Due to the winds and the crazy wind chill, our school district has closed for the day. Enjoy your Wednesday off. If you are bored, head on over to Club Geek. I'll be checking in throughout the day. Talk to you all later!

~Mr. M

Sorry about forgetting to blog, I guess I was busy chit-chatting with you at the end of the day. It was great hearing your opinions about your report cards - what you are proud of and what you would like to improve on. I am really impressed with how you all seem to be "owning" your education. Here is the classwork for the day.

Here is a link to something cool. It is the cockpit of an Airbus. I don't know much about these large planes, but check out this 3D panoramic view from the inside! Pay attention to the details! Anyone think they could fly this thing?

Today, I raised the bar of expectations that we are going to have for ourselves. It is that point in the year where we slide into writing like fourth graders. What this means is that complete sentences with proper mechanics. i know many of you are nervous about the consequences of this, but it will be old hat soon enough. Your fourth grade teachers will be impressed! You are all great kids who can do wonderful work, trust me - I see you every day.

We will be writing a lot of nonfiction and use those grades as our writing grades. So, our writing grades will reflect our work in social studies, math, science, and reading - along with our writing projects.

Have a good night, kids, and remember your capital letters, punctuation marks, and proper spelling!

Today we were taking our science concept (exploring matter by breaking it down to its basic elements - atoms) to English class. We were practicing all of our English skills by breaking down sentences to their atoms, or parts of speech. We were trying to identify subjects, predicates, nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and verbs in sentences. Here is our work:

Great job, kids!!!
Here is the classwork for the day:

In addition to posting your classwork for the day, I want to suggest something for you to do at home to help you progress through your multiplication math facts. Head on over here and get the individual level you are on and practice it the day (or morning) before you take it here in class.

Here is the classwork for the day:

I have added lots of books to the "Kids Picks" section of our book shop. I have also added items to the "Software" section of our shop. Feel free to browse around. If you have and questions, feel free to email me.

After our two hour delay, we began our new quarter (and grade book) with a POD, or problem of the day. Mathematics brought us into our multiplication facts, as some of you are going to collect more data about your performance. Good for you! Who knows what you will find, that's what makes collecting data interesting. Anyway, here is the classwork for the day:

There is a two hour delay this morning, so I will be seeing you all around 10:45 instead of 8:45. Eat an extra pancake for me!

Happy Birthday, Tommy S.!!

Have a great weekend, kids. You did a great job this week scoring a class average of 98% on your spelling tests, a 95% on your chapter 10 multiplication test, and a 93% on your Centerfield Ballhawk comprehension tests. Great work!

Monday there will be no school for you, but I will be here finishing up your report cards. One great little bit of data that I ran across was about missing work, or work that is turned in late. During the first quarter there were 67 assignments turned in late. During the second quarter there were only 17 assignments turned in late.

Here are some pictures of our classroom computer that we have been taking apart. Great job, kids, it seems you are wonderful at this type of thing. Now the next step is to put it all back together correctly again.

Next week we will be starting our multiplication timed tests, head on over here to get a head start.

Hopefully this weekend I will be able to add all of your suggestions of books and software to our store. Keep checking back! Talk to you later. Below are some pictures from your performance at our Pride assembly.

~Mr. M

Thanks for bringing in all of your DS's! You made spelling today a great success! We will try that again next week. Be sure to study for your spelling test tomorrow.

Here is the classwork for the day:

Happy Birthday, Hunter!!

Even though you are on vacation in Mexico, we are thinking of you and hope you are having a blast!
~Mr. M's class

Tomorrow is our first "Bring Your DS to School Day"!!! If your parents approve and trust you to be careful with your Nintendo DS, you can bring it to school. We will be using the mesh networking technology to take advantage of the chat feature built into the DS. We will be doing this during spelling. Instead of using chalk slates, we will have groups in chat rooms on DS's writing their answers. Should work out, should be fun! Remember to get your parents' permission, first!

Many of you have science homework, or should bring your science home. The main point, and change from previous work, is that you begin to become proficient at writing your thoughts down in complete sentences. I do not expect everyone to be perfect right away, but I do expect us to be wonderful by the end of the school year. Writing about science and math in complete sentences will set you apart from every other fourth grade student next year. You can do it! Written expression is a skill that will take you far in life.

Even though tomorrow is Thursday, we will be having our comprehension test for Centerfield Ballhawk. Click here to do some online activities for the story.

I want to remind you kids first that we have a PRIDE Assembly on Friday morning. Please remember to wear your blue Pride shirts Friday morning.

PARENTS - - - I have added an Amazon store to this site. Feel free to browse, even though there is not much there yet. I will be adding dozens of books. I would love suggestions, also. Treat this store like a like the traditional book orders from schools, but you get to purchase without cash and get the books sent directly to you.

PARENTS - - - I have also added an Educational Downloads area, too. Right now there are math fact timed tests galore in it. If you would like your child to get some extra practice, download away! If you would like your child to get a head start practicing multiplication, feel free to take as many of those as you want. Challenge your child to a math fact race! They are getting pretty fast.

Lastly, I will be busy tonight watching the MacWorld Expo Keynote by Steve Jobs. Its Apple's release of all of their way cool new technologies. Here is the classwork for the day:

Just wanted to let you know that I have added a new tab to the top of the page. It is called Shop/Downloads. This page has two links, one for our shop and one for educational downloads.

With she Shop page you can shop with Mom and Dad for books, software, and other things. Think of it just like the traditional book order forms, but you do it all in your own home and the things you buy come right to your home in a package! I am an Amazon affiliate, which means that I can recommend and sell the products they sell on my site. All money (and it is not a lot! ) goes right back into paying for hosting and bandwidth of Marchionda.org. So, think of your purchases as donating a few cents to our classroom website. You can tell me what types of books, software and other things you want in our store. Over time it should be quite a cool place. Remember that you must be with Mom and Dad to use the shop, just like in the real world!

The Educational Downloads area is going to be a place for paper and pencil games and drilling activities. I have put up all of our Rocket Math and will be adding other math games soon. I will also add up some readers and many other activities shortly. Keep on checking back!

Lastly, you will need a password and username to access these pages. If you do not remember it from class, email me and I will let you know what they are. Click around and have fun! See you in school.

~ Mr. M

This morning was the final activity with UW Oshkosh's Science Outreach program. Follow the previous link to see their web site filled with links to other web resources.

We attended many short science lessons this morning learning about how hover crafts work, UV materials, endo/exothermic reactions, earthquakes, and phases of the moon. This was a great cumulative activity to do with our class. We all seemed to have quite a bit of fun. Thirty new photos have been added to our SIR photo album. Here are some of the pictures that I took:

Have a great weekend, kids! Hope you had as fun of a week as I did.

Today we learned about comets and what makes up a comet. Kids, use the commenting system to name the parts that make up a comet, and to name what materials a comet is made of. More pictures have been added to our album. Feel free to check them out.

Also, some of you were interested in binary as a language. So, we learned how to make letters and symbols in binary. Pretty cool, huh??
Here is Tommy L.'s:

I wonder what it says?? Hmmmm??
Here is the work for the day:

Thirty-six new photos have been added to our SIR (Science in Residence) photo gallery. Today we reviewed what we learned about scale models by using balloons to to make models of the Earth, our moon, and Mars. This gave us a great comparison to see the relative size of these objects. We also were able to understand the distance between these objects by keeping them in scale.

Next we learned about the telescopes and how the atmosphere can interfere with what we are seeing from Earth. We then practiced surveying a mystery planet from space without an atmosphere, comparing observations.

Lastly, we observed how meteors impact the surface of a moon or planet by dropping different sized objects into a fake surface. Check out the pictures for more details.

As you notice on our planner sheet, there was not a lot of classwork today. We are in the middle of taking our district assessments. We should be finished with everything by the end of the week. Next week we will continue with our current spelling list and language arts story.

Congrats on your math tests, our class average was a 93%!!

Club Geek Challenge:
1. Find a picture on the internet for 5 or more of your spelling words.
2. Upload them to our Digital Briefcase.
3. Go to this thread and paste each of our pictures along with the correct spelling of each word.
4. Look for me to post back, get your reward in the morning.

Here are 28 photos from our SIR Program. Head on over to the Albums area of Marchionda.org or simply click on the image below. Enjoy!

p.s. For extra credit - comment the adverb in my sentence above.

SIR (Science in Residence) has begun! Today we met our college age scientists from UW Oshkosh who are cementing in some finishing concepts from our study of space. Today we learned about scale models and why they are useful. We also built a scale model of the Sun and compared it to a scale model of Jupiter. We learned that all models have to be shrunk down the same amount in order to compare them accurately. After making these models we were able to view scaled models of stars that are much larger than our Sun.

We also learned that 109 Earths would fit in a line across the sun. With the Earth able to have 4 of our moons fitting across it, that would total 109x4=436 moons across the Sun! Wow!! We also learned that our moon has a name, Luna.

Lastly, we sorted stars by temperature, color, and size.

I have taken a bunch of photos on my iPhone, but it died and I have no power here at school for it. When I get home I will upload the photos and make another blog post to let you know they are up. Each day I will add photos to the album. By Friday we should have quite a few photos. Check back later tonight for the first batch of photos.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? It should be fun!!

What was your favorite activity today? Comment below!!

Congratulations are in order. Mackenzie, you did a great job accomplishing the Club Geek Challenge below. Anyone else want to give it a shot? You have until the end of the week.
Club Geek Challenge:
1. Find a picture on the internet for 5 or more of your spelling words.
2. Upload them to our Digital Briefcase.
3. Go to this thread and paste each of our pictures along with the correct spelling of each word.
4. Look for me to post back, get your reward in the morning.

I am finally feeling better after being out of school on Friday. The doctor said that I have a sinus infection. I am going to have to take all of my vitamins and eat all my veggies to get healthy again. I also have to take my medicine. Can you believe this weather? It feels like spring. I am half expecting flowers to blossom and bunnies to begin hopping around. Doesn't this warmer weather and thunderstorms make you feel strange? Anyway, be sure to bring your boots to school. Even though we may not get outside in weather like this, you sure will want your boots if we do get outside.

Club Geek Challenge:
1. Find a picture on the internet for 5 or more of your spelling words.
2. Upload them to our Digital Briefcase.
3. Go to this thread and paste each of our pictures along with the correct spelling of each word.
4. Look for me to post back, get your reward in the morning.

Here is the classwork for the day:

I have added a new game to the arcade called "Marble Lines". It is a lot like Luxor, so I thought you all might like to play it. I found this game through Victor, an former student of mine. He added it to his site and posted it on his blog. Check out his site @ PieTheClown.com. Head on over to the arcade to play Marble Lines, or you can click on the link to the right.

Just the classwork today, kids:

Welcome back from our long break! It seems like forever since we were doing Rocket Math, reading a story together, and learning about words. Before I go on I just want to take another moment to say thank you for all of the wonderful gifts you shared with me this holiday season. Although I only got to unwrap a few with you at school, Nadia and I had a great time uncovering those great surprises!

Secondly, thanks for remembering our classroom policy on talking in the hallway. I was so pleasantly greeted by all of you being perfect young students in the hallway. Nothing makes a teacher more proud than to see his class behave the way you all do.

I am looking forward to a new year and a new grading quarter starting in two weeks. These are the last few weeks to get as good of grades as you can before report cards come out. Also, Parent/Teacher Conferences will soon be following report cards being sent home. Check back here for updates. I'll try to put them all in the side bar.

Talk to you later!