That's right me. Thanks for helping me out today with my lost voice. You kids really stepped it up, paid attention, and listened so well! I am a little bit behind on my correcting, so math tests will be coming home on Monday. On that note, congratulations on your social studies tests! We scored a class average of 94%! Nice work. I can definitely tell that you studied hard!

By the way, the angry penguin in the corner says, "Hey, make sure you bring your boots, hats, mittens or gloves, and a warm jacket to school. Obey the angry penguin!"

I'd listen to him, he looks pretty angry. Have a great weekend.

Go ahead, click the picture for a lot more!!

Today we were learning about the phases of the moon and eclipses. We learned that there are two types of eclipses (over cover ups). Let's review:


A lunar eclipse (lunar/moon eclipse/cover up) is when the moon gets covered up by the Earth's shadow. So we have the sun with the Earth in the middle and the moon opposite the sun. This is what it looks like:


A solar eclipse (solar/sun eclipse/cover up) is when the moon is between the sun and the Earth and a small shadow is cast on the Earth's surface. If you are in the right place at the right time you would see a complete and total eclipse of the sun. This is what that looks like:


These are the phases of the moon:


Better than a textbook, huh?

Today in writing I told you a bit of the story of the 1977 golden record launched on one of many rockets out into the depths of space. We learned of the people in charge of coming up with the media and items on board the time capsule and the golden record. Our writing project dealt with what you would put on your golden record or time capsule to represent Earth's life and cultures. That was such a great conversation and I cannot wait to read all of your ideas. A few one that stick out were:
Mackenzie - a colorful rug to show Earth's different fabrics, colors, and artistic styles
Toni - a poster of all of our countries different flags because it represents our differences and colors of our world
Braden - a laptop to show the knowledge of the human race
Jeffrey - a volcano because it represents Earth life, sound, land and materials
Kendra - a globe because the aliens could recognize our planet and meet us
Rodney - textbooks so that aliens could learn the things that we are learning

I think that this is just a wonderful conversation full of ideas that I have never thought of. I would like to keep the conversation going by extending it out to parents. Parents, what would you add to the time capsule or record on the golden record? Here are some ideas that I shared with your children from NASA's web page. Comment your ideas!

In other classroom news:

1. I am asking that all children send in one (1) gently used paperback chapter book to be given away for a winter/holiday party we will be having in a just a few short weeks. Dani's mom will be getting the books from me and wrapping them all in paper. We will be playing a fun game with these, and will hopefully end up with a new book to read at the end of the game.
2. Please remember to bring your hats and gloves/mittens to school. Right now the weather is getting colder, there may be drastic temperature drops. Please be prepared. Hey, if Nadia can do it, so can you!

Here is the classwork for the day:

Just a few reminders, kids. Tomorrow we will be taking the first part of our math test. I have decided to split the test into two parts so that we are not rushed and have enough time to get the right answers. Part two will be on Thursday. Remember that there is also going to be a test in social studies on Thursday. Your study guides have come home. You can download another here if you lose yours.

Email subscriptions seem to be working fine now that the news is being delivered between 3:00 and 5:00 pm and not am. That was a silly mistake that I made with our RSS feed, but now all appears to be all fixed! Be sure to remind your parents to activate their subscription by clicking the link in their email. See the blog post below for more details.

As a part of your homework, should you choose to accept the challenge, I want you to test out the commenting on this blog. The comment button is below this post. Comment to me what type of geographical community you would like to live in and why. Your geographical communities to choose from are: a river community (St. Louis), a desert community (Phoenix), a mountain community (Denver), or a community in the Great Plains. Don't forget to tell me why!! I cannot wait to hear your comments.

Lastly, remember to bring in your gym shirts. They were sent home before break to be cleaned, but now we need them back.

I just added our two movies to the album page and hope to get our photos up soon. As I redo a lot of this I realize that I need to take more photos of us and shoot more movies to share here. You kids are such a great class, and I have such a great time teaching you. The world should know how great you are. I'll get on that!


Also, I have transferred all subscriptions from our old site to this one. Parents and kids, you will need to check your email for an message that looks like this:

Once you have received this message click the link (it's safe, its only me!) to activate your subscription. If you do not want to subscribe and you are, just let me know and I will unsubscribe you right away! After you are activated, you will get our classroom news delivered to you between 3:00 and 5:00 pm each day. Unfortunately, my message was routed to my junk mail box - I had to fish it out. Maybe that is where yours is if you didn't get a message like this one.

Enjoy the movies and be sure to check back often.

p.s. Commenting is still available, the button is just at the bottom of the posts. See below. Comment to test.

. . . on this new, redesigned site! I'm excited, aren't you??
Be sure to submit your email address to this blog once again. I am asking you all do to this again - and get your parents to if they are interested,also - because of the shift in web technologies that Marchionda.org is undergoing. Hopefully all of this will work out of the box, but if it doesn't don't be afraid to email me.

REMEMBER TO BRING BACK YOUR GYM SHIRTS FOR TOMORROW!!

Also, our school district is holding a writing contest for students in each grade level. Students are to write about how their teacher makes their day special. I would love to see some of you show off your great writing abilities! I would bet that we could have a winner right in our classroom. There is a thread about it in Club Geek right here. Feel free to join in the conversation and get pointers about a good essay in that thread.

We have started spelling list number 9 dealing with the different spellings of the sound /oi/. We learned that the sound /oi/ can be spelled with "oi" or "oy". Our list of words is:

1. joyful
2. choice
3. voice
4. joint
5. moist
6. spoil
7. royal
8. annoy
9. noise
10. employ
11. soil
12. loyal
13. boiled
14. destroy
15. pointy

I double-dog-dare you to type your words in this thread in Club Geek making the spelling of our spelling rule a different color. That's right, a double-dog-dare!

Some of you chose to practice some challenge words from our reading series. Those words are: earthquake, volcano, hurricane, weather, rumble.

Lastly, we will be having a math test on chapter 6 on Wednesday. Until then we will be brushing up on borrowing, double borrowing, and borrowing from nothing. On Thursday we will be having a short social studies test on geography and communities. The test will be shorter than usual, but a study guide will be going home tomorrow. That's it for now. See you all tomorrow.

Hello, kids! Welcome to the new look of Marchionda.org. I have decided to make this version of our site live even though it is still under a bit of construction. There are some improvements that inspired me to change the site. I would like to take a moment to share them with you, along with what is still underconstruction.
Improvements:

• This site should load faster in our lab at school.
• It will be easier for me to add games.
• You can send me files through Marchionda.org.
• You can send me web games you want added.
• Club Geek is still around and doing well.
• It will be easier for me to blog with.
• It is much prettier.

What's under construction:

• Games are still being added.
• The album page needs to be started (and finished)
• Old blogs need to be imported in.
• Email subscriptions need to be added. (SHOULD BE READY TO GO! - JUST LOOK TO THE SIDEBAR ON THE RIGHT)

That's about it for now, let me know what you think by testing the commenting system! Be sure to check back for updates on the site. You will not be getting updates by email so check back until I have that feature back working.
~Mr. M