Our Own Intereactive Art Museum!

Mrs. Smith (our Art teacher) and I have teamed up to create an interactive art "museum" for our students' work.

Mrs. Smith chooses are work that she thinks best illustrates what she is having her students do. She then puts it on the "art museum" wall.The student creates a video explaining about the work, what they did, and what they learned.

Here is the link to the video on Vimeo if it's blocked. 

Here is the QR Code for Alex's video. If you scan it with a smart phone you will be taken to the video.

Here is the QR Code

Now when someone comes along and wants to know more about the art work they can simply scan the code with their smart phone and instantly start watching a video of the artist explaining his/her work.

Halloween Fun 2011

Here are a couple sites you might enjoying visiting for Halloween. The first site is online pumpkin carving. What kind of face does your pumpkin need? The second site is Zap-A-Ghost. How many ghosts can you click on? The last site is Hidden Spirits. Can you lead a scientific investigation to debunk a haunted hotel?

Online Pumpkin Carving

Zap-a-Ghost

Hidden Spirits

Ben and Jerry's Halloween Fun

Transylmania 2

M&M's Dark Chocolate Game

Here is a Scariest Places on Earth Show you may enjoy watching.

Create a Drawing in Paint

Marissa's Picture

Today you will be creating a picture for your creative writing story using Paint. While paint can be hard to use, the possibility to do something very interesting is there.Don't believe me, look at Marissa's picture above. When you are finished, save it to the computer pictures folder on the student shared drive.

Tuesday's Lesson Plan

Here is the lesson plan for today. Listen carefully to it. Remember, criticism does not mean being mean. Criticism is supposed to address both good and bad parts of the story so make sure that when you give your criticism the purpose is to help make the story better. 


If you do not have your first draft finished, read what you have. Do not work on your story while someone else is reading theirs. 

Why I Write

The National Day on Writing is October 20 and we have been asked to submit an answer to the writing prompt "Why I Write". If you look carefully at the rules you will see that you can use any writing form you choose from a play to a haiku.

You will publish the answer on your blog and then on the "Why I Write" site. Your story may be selected to be added to an anthology eBook that will be created later this fall!

Poptropica

"Poptropica is a massively multiplayer online game and virtual world, targeted at children ages 6 to 15, where players can travel, play games, compete in head-to-head competition, and communicate safely with each other. There is a role-playing component as players are encouraged to finish "island missions and get medallions."
Wikipedia.com

If you have finished this weeks assignments, check it out.

Storytelling: A Couple Scary? Stories

Here are a couple stories I recorded. I toned down the scare for the setting and audience. Junior High students can't handle something really scary ;)

The Yellow Lady of Big Rock by Mr. C's Sounds

The hook by Mr. C's Sounds

Isle of Tune

It is about time I find an interesting music game/sim. Isle of Tune allows you to create music by creating roads, lining them with musical items, and then sending cars down the street. It is hard to explain, but it is very cool watch/listen.

Comments4Kids Wednesday

Today you will be commenting on blog posts. First you will choose three of your fellow 8th grade students here to leave a comment on. You will choose from the other two classes.

After you have finished those comments, you will choose two posts from the links in the widget below to leave comments. Remember to follow the commenting rules we have already established:

1. Relevant
2. Positive
3. Good Conventions (spelling, punctuation, etc.)
4. If you don't have anything to say, don't leave a comment. No Drive-By Comments!

Lakin's LineTime Review

Lakin made a video review of the app LineTime and posted it on her blog. Click here to watch her review.

Your Science Lesson

Today I would like you to write about the science lesson you are teaching. Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. What are you teaching the students?
2. Where did you find your resources/information?
3. What activity are you having the class do?
4. What vocabulary are you introducing to the class?

On Thursday you will be writing a reflection on the lesson you have taught. 

Bean Project Write Up/ Plans for the Week of October 3

http://cooltext.com/

Here is this week's plan. Along with today's lesson. Take a look at what you will be doing this week. I would love feedback from you. If you see something I should add or change you can leave a comment on the post or even leave a comment on actual plan. If you leave a comment, leave your first name so that we can discuss it later :) Here is the link to this weeks lesson plans.

Today you will finish writing up your lab posts from the Bean Project. You will need to make sure you address all of these parts:

1. Problem
2. Background Knowledge
3. Hypothesis
4. Materials 
5. Method
6. Experiment
7. Collect Data
8. Conclusion
9. Questions for Extensions

As usual make sure your conventions are good.  After you have finished, let me look at them before you publish so I can approve them.

Terrifict Tiger Assembly, September 2011

These are random scences from today's Terrific Tiger Assembly

Miss Reta Lott This Is America Respect

What Are You Learning?: Plate Tectonics

More videos showing what students are learning and doing in science class. This time students are working on lessons they will be teaching to the rest of the class.

Students Can Facilitate Their Own Learning

Lakin decided to create a paper model for her Explorers PowerPoint. She sketched the idea for each slide on paper so that she could organize it and tweak it before she created her presentation. Because she had already organized her pages and received the feedback she needed she managed to put her presentation together in just a few minutes. Instead of spending time on the computer making decisions about what information to include and how she should organize it, she focused on finding great pictures to emphasize her points (to the point of not even needing text on some slides!)

Don't Make Your Presentation a Killer!

Here is a slideshare presentation we will use in class to help my students understand how and why they should make good design choices when using any presentation software.

Death by PowerPoint

View more presentations from Alexei Kapterev. (tags: tips powerpoint)

What Did You Learn?: Non-Ivory Soap Boats

Here are a couple videos from students that watched their soap boats. Some of the boats sunk and some of them floated. Here is their reaction.

 

What Are You Learning?: Explorer Projects

Students are researching explorers of North America. They have to create a PowerPoint presentation as required by the Missouri Assessment Program. Here are a couple students explaining what they are learning and what they are doing.

Picture of Captain Cook from Wikipedia.com

Here are the links for your explorers assignment. Read the directions very, very carefully and follow them. The links are also found on the right of the blog below the green bar. Make sure you cite your sources! You will upload it to Google Documents when you are finished.

Instructions for the Explorer Project
Links for the Explorer Project

Use EasyBib to cite your sources appropriately. 

Our Students are Artstounding!

Francisco and Jessie drew an amazing picture of a mustang, our district's mascot. Today is football homecoming and they are showing their school pride. Check out the video where they explain what they did and what they learned.