Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Mr. McClung's Sixth Grade Blog

Mr. McClung is the sixth grade science teacher at Noel Elementary. He just started a class blog a few weeks ago. Check out his site and leave an encouraging comment for his class. http://mcclungsblog.blogspot.com/

MCHS Drama Class- Anti-Drug Assembly

The McDonald County High School Advanced Drama Class came to Noel Elementary to perform various skits and speeches advising students to not do drugs, alcohol, or tobacco. I recorded a view short video pieces for you to enjoy.










Letters to Santa


My students have written the traditional "Letters to Santa". Read the comments to see what they would like for Christmas, then leave your own letter.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Colonial House by PBS


The Colonial House times were difficult.Some reasons why they they were difficult was because they came at the wrong time of year.The women had to stay on the ship 1 month after the men went to set up the houses for the village.The women had break downs from time to time because they suffered.

The women had to deal with more things than the men.They had to make food, milk the goats,make the bread,take care of the garden,and clean the house.But some men had almost the same job as the women because they were indentured servants.They had to work for other family's for a certain amount of time like two or more years.

The Colonial House people had to work together in order to survive this hard time.There were children who were in risk to death because they got very sick sometimes.The governor had a death in the family so he had to go back.But he came back to the village.The things that they did were stressful but they made it .

by Slendy

Blogging Tiger Winner for Writing


Just Dessert
by Nathan


Once there was a little girl named July. She was picky and spoiled.Her and her mom went to a store to get a pumpkin to make a pie. When they got to the store July said there`s a ton of pumpkins to pick from! after 30 minutes they had picked a pumpkin and went home. were making the pie. as July`s mom lowered the knife and the pumpkin started to glow but when she lowered the knife lowered the knife more the pumpkin just kept getting brighter but as the knife punchered the pumpkin it stopped glowing.
The next day they woke up to glass breaking, it was their neighbors. They had went to the same store as July and her mom. They were screaming.
July had found out that they were pranks the store had put out.

Congratulations, Nathan for winning the Blogging Tiger Award for Writing. This story was based on The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg

Friday, November 21, 2008

Jamestown Resettled

The colonists at Jamestown lived (and died) through a variety of choices, both good and bad. Now is your chance to see if you could do better. History Globe's The Jamestown Online Adventure is your chance to pit your intelligence against the intelligence of the original settlers. Can you do a better job? Click this link to try.

After you have tried to out-think the original colonists, print out your conclusion and put it in your folder.

Leave a comment about what you learned.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Playing Music in Fifth Grade



Here is my class playing their recorders. I am curious, is this music jazz or blues?

Monday, November 17, 2008

Evaporation in the Water Cycle


In class we had a demonstration of evaporation. The problem was to determine what happens to something that is mixed with water when the water evaporates. Does the stuff mixed in the water evaporate too?

I took water and added food coloring in one container and salt in the other. I heated the water and evaporated it out of the container. The students looked at the containers and noticed something was left behind. What does this mean? What was left behind?

Thursday, November 13, 2008

International Sasa



Here is TamakiToday's video "International Sasa". Do you recognize anyone in this video?

Mr. Webb. thank you for sharing this video with us!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

My Edublog Nominee: Tamaki Today

I am nominating for an Edublog Award Tamaki Today for Best Educational Use of Video/Visual.

Although I just discovered this blog in the last couple months, I am amazed by the volume and quality of videos created by the students of Room Six from Tamaki Intermediate School in Auckland, New Zealand. The students use this blog to not only inform the community about what is taking place, but also as a way to educate others about the culture, customs, and language of New Zealand.

My class was very fortunate to learn from the blog how to Sasa, a Samoan Slap Dance. We created our own Sasa for them to use in a video they are presenting. This is the first international project my class has been involved in.

I would really like for Tamaki Today to receive the attention they deserve and that is why I am nominating them.

Mr. C

Celebrating the End of "The War to End All Wars"

Veteran's Day is held on the anniversary of Armistice Day, the day World War I came to an end. There was hope that the brutality of this war would persuade people to no longer use military might to solve a country's problems. Unfortunately, this proved to not be the case. Read the poem below written in the spring of 1915, two years before the United States actually entered the war. War is such a waste.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD This is a picture of him.


BTW the orginazation Veterans of Foreign Wars uses the poppy as their symbol. Here is a link to the page that explains the history of their use of the poppy.

Water Cycle Cut Paper Project

Explorer's Maps




Here are some examples of maps made in Social Studies that show the routes of explorers the students studied.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Free Rice Revisited

Free Rice, the website that uses vocabulary to donate rice now has subjects that can be chosen that make the site even better to use. Below are the different categories that can be selected. The picture above shows the Famous Paintings category where you have to identify the artist of the art. Obviously, this really expands the usefulness of this site for education purposes. Here is the link to the subjects page.

ART

Famous Paintings

CHEMISTRY

Chemical Symbols (Basic)

Chemical Symbols (Full List)

ENGLISH

English Grammar

English Vocabulary

GEOGRAPHY

Identify Countries on the Map

World Capitals

LANGUAGE LEARNING

French

German

Italian

Spanish

MATH

Multiplication Table

FreePoverty Geography Game


FreePoverty.com is a geography game site that allows students to test geography skills while
raising funds to donate water. The actual donation mechanism seems to be spotty. Here is a post explaining why. Here is a link to the about page to get more information.

If the donations never go through, it is still a fun geography game to have students play.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF


This year the fifth grade participated in Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. UNICEF uses the money to help children around the world get immunizations and education. We live in a country where we are blessed and we decided we should try to help out children who aren't.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Is Fear a Factor for You?

We held our sixth annual Fear Factor contest on Halloween.



The second contest was singing karaoke during lunch period. We had one student drop out when he couldn't keep up with MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This".



Our last contest was to see who could eat a jar of frozen broccoli and chicken baby food. Yengshi was declared the winner! Congratulations!

Our Sasa

Here is our Sasa contribution for Tamaki Today's video. We chose the tiger because it is our class mascot and the chicken because McDonald County is the poultry capitol of Missouri.


Here is a Sasa made by Rubecca, Slendy, and Megan. They used the Macarena for inspiration.