First Blogging Session Fun

Well done 5KP, you have entered the blogosphere…

For homework tonight please do the following :

1. Click on your name in my blogroll to the right of this screen. Check that it goes to your actual blog. If it does not, send me a comment to this post telling me the problem. If it does, finish today’s entry, change your heading and tagline or write a new post if you haven’t done these things already.

2. Click on at least 3 other students in 5KP and leave a positive comment about something they have done, their choice of them or the quality of their post.

3. Show a parent your blog and if possible, get them to comment on it or my blog.

See you tomorrow and thanks for another great day.

Google Earth

Thank you to the wonderful Mr. Power for starting our Migration Unit this week by exploring Google Earth with the students.

If you do not have Google Earth on your computer it is a fast and free download. I encourage you to watch this with your children and ask them about what they have  been discussing in class. I think a great idea once you have Google Earth up on your screen is to go to Tools, Options, Touring, and adjust the ‘tool pause’ bar to about 20-30 seconds. That way you should have enough time to read what the children have written as you fly around the world seeing where they are from.

http://portal.saschina.org/eportfolios/spower/files/-1/1485/5kp+final.kmz

Math Test this week, Wednesday at this stage…

 

Unit 11

Skills covered on the unit eleven test include:

*understand the relationship between the volume of pyramids and prisms and the volume of cones and cylinders

*find the surface area of prisms

*understand how to find the surface area of cylinders

*understand the concept of and calculate capacity

*use formulas to find the volume of prisms and cylinders

*use formulas to find the area of polygons and circles

*know the properties of geometric solids

I have a Californian Teaching Assistant!!!

I just want to send out a big thank you to my friend of 13 years, Harriet. She is always me sending me great stuff I can use with the students like in the following posts. I think you will agree that this next site is also great fun to watch, you may need flash, to see how an International Space Station is made over a ten-year period.

   Thanks Harriet and keep those great learning-tools coming.

This is Harriet with her daughter Erin and her husband Stan.

Work for Friday

Hello my little munchkins…The last few days have taken their toll so I am having a bit of a rest today and would like you to do the following IF or WHEN your substitute teacher allows you onto the lap-tops. If you don’t have access, use the time in ‘word’ to write up future posts and save them to your s drive.I want you to :complete a blog entry on scholastic; write a post about your experience with readers theater-the good bits, the bad bits etc; find some interesting sites about invention conventions at a 5th grade level and also try and embed a suitable video of either a rube goldberg machine or another invention you find interesting.I would also like you to read through the other 5th grade teacher and student blogs and leave at least 5 comments….Want more! Think black boxes, think humdingers, think science, think creatively!Don’t let me down and I hope to hear glowing reports about you on Monday.Oh, and by the way, if you HAVE NOT completed and submitted your sheet on your go cart feed-back to the brown cart up the front…get off the computer now and do it asap!Ciao for now  

Calendar

I have recently added the google calendar function to my blog. It appears to the right of this post and should be a useful tool for parents and students. Please keep an eye on events in the near future and add them to your diary or your own calendar.

I can’t believe it is nearly the end of the first quarter of your child’s fifth grade. As I have said earlier, the group have really gelled well. We have 9 boys and 9 girls and I really hope we can maintain the class for the whole school year. So often in the international school system changes occur that mean families have to move away suddenly and it is always difficult for those involved. When you have a class that get along as well as 5KP do, you really want to keep things just the way they are.

The students are encouraged to wear their house shirts tomorrow as it is the start of the A.P.A.C. (Asia Pacific Activities Conference) tournament in the morning and we will be taking a break from our IOWA schedule and going along to cheer for S.A.S.

Introduction to Gmail

Today all of the class were given their gmail accounts by Mr Power. The students now have their own gmail email address and have been instructed on how to merge their other e mail accounts into this one if they want to. The class were told the importance of being a responsible blogger and that what they put out there on the web can be seen at anytime by anytime. They will soon be given a piece of paper to sign up for responsible use of the internet as well as the diary form they have already signed.

Tasks to complete this week include.

You all need to have made up at least three categories on your blogroll. Essential categories are Teachers, Students and Useful Links.

Within these categories I want you to have added every student in your class, all of the 5th grade teachers including Mr Power and any specialists you know have blogs (eg Li Laoshi). You can find most of these links in my blogroll.

You are to change your password for all of your accounts, preferably to the same or similar one that you will remember.

For today’s homework you are to do a follow up activity for your Ideal School writing task. Remember to make your writing as detailed as possible in line with what we have been discussing in our ‘writers workshop’ lessons. Write at least two-three paragraphs discussing what we did in class and the end result of what your poster looked like. Which part of a school did you choose to focus on? Were you happy with the end result? Now that you have done the writing, add a picture from a file of your own or google images, like we did in class today.

Write another post about what you did over the long weekend. If you have any photos at home that you could upload of yourself, practice uploading them by using the upload button below your writing section on the back end of your blog.