Woo Hoo!

Enjoy the long break and looking forward to hearing about everyone's adventures when we're back together in the new year.

Happy Everything and Merry Always!

Meaghan and Alexa's Weekly Update...

Hello, this is Agent Meaghan and Agent Alexa reporting from Mrs.Clayton’s class. We have found many amazing things that happened to them in their amazing week. First, they had their Science Test, Then on Thursday, they had art. Last but definitely not least, they had an amazing PJ Day on the last day before break! Hope you guys enjoy our Weekly Update and have an awesome Winter Break! Agent Meaghan Out! This week, in Science we had a Test and finished up our third topic. Our third investigation  was called Fizz Quiz and I think it was the best so far! We have been learning about chemical reactions and chemical equations. We got to test out all sorts of things like mixing baking soda, citric acid, calcium chloride and water together in a bag. The bag blew up with  carbon dioxide and it created a precipitate. We also put baking soda and calcium chloride in a bag and that made a precipitate of calcium carbonate (calcium carbonate is chalk). The Chemical Equations were really fun too! It was fun to learn all the chemical names of items all around us. Next semester, it won’t be science, but it will be Social Studies! This week, we had Art. Most people have finished their Singapore shophouses and pasta boxes. The pasta boxes could get colored with spray paint and glitter if you wanted them spray painted. The Singapore shophouses were fun to make and paint. A shophouse is a shop at the bottom and a house on top and sometimes there are even three floors if you are a rich person. You can even give your pasta box and your singapore shophouse to your parents! Agent Alexa gave her dad her pasta box and her mom her shophouse. I had a bunch of fun making both projects and I am giving my mom my pasta box! This week, we finished our Non-Fiction writing piece. It was fun to gather all of the information. I can’t wait to see what all of the kids wrote about! I bet that all of us (students) thought that research was boring before we started. When we actually started researching, I think that all the kids got even more interested in the topic that they picked. It was really fun to search for books and on the internet for our topics. I (Alexa)had a bunch of fun going on the internet to research more about sloths! I can’t wait to see everyone else's!

On the last day before the winter break, we had our AMAZING PJ day! Since it is the last day of school before break, we got to play dodgeball with Mr.Clayton, Mrs.Clayton’s husband. We also had our second Rock Star Mall! There was a bunch of new stuff and some old stuff at the mall. You can check out what was popular with everyone at the Rock Star Mall by checking Alyssa’s Economist report. I bet Candy was high up on that list! I got 2 pieces of candy! At the end of the day we had our party! We watched A Christmas Carol. While we were watching we got to shop at the mall and drink hot cocoa. We also got to have some yummy treats like special cake pops and we got candy canes and popcorn too! Agent Meaghan and I hope that you have enjoyed our Weekly Update! Sadly, this is the last one. In January, we will have another amazing pair of Agents writing about Mrs.Clayton’s class and what they are doing then! We hope you have a wonderful, wacky, and wondrous Winter Break! Let’s welcome our new student…Alexander! Agent Meaghan and Alexa out!

Thinking Back on Science...

A LOT of learning was done during our Science Unit.  Although we're done with the investigations, there's still just one last bit of learning, and it's an important one.  Tonight's home learning is to reflect on all the thinking and discovering and questioning and learning you've done over the last few months.  In other words, it's time to METACOGNATE!

Here are some questions to get you thinking!

What new skills have you learned?

What did you learn about working together with lab partners/groups?

What worked and what didn't work for you?

What connections did you make?

How was your thinking pushed?

What did you enjoy and why?

Would you have done anything differently?
Favorite experiment?  What made it so gooood?
Least favorite or most difficult?  What did you learn from it?
Was there anything you could've improved on?
Questions you still have unanswered?

Batik Kaleidoscope Artwork

Check out the amazing Batik Kaleidoscope artwork our class created.  I'll bet some of these are going to be gifts for family members over the holidays.  Lucky them!

A Comma Story

What a nice little comma she is.   I hope this story helps some of you that are struggling with where to put those commas!

Rock Star of the Week, Greg!

Greg's Rock Star Wordle

Mychal and Luis' Weekly Update

In a galaxy far far away in Mrs.Clayton’s class, we (Luis and Mychal) will be telling you how our week went. We hope you enjoy our weekly update! It is about multiple of things, those multiple things are: On Monday we had music class, on Tuesday we had a super scary story, on Wednesday we had our Mad Scientist investigation finished and finally our Christalite Methodist Home trip. We hope you enjoy reading this week’s Weekly Update! Enjoy! Monday was pretty awesome. In Music, we practiced our Christmas songs for the Christalite Methodist Home. We are going to sing “Silent Night”, “Jingle Bells”, “Feliz Navidad” and “We Wish you a Merry Christmas”. Our favorite song has to be Feliz Navidad, because it’s short and can be extremely catchy.  We also sung Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Mr. Anderson to help his recording skills. We got to play a poison ball game which is where, there are three balls, two are poison, and the other is the cure for the poison. We pass the ball around while Mr. Anderson plays music. When the music stops who ever has the poison ball is out, whoever has the cure gets to save someone who had the poison ball. That’s all for Music on Monday. Tuesday was fantastic! We had a scary story from Mrs. Brundage! Although I hope everyone wasn't super scared. Secretly, I (Luis) was scared. It was actually pretty obvious that I was scared because I was hiding underneath my friends leg, covering my ears. The cool thing is that my class and Mr. DeMichele's class had a different scary story than everyone else. I loved this scary story because last year I left the classroom because it was so dark! Anyway... Boo! Did I scare you? I hoped you enjoyed how our scary story was like. On our wonderful Wednesday we had Mad Scientist. We also finished our third science investigation. Our third investigation was the Fizz Quiz. Mychal and I had so much fun on this investigation, because we didn’t just see chemical reactions. We learned about atoms, molecules and chemical equations. Mychal and I hope we did really well on our response sheet. That will sadly be all for Wednesday. I hope you all did well on the response sheet! On Thursday we went to the Christalite Methodist Home and made Santa hats for the elder people who live there. I felt like we not only learned a lot but we also got to meet some really nice people who were living there. One of the people even played “Amazing Grace” on his harmonica. We felt this field trip was good to help us that learn giving is just as good receiving. We can’t wait to go back in February! Mychal and I hope you enjoyed our Weekly Update. I hope you enjoyed our fantastic week about: Music, a scary story, Mad Scientist and our field trip. Tune in for the next weekly update. Next week's weekly updaters are: Meaghan and Alexa. Bye!

Sweet!

Science can be pretty sweet!  

Who'd have thought there would be so many chemical reactions happening when you busted out your apron and a few chocolate chips.

For more entertaining videos, head on over to The Kid Should See This!  Thanks to Alexa's mom for reminding me of the awesome website.

Christalite Methodist Home Service Learning

What an amazing experience we had today at the Christalite Methodist Home!  There was Christmas singing, Santa hat decorating and a whole lot of smiles.  We're learning that with service learning, we get out of the experience what we put in.  And these kids sure put a lot in today!  

Hour of Coding

I've NEVER seen our class as quiet and focused as when they were coding an Angry Bird game.  What an engaging activity Mrs. Lynch brought to our class today.  I imagine there are future computer programers in some of our kids.  It's an awesome sight to see!

If you're interested in doing even more coding,
check out the Scratch class in our next EASA session!

Rock Star of the Week, Beatrice!

Beatrice's Rock Star Wordle

From Imprisonment to President

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin,
or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate,
and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love,
for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Rest in peace Nelson Mandela.

In Case You Were Wondering....

This is what awesomeness looks like!
Congratulations to our very own Beatrice,
and to all the Basketball Shootout winners.

Nandita and Alyssa's Weekly Update

Hello, this is Nandita and Alyssa from Mrs. Clayton’s class. We’re here to tell you about our amazing week. We both had an especially great time during P.E, Science Lab, and Reader’s Workshop. To find out more about what we did during our fantastic week, keep reading!

In P.E., we had Fun day! Fun day is after your class is done with all of their classes in swimming. We got to do fun cool things like diving, splashing and other fun things like that. We did so many activities, diving, going on the yellow slide and rode on those mats on top of the water. We saw a lot of boys that were playing basketball. (Some boys threw the ball from the top of the slide before they rode down.) The most popular activity the boys played was water polo. We thought that swimming with the fins were very fun too! We just wish that we could play tag games in water on Fun day. Sadly that was our last Fun day.

In science, we continued learning about the digestive system. We watched a Bill Nye video to learn some more about our last science experiment. Did you know that the digestive system starts before you even put the food in your mouth? It’s true. When you look at, smell, or even think about food, your mouth starts making saliva. The saliva helps to break down the food while it’s in your mouth. The food is now called chyme. Now, the chyme is that the food goes down into your stomach, where hydrochloric acid breaks down the food even more. After that, the food goes through your small intestine, (which is actually the longer one), and into your large intestine. (The shorter one.) There, all the nutrients are absorbed from the food. When this is done, well, you will have to go to the bathroom.

This week, we also started our nonfiction unit in Reader’s Workshop. Everybody picked a subject they wanted to learn about, or that they knew they could write a lot about. Dogs were a very popular topic. Once we’ve done as much research as possible, we will all write two pages about our subject. This is a really exciting unit for us, because we can learn a lot of information on subjects or topics that we like, or that we did not know much about. Right now we are gathering information on a sticky note. Later, it will turn into a wonderful masterpiece of true facts. We cannot wait to see everyone's writing.

Thank you for taking your time to read this Weekly Update. We hope you enjoyed reading about our Fun Day, Science Lab, and Reader’s Workshop this week. If you liked this, you should read more of the Weekly Updates from Mrs. Clayton's class! Have a wonderful, wacky weekend!

Awesome Opportunity!

A Year in Review!

Every year, Google publishes its annual Zeitgeist, a video about what mattered most in the year.
Last year, Zeitgeist sorted billions of Google searches and captured the year’s 10 fastest-rising global queries and the spirit of 2012.  From that report, the Google folks created a short video highlighting the events of 2012, as seen through the lens of Google searches.
It’s a different way and a different perspective to view the past year.
What do you think will be on the Zeitgeist this year?  Post your comments below!

Check out the 2010 video and 2011 video!

True or Hoax?

I had this video sent to me and thought it was INCREDIBLE!!  Then I put my thinking cap on and wondered if it was in fact real.  I mean, it looks real and one would hope that something like that could happen.  What do you think??  Share your ideas and think about how could you figure out if it's real or fake??

Rock Star of the Week, Anushka

Anushka's Rock Star Wordle