sharing forum, what a little stinker! Here is the work for the day:

See you tomorrow! Hope your day went well.

Nothing new but the work for the day:

Kids, I have added a link in the sidebar that will allow you to read along at home with our story of the week. The link is just above our clock. See it? Good, hope you enjoy. Click here to view some vocabulary activities for our story of the week.

This week we will be beginning a science unit on HEAT. We will be learning theses vocabulary words: thermal energy, heat, friction, conduction, conductor, insulator, convection, radiation, and thermometer. In this unit we are going to learn about ways things become hot, ways to use heat as energy, how thermal energy moves through objects, how temperature is measured, and ways in which controlling heat (or thermal energy) makes our lives easier.

Below is the homework for the day:

This is just a test to see if this will work. You may not see this until after you have taken your test on Friday, but I am just trying to prove a concept. Let me know if this works. Go ahead and listen to our story of the week by clicking the link below.

25 In You Made a Million

Did it work?

Watch and try! Click the link below.

Ice and String Movie

Remember to study for your spelling test of tion and sion words. We will also have a language arts test on our story of the week. English and math are also due tomorrow! See you later!

Kids, be sure to give your parents the report cards that were in your take home folder tonight. Inside of the envelope you and your parents should find:

• a writing sample (if you you were here on the day we did it)
• your report card
• a subject area graph report

Lastly, be sure to finish any corrections you may have.
Have a great night.
Here is the classwork for the day.

Not much to say here, kids. Remember that third quarter report cards will be going home tomorrow. Here is the classwork for the day:

To Parents:
I have one spare copy of No left to borrow to a parent that is interested. First come, first served! Shoot me an email if you would like to read No.

To Kids:
After a week of cursive writing, I can already tell that you are able to write a lot faster and a lot more clearly. What a difference five days can make. I just want to say to all of you kids a few words about how impressed I am with you. None of you complained about the work taking longer, none of you complained about needing more time to complete your work, and all of you are now able to work at a faster pace - some of you even faster than printing!

Your attitude has been wonderful as a group and only makes me think of the successes you will have as students in the future! Keep up the great work and the great attitudes! You all make me smile!

Check out our blast from the past video.

Happy Birthday, Callie!!

As a Friday thought, I thought I would publish our latest video podcast that we watch called Experiment of the Week with Robert Krampf. Check out his web site, too. This week is experiment 55, "Light As Air". Get out your tape measure, paper, pencil, and a calculator. Have mom or dad watch the video and help you. Comment to this post how many pounds of air you have in your living room or bedroom. Let us know the weight and which room you did the calculations for. Have fun!! Click the link to see the movie.
Light as Air

Again the math is like this:
1. Height of your room X Length of your room X Width of your room = b (b is just some number)
2. b X 1.2 = c (how many ounces of air in the room)
3. c ÷ 16 = d (this is the pounds of air in your room, post this number with the name of the room you measured!!!)

Remember that you will be having a test on Cocoa Ice tomorrow, so please read it one more time tonight. All of you should have taken the book home with you. You will also have a test on your spelling words. Study, study, study!!

Here is the work for the day!

Today in science our assignment was to take our English skills and use them to communicate how sunlight is transformed into electricity. This writing was to be multiple sentences including plants, animals, death, coal/oil, mining/pumping, and burning to create electricity. Kids, I encouraged you to have your parents read over your writing. All good writers have even better editors! Good luck and be patient with your writing so that your mechanics shine through.

Have a great night and feel free to ask any homework questions in Club Geek in our new forum. Check it out. I just added the homework help to the classwork forum. Please feel free to use it!

Kids first - Here is the classwork for the day. Be sure to clean up any corrections you may have. I know that our adjustment to cursive writing can cause you to get some things wrong that you may have otherwise, but keep at it! In a week or two, you will all be pretty fluent cursive writers ready for fourth grade!

We are reading Cocoa Ice in reading. Here is a Power Point on the vocabulary for you to download. Here is a Power Point on cocoa pictures for you to download. Feel free to play them and see if you learn anything. Here is a link to information on Santo Dominico.

For the Parents - Apparently . . . well, it has been brought to my attention that Amazon is sold out of the "No" book that I blogged about previously. Teachers at our school are really excited about it, and I know some of you have ordered it. If you would like to read it, you can borrow a copy of mine when they come in. I should have 2 or three copies to share. Just shoot me an email and I will let you borrow it.

Lastly, for the parents, if you enjoy getting these blog posts emailed to you, if you enjoy hearing about your kids' days in this format, and if you would like more teachers at our school to do things like this, please-please-please talk about it to our PTO, to our principal, and/or to our school board. There are many teachers here that would love to do this and would appreciate your voice and support in learning how to have a classroom site. Thanks!

Not much to say, but a reminder that you all have no grades because this is the first day of the fourth quarter. This is your opportunity to start all over. Set some goals for yourselves. What subjects do you want to do better in? What areas of your student skills would you like to be better at? Now is the time to ask yourselves these question to become the best student you can be. I know you can do it! You all impress me every day! Keep up the good work.

~Mr. M

Parents, if you have not already, please read the post below and check out chapter 4 of the book.

Well, that's the end of the third quarter. Our class grades are as follows:
Reading Tests: 93%
Reading Work: 93%
Math Tests: 91%
Math Work: 90%
Spelling Tests: 97%
Spelling Work: 95%
Science: 92%
Social Studies: 94%
POD's: 83%
That's pretty good! Pretty much all A's and or PODs have improved. Next week I will be making your report graphs and filling out your report cards. Report cards will be coming home on Wednesday, April 16.

Check you all out in Club Geek! Have a great weekend.

Below is the classwork we did today, kids. Now, go away (hehehehehe) the rest of this blog post is for your parents and me.

Parents, I recently ran across this book:

I have been reading it from a parent's point of view with my wife, Michelle. I have also been thinking of it from a teacher point of view, too, and have found the book to be really insightful in many areas of working with children. David Walsh is a very bright man who understands today's cultural media very well. Click here to read more about him.

I plan on buying multiple copies of this book for my classroom parents for next year for anyone who would choose to read it. I highly recommend heading on over to Amazon and buying a copy. It is definitely worth more than the 15 dollars they are charging.

Attached to this link is chapter 4. It is about defining and developing healthy self-esteem in children, dispelling some myths of what "healthy" self-esteem is, and has great insight into what we can do to help our children grow into independent, successful adults. Feel free to comment to this blog post or send me an email letting me know what you got out of the chapter. If you like the chapter, BUY THE BOOK! Thanks!

Happy Birthday, Kassidy!!

Hope you like your iDog!

Here you go, kids!

Here is the classwork for the day. Don't forget to play a prank on your parents! hahahahha

By the way, don't forget that tomorrow is "Bring Your Portable Music Player to School Day!!"