Water!!!

What a wonderful way to celebrate
the end of the year!  Almost 6th graders!

Kid President Is Back!

We're SO close to #1

Play Day 2014

A HUGE thank you to all the PE teachers for making this year's Play Day such a wonderfully fun event!!!

Rock Star of the Week, Nate!

Nate's Rock Star Wordle

Jade and Noemi's Weekly Update...

Hi, this is Noemi and Jade telling you about our fantastic week. Unfortunately, the school year will be over soon, so this will be the last Weekly Update. We had many highlights of our week as our week had been great. Some awesome things were visiting the Middle School library, the very last Grammar Challenge of the entire school year, and play day. These were the things that really stood out in our week. Hopefully, everyone enjoyed the week and had a great time.    

We are almost at the end of the school year, which means that we are going to have to go into Middle School soon. Which means we are going to have a different library, that means that we got to visit the Middle School library! There were about three classes that got to visit the library at the same time, which meant that it was super crowded. We all thought that the library looked really cool. It was definitely bigger than the library that we had for the past three years. The Middle School library also had many cool designs painted on the walls. One room had the solar system painted on the walls. The best part about moving into Middle School is that you can check out ten books at a time and you can check books out for summer vacation. The middle school library is huge! Some of the teachers showed us a video of the three finalists for Book Idol, the winner of the book contest was… The Hunger Games! Click here to watch the video. We had lots of fun there and we all (hopefully) are looking forward to moving into Middle School.

Our whole class was super excited and nervous for our very last grammar challenge for the whole entire year! In case you’re wondering, the Grammar Challenge is a competition between the boys and the girls, in which we correct grammar mistakes and compete for points. This round would determine whether the girls or the boys would win after four long weeks of competition. The speakers for this week were Noemi, who was representing the girls’ team, and Johan, who was representing the boys’ team. A big round of applause for our fantastic speakers! We battled it out and at the end the girls won for the third time this school year! That meant that the girls’ team won a Subway party! Congratulations to the girls’ team and boys’ team for trying their best and doing really well.

What time of the year do the Elementary students get to have fun and play on the High school field? What is full of water, buckets, and popsicles? 5...4...3...2...1...Play Day! Every year, all the grades from kindergarten~4th grade gets to head down to the high school field for 90 minutes. The 5th grade students got an extra 15 minutes. There are tons of different stations such as: Musical buckets, tug-a-war, and relay races. Here is what some of the kids who participated in playday thought were really enjoyable: “ I like the sponge race”, “ I thought that musical buckets was a ton of fun”, and “ Out of all the things that were available at playday, my favourite station was when the classes went against each other in tug-a-war.” It seems like everyone enjoyed Play Day. However, we are in 5th grade and there is no Play Day in Middle School. This was our last Play Day and we definitely enjoyed it.

This week has been super fun, and sadly it’s over. Throughout the week we have had an awesome visit to the Middle School library, the final Grammar Challenge, and Play Day! This is the last Weekly Update of the school year which means that it is the end of the year soon. Mrs. Clayton will be moving soon. We will all miss our wonderful teacher and the students that are moving (Julia, Alyssa, and Meaghan). Good luck to them at their new school. We hope that this week week has been as enjoyable for everyone as it was for us. Good luck and have fun in 6th grade!

Where Are You?

Where in your life have you stepped outside of your comfort zone and experiences some magic?  Maybe at school or playing a sport or trying something new?  I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and find where the magic happens!  Let us know when you've experience a bit of magic in your world!

Rock Star of the Week, Luis!

Luis' Rock Star Wordle

Who'd Have Thought?

I'm guilty of buying this product.  I never knew it was producing so much waste!  Maybe it's time for me to think about buying things that have more biodegradable packaging.  What do you think?

Vainavi and Julia's Weekly Update....

Hi, this is Julia and Vainavi here with reports about this week’s Weekly Update. This week went by so smoothly and quickly, we almost couldn’t keep track of all the things we were doing! During this week some things that stood out were Spirit Week, our Topic 13 math test, and Social Studies presentations. We know that everyone in this whole class must have some part of this week that they really enjoyed, so keep reading to see if your thoughts about this week matched ours!

Throughout the week, we had a special event going on called Spirit Week. Student Council created a quick video to tell us more about this fantastical event. Click here if you want to see it. The video was all about what event we would be doing on which days, and what to wear on that specific day. We had Color Day (Monday), Career Day (Tuesday), Earth Day (Wednesday), Character Day (Thursday), and Sports Day (Friday) during the week.

First was Color Day. We had to dress up in only one color straight from head to toe. What we mean by “head to toe” is that everything is in one color from the top of your head all the way down to your toes. It was really fun seeing people and what color they had the most in their wardrobe to wear! Some people thought that this was a free dress day and wore so many different colors. We don’t want to mention names though... Mychal. It was both of our favorite parts of the week.

The following day we had Career Day. That is when we dress up as what we want to be when we grow up. Lots of people in our class dressed up as a teacher, but there were some outfits that were more unique and those were: a lacrosse player, a mad scientist, an actress, a student (also very popular), a ninja, a vet, an ice skater, and an engineer. They were all great costumes, and it really expressed people’s spirit. We were told not to have props though some people still brought a few in. Overall it was a very fun day!

After that, it was Earth Day, a day when we dress up in green, blue, brown, in other words, colors of the earth. Another choice was that we could wear a shirt that said messages related to earth. Lots of people chose to wear green, but some wore blue as well. This was very fun, and we hoped people picked up some trash on that day!

Next was Character Day. That is when we can dress up as a person from a book, T.V. show, or movie. Surprisingly a lot of people participated with full spirit. Both of us agree that it would be hard to dress up as somebody from a book, a T.V. show, and possibly a movie. Lots of people from all over Intermediate School dressed up as Katniss, from the Hunger Games, and others dressed up as things both of us didn’t know about. It was really fun seeing what characters people love, and the way those people dressed up like. Some people in our class didn’t want to dress up, but realized that they were dressed up. What I mean is the people like Vainavi, Nate, and some others were dressed up from a book called the S.A.S. Yearbook! Thursday was really fun for a lot of people, and we would love to do this again.

And finally, we had Sports Day. That is when we can wear a jersey from a team that we could have been on, or a team that is famous from any sport. Most people wore their Fighting Fish shirts, and others also wore shirts from other sports. It was cool to see what sports people have done in their life, and also fun to see what games people have gone too. This was the last day of Spirit Week, and both of us wished it were Spirit Month instead! Maybe someday we will have Spirit Month.

On the same day of Career Day, we also had our Topic 13 math test. The unit was all about Units Of Measure and everyone seemed quite comfortable with all the conversions and steps. How it worked, was that we had to basically convert units of mass, capacity, and length. If a unit is smaller, then we would have to divide to get the answer of the unit that was bigger. And of course the opposite, if a unit were greater, we would have to multiply to find the value of the unit that was smaller. Here is a quick question to see if you know how this topic works. How many millimeters are 50 centimeters? 5...4...3...2...1... 500 millimeters! Centimeters are greater than millimeters so we would multiply in this case 10 (because there are 10 millimeters in one centimeter). Now, if we were to say what is 500 grams into kilograms are, that would be 5. Since our unit is greater, we have to divide 100 grams go into kilograms (there are 100 grams in one kilogram), so the product would be 5. Everyone did a commendable job on their test, and we wish them a best of luck for the next one they will have!

Also, throughout the week, we had Social Studies presentations going on. What each person in our class had to do was research a historical place in Singapore, and then do a presentation on that place. On Monday, our first brave and totally not scared (or were they?) boys came up and shared their presentation to the class. Declan was the first to go, and both of us agreed it would NOT be fun to go first, but somebody would have to, and that was him. Followed after Declan was Kasym. Both Declan and Kasym didn’t look scared, but even if they were, they did a GREAT job! Then, during the rest of the week, a bunch of other people went. They also did a really good job! There are still lots more people that have to go, so best of luck!

As you can see, this week was pretty fun, and it went by so quickly (probably because of Spirit Week). Now there are only three more weeks of school left (awwww)! These were the best highlights of the week. Next week Amber and Meaghan will be writing, so stay tuned. Did your favorite highlights match ours?

Kid President Returns...

Is there anything better than a Kid President video?  I think not!

Done It Again!

A HUMONGOUS THANK YOU to Greg and his thoughtful mom for making some delicious brownie treats for us to enjoy before our Puzzle test today.  They sure were tasty!

Sir Nicholas Winton...

Sir Nicholas Winton rescued and found homes for almost 700 Jewish children destined for a Nazi death camp during World War II.  This clip takes place 50 years after the rescue.  Watch to find out how they thanked him.

Good Advice..

Rock Star of the Week, Meaghan!

Meaghan's Rock Star Wordle

Goofballs!

Mr. Kimzey's Science Lab....'nuf said!

Grammar Girl to the Rescue: Broke vs Broken

Clumsy Kasym needs help remembering when to use broke and when to use broken.

Broke is the past tense of to break:
Kasym broke his leg last week. Ouch!

Broken is the past participle of to break: Kasym has broken his leg two times.  Poor kid!

You use broke without any other verb form, but you must use broken with another verb such as has, have,had, was, or were.  Remember that broke is alone (with no other verb), and both broke and alone end in e.

Of course, broke and broken are also adjectives, meaning you can use them to describe nouns:

• The broken vase was a family heirloom.
• I can't give you any money because I'm broke.

Get Ready For Spirit Day!

We've got spirit yes we do, we've got spirit, how about you?

The Wonder Continues...

For those of you that loved the book Wonder, R.J. Palacio is
releasing a short e-book called
The Jullian Chapter.  It's being released May 13th!  Do you think she was listening to our conversations in class about why there wasn't a chapter for Julian.  It looks like other folks were wondering the same thing too!

AND...

In August, she's releasing this in August
(what an appropriate month):

The WONDER continues!

Happy!

Clap along if your know what happiness is for you!  Check out Singapore's version of the video.

Preston and Alex's Weekly Update

Hi, this the perfect Preston and the amazing Alex bringing you this week’s Weekly Update. We’ll be sharing three things that were special from our awesome week. Number one is Math. Second is counseling. Finally is our Word Study lesson and challenge. These are the three things we’ll be discussing, so we hope you enjoy!

On Monday, we were continuing our journey in geometry. We learned how to find the volume of one irregular shaped solid. You first need to split the solid into two and find the volume of both of solids, and then add them together. The class was told that this lesson was complicated but it’s not. (Once you get the hang of it).

On Tuesday we went to counseling. We learned about being mindful though words. For example you probably love your family the most, but you might say more hurtful things to them than your friends. What we learned today was about thinking before saying somethings? We need to ask ourselves three things: is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Those are the key words we have to think about, before speaking. We also learned about being an upstander which is important in bullying. An upstander is someone who reports the bullying before it gets any worse. A bystander is usually somebody that witnesses the victims get bullied and don’t react. So next time you see someone being bullied be an upstander not a bystander and help. Last, but not least we had Word Study. What we did was review on how to add suffixes and prefixes to words, we also learned why there are silent letters  in some words. For example there is a silent “g” in sign. Some people think that it’s pointless, but if you add a suffix or a prefix to it the “g” gets pronounced. Like in signal the “g” gets pronounced. Then at the end of the lesson we had a competition. Each group was given a word and the objective was to come up with as many words with that word by adding suffixes and prefixes to them. Most of the class had high scores. The team in downfall was The Beatles with 8 points (Good try). And the winner was Jackson 5 with 14 points. (Congratulations by the way.) So, those were the three cool things out of our fantastic week. We hope you enjoyed reading about our amazing week in Mrs. Clayton’s class.  Happy Birthday to Preston (Wednesday) and Luis (Saturday). Please be sure to tune into next week’s weekly bloggers the joyful Julia and the victorious Vainavi.

How Clever Designs Can Help You Learn Chinese

Learning Chinese (or any language for that matter) can be tough!  In Chinese, there are tens of thousands of characters that can take years to master.  ShaoLan Hsueh has come up with a creative way to help you learn them using design and story. What do you think of her technique of teaching?  Could this help you learn Chinese?  

World's Toughest Job....

Watch this NOW!  

Hmmm, what do you think you should do RIGHT NOW?   Do it!!!

Today's Meet!

While we read aloud today, we're going to share our thinking (evens & odds) about Number the Stars. Look closely at what the characters say and do to gain knowledge about them.  Also, think about why the author choose to highlight these events from history.  Comments need to be detailed and add to the conversation.

Rock Star of the Week, Kasym!

Kasym's Rock Star Wordle

Beatrice and Anushka's Weekly Update...

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Weekly Update, brought to you by the amazing Anushka and the brilliant Beatrice! This was a very important week for all of us for several reasons. We will be telling you about our interesting talk with Mr. Robertaccio, the sixth grade counselor, the new unit in puzzles, geometry and lastly our Social Studies’ presentations. Now sit back, relax and read on about our fun week. Remember when you went from second grade to third grade (if you already have)? That is what will be happening to us soon, except we are going from 5th grade to 6th grade. There were many different reactions to moving up into sixth grade. Some things that some kids said were.... “I’m sorta excited but at the same time nervous” ,“I am dreading it” ,“I am super super excited” and “I am so scared”. To give us a bit more information, (and to help calm down on the stress) Mr. Robertaccio, the counselor for 6th grade, came down to talk to us. He talked to us about electives, homebase, middle school lockers, rules, and other such things that kids tend to worry about. We will only be giving you a short summary about the talk, but in case you would like to know more, click this link to find out more about it. To begin with, he started with classes. We would have homeroom for 18 minutes (strange number right?), and then have our school core classes (like RLA, math, history, etc) which were 83 minutes (even stranger number). At the end of the day, we had either an elective/music and World language. In world language, we got to choose from the languages of Spanish, Chinese and the new one of French! If we chose to have music (band, strings or choir), we could have the three choices from these electives: movement, art, cooking, strategic learning, drama, IT, video and tech. If we didn’t take music, then we could choose six electives. Mr. Robertaccio then talked about teachers and not only how nice they were but were chosen especially for sixth grade since the kids will probably be quite nervous. The rules didn’t take very long and they were normal rules anyways. Everything else was about the schedule, timing and having some fun. Even though some kids think they dread it, everyone must be excited about 6th grade.

What did the acorn say when he grew into a big oak tree? Here’s a hint, it is the unit we are doing in puzzles. He said... geometry (gee I’m a tree)! Do you prefer numbers, algebra or shapes? Either way, we all agree that this is going to be an interesting unit in puzzles! Geometry is all about shapes! Although some people are having a few problems, it seems like we will all learn a lot from this unit. Some things that we have learned so far are about solids, views of solids, using objects to solve a simpler problem, and models of volume, we will now continue to learn about volumes. For those of you who are struggling with geometry, you can go to IXL and practice in the geometry section B.23-27. On Thursday in puzzles, Mrs. Clayton had us find the volume of the classroom, after we learned the formulas for finding the area in cubic units. The class picked up on volume quite quickly. Here is how you can find volume; width=w, height=h, length=l. You then multiply them together. This is a very short unit, which has only seven lessons, and we are going to learn as much as we can from our brilliant teacher Mrs. Clayton!

Moving on to our social studies presentation. Before we begin talking about the presentation, here is a quick pop quiz to see what you know. Question 1: What is the historical significance that the cenotaph has on singapore? Question 2: Why is the Civilian War Memorial located where it is? Question 3: Who founded Raffles hotel? If you had no clue what the answer is to any of these, then you now know a little bit of what we will all be learning from each other. There are many different sites that we will be learning about during the month of May. Some of them are old and some of them are newer. Confused? Every individual student will be making a presentation (except for one person who is doing a timeline)  about a different historical site in Singapore. This way, the class will learn about 21 different sites (not including their own). We are working very hard on our presentations and at the moment, we are putting information about our sites into our slides. There are many different ideas about how to set it all up. People are excited, nervous and both of them too. May is getting closer and closer, and soon we will finally be able to present!

These were only three things from our fantastic week, but they were the best moments. Thanks to Mr. Robertaccio, we know a lot more about sixth grade (this helps us to not be so nervous. It is a big transition and many are stressing about it), and everyone must be very excited. It was interesting to learn all about 3D shapes for math and prepare for our big-part-of-grade social studies presentation. This is the end of this week’s Weekly Update (Well, almost. In 34 words it will be over), but please do come back next week with the anticipation to learn about it from the amazing Alex and the perfect Preston! Hope you have a really “good” Good Friday and a great weekend!

Enjoy Your Long Weekend!

Noemi and Alyssa's Weekly Update...

Hello, this is Alyssa and Noemi from Mrs. Clayton’s amazing class. We have been having a sometimes challenging, but great time this week, and we would like to tell you all about it. Some of the highlights were our MAP testing, the PACER test in P.E., and the final Grammar Challenge. We hope you enjoy reading all about our extraordinary week as much as we did writing about it! Does this sentence contain alliteration or onomatopoeia: “Crash! Splat! The plate toppled out of her hands and onto the floor.” How about this one: What are three properties of an obtuse triangle? Give up? If you have no idea what to say, or are feeling completely confused, you’ll know exactly how several of our classmates felt on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings. The time had come for our MAP tests. We were all working hard to get good scores on the tests this week, and it wasn’t very easy. Monday was Math, or Puzzles as we like to call it, on Tuesday we took the Reading test, and Thursday was for the Language test. Each test had about 52 questions, except for the reading one which was about 42 or so. Although taking the test was stressful at times, we all felt better after seeing our great scores. Everyone was super happy when we finally finished our MAP tests. Great work all of you! On Thursday, we took the PACER test. A PACER test is a physical endurance challenge in which you have to run as many laps as you can. There is a recording that tells you when to start and stop. There is also a time limit to finish each lap, (which gets faster every few laps) so if you finish after the recording tells you that the lap time is over, you have a miss. If you get two misses in a row you have to stop running. The reason we are doing PACER tests is that the P.E. teachers want to know how much we have improved over the school year, as we took the same test at the beginning of fifth grade. The whole class had mixed feelings about the PACER test, and here is what some of our classmates have to say: “I was nervous before the test”, “I was really scared of getting a bad score,” and “ I was super excited and nervous, but I knew I was going to do just fine.” We definitely agreed that just like every test, this one was scary at first, but in the end, it didn’t turn out as bad as we thought it would. Our whole class was super excited (and nervous) about the Grammar Challenge on Friday, because it was the very last round. In case you’re wondering, the Grammar Challenge is a competition between the boys and the girls, in which we correct grammar mistakes and compete for points. This round would determine whether the girls or the boys would win after four long weeks of competition. The speakers representing each team for this week were Anushka, who was representing the girls’ team, and Greg who represented the boys’ team. They both did a great job and got a lot of points for their teams. There was some tough competition, but the girls’ team won this round. It came pretty close, though. We had some really hard questions, like having to complete the analogy “Square is to plane as cube is to...?”. A lot of us were super confused. Some people thought it might be a 3D shape, a train or even the universe. Congratulations to the girls’ team, and better luck next time, boys! So our week has now come to an end, and so has this Weekly Update. We hope you have enjoyed hearing all about our MAP testing, the PACER test, and one of the non-testing events, such as the Grammar Challenge. What a super special week! Even though this has been a great one, we are sure next week will be just as fun. Hear more about it from the brilliant Beatrice and the awesome Anushka next Thursday!  

Grammar Girl to the Rescue: Capitalizing Earth

April 22 is Earth Day. Earth is capitalized in Earth Day because it's the name of a holiday, a proper noun. Earth isn't always capitalized though, and sometimes it seems to break the standard rules.

Other planet names are always capitalized (e.g.,Jupiter and Mars), but earth is often left lower case, especially when it comes after the: Protect the earth.

On the other hand, when people write about earth in an astronomical sense or in an article that includes other planets, earth is usually capitalized.

• We will move heaven and earth to find him.
• The spot on Jupiter is about as big as Earth.

Beatrice and Jade's Weekly Update...

Hi, this is Jade and Beatrice here with your Weekly Update! Our week was so fabulous that we just had to tell you all about it. We assume our whole class enjoyed this week, so read on to find out what we did. Three things that we did were learning about MAP testing, elective classes next year, and the last but not least, Rock Star Mall! We had some things where we were all “YAY” about and some things where we were all “uh-oh” about but that did not change our week. So sit back, relax, and enjoy as we bring you reports of our week. Throughout the week we were learning about MAP testing and some test taking skills. MAP stands for Measurement of Academic Progress. One thing we were definitely not excited about was the MAP testing discussion. Although a lot of people were excited that we would have no homework that whole entire week we did the MAP testing. We will take this test for teachers and parents to see how we have improved over the year. This also helps the teachers for another reason because our results will be sent to some of the middle school teachers to see where they would place us next year in subjects like math, reading, and language. We also learned some things that would help us just in case we forgot when taking the MAP test. We also learned that we should eat some sort of breakfast to get our brains working before coming to school. That definitely would help us get ready. Some of us were freaking out because we will be taking  MAP tests next week, but others were just being calm and not minding too much. Mrs.Clayton also told us that there was no failing so that relieved us all. ATTENTION ALL PARENTS: Please make sure that your child goes to bed early, gets a good night of sleep, eats a good breakfast, and is not too stressed out about the test. This will help your child get better grades. If your child is too tired, then he/she might not get as good grades as they normally would. Good luck on the MAP test everyone! On Tuesday, our class had music. We met a special guest, Mrs. Craig. She talked about some things that we could be doing next year in music. She talked about being in the choir, the strings, or the band. The choir is basically singing. The strings is instruments but not any instruments. It’s instruments like violin, viola, cello, and bass. Only a few people raised their hands when she asked who played any of these instruments. However, we were allowed to start any instrument as a beginner so, we do not have to be able to play the instruments to join. Last but not least, the band group. The band group is also instruments but is more instruments that would play in a band, like flute, trumpet, euphonium, and some other instruments. Most of us said we wanted to join the band because we could play the drums, but Mrs. Craig said that we can only play the percussion in intermediate band which takes a lot of practice. She also said that when we mastered one of those instruments, we can play other instruments that are in the program like the clarinet, the tuba, and many more. She talked about other different electives that we could take. Elective classes are when we sign up for different classes of our choice to take during the day. A few of these were: art, drama, cooking, IT, etc. She told us that music and language were all year classes but others were just one semester. She said that if we take music and a language, we only get to pick one other elective class. But, if we take either music or language, then we would get to choose three more elective classes. If we didn’t take music or language, we would get to choose four elective classes. We all thought this talk helped us a lot in choosing our elective classes next year. The best thing was EVERYONE is welcome in the music classes. Some of us said we were looking forward to middle school but some of us were not happy about going into middle school. It sure will be a big change!
On Friday, we had our third Rock Star Mall! We all mostly had quite a lot of money to spend. While kids shopped at the rock star mall, we watched the Variety Show 2014. Everyone had worked very hard to get as much money as possible, especially the people with jobs. There were some things that we had that was also in last quarter’s Rock Star Mall but we also had some new things that really caught a lot of our eyes. Some of the things that were super popular at the rock star mall were the mustache necklaces and the candy. Some other things at the Rock Star Mall were headbands, pouches, and many other items. The people with jobs got to exchange their checks for starbucks and go over to the Rock Star Mall to shop first. After that, Mrs. C called on multiples to go and shop. Finally, everyone who wanted to shop got their chance. After the Rock Star Mall, almost all the items were gone. Although, some things that were not as popular were still there. It looks like the Rock Star Mall went well again.  A big shoutout to the Rock Star Mall backstage crew, Jade the economist, Young Seo the banker, and Meaghan the cashier! Thank you for helping run the rock star mall.  Almost everyone got what they wanted. We hope everyone enjoyed this quarter’s Rock Star Mall and we will be looking forward to next quarter’s Rock Star Mall. Our week was one of the most enjoyable weeks of the year and we had so much fun. We were all really happy about spending a week with the (sort of) fun lesson about MAP testing, the interesting talk about next year’s elective classes, and last but not least, the cool Rock Star Mall! We hope all of you enjoyed this week’s Weekly Update brought to you by Jade and Beatrice. Next week’s Weekly Update will be presented to you by the amazing Alyssa and the nifty Noemi. Be sure to hang around for next week’s Weekly Update!

Rock Star of the Week, Alex

Alex's Rock Star Wordle

Before and After

Here's a VERY good reminder that things aren't always as they may seem.  Whether you're a fan of hers or not, you have to respect that someone as high-profile as Lorde is comfortable in her own skin to call out things like this.

Hmm...

Hmmm...what do you think this means?

Rock Star of the Week, Preston!

Preston's Rock Star Wordle

Historical Site Presentation Dates

I can't wait to hear all about the historical site you choose to
present about.   Here are the dates you signed up for.  We'll start working on them in class after break. 

Time for a Brain Break!

I'm all for having more brain breaks in class.  A student a few years ago shared Four Corners with me and it's been a hit with students ever since.  Let me know if you have any new ideas for things we can do for brain breaks in class.  Remember, they need to be
quick, easy and most important active!

Math Recap

A little recap from today's lesson.  Happy computing!

Unsupervised Outdoor Play...

I came across this last week and thought it was pretty interesting.
Do you have any thoughts on the matter?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patty's Day folks!
Don't forget to wear green on Monday.

March 14th

I'll give you 3.14 seconds to guess what day it is...

Harrison and Mychal's Weekly Update

Hi, this week’s Weekly Update will be brought to you by the harry Harrison and the marvelous Mychal. We will be telling you all about our week in the Weekly Update. First we will be telling you about our great time learning about our student lead conferences coming up, our special visitor Peter Brown, and our surprise guest, Jon Cooper.

In math, we prepared for our student led conferences that are coming up. We will teach our parents one of the lessons we did this year. Lots of people are teaching their parents about the order of operations, adding and subtracting mixed numbers, and much more. Most of us are having a question to start out with to see how much our parents know about the topic we are teaching. After our parents have answered the question of the day we will give them some more questions to see if they understand what we taught them. This is a really cool feeling to be teaching our parents because we are always the ones getting taught. When our parents are experts on the lesson we taught them, we will play a game to test their skills. Some games are to help you understand the lesson. Others are like tic atac toe where you are trying to make a certain pattern with the answers you got. We can’t wait teach our parents.

On Tuesday, we had our special visitor Peter Brown. Peter Brown is an author/ illustrator from New Jersey. He was first inspired by his grandpa who was an artist. He thought it was cool to see a grown man drawing and making art very seriously. Some of Peter's first pictures were horses since he lived by a farm. He also drew pictures of his mom. When he was little, he said he drew better than he counted. He showed us a picture of his mom he drew when he was a child. She had six fingers on one of her hands! Then he read Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, with special effects like noises. He taught us how to draw Mr. Tiger. First he started by drawing two vertical rectangles on top of each other. The top one was bigger than the one on the bottom. It was surprising how good his drawing was after only fifteen minutes! He told us that simple shapes such as triangle are really good when drawing this tiger. He was a really funny guy.

On Wednesday, we had an interesting visit by Jon Cooper, a British battlefield archaeologist. Battlefield archaeology is when a man or a women studies remains of a battlefield. He came to talk to us about our social studies project. He is currently researching World War 2 at Adam Park. He told us about the lost shrine somewhere in Macritchie Reservoir. He told us that this shrine was used for the ashes of the Japanese dead. He said that the Japanese built the shrine. When the British started started taking over Singapore they decided to take the ashes back to Japan and blew it up ahead of time. The British went to the area and only found parts of the shrine . He showed us pictures of Adam’s Park right after the war and now. There was a HUGE difference. The road that was built is covering most of the artifacts from the battle that went on there. He told us about a very nasty disease that we both don’t want to write on here because it’s so gross. Jon Cooper is a funny guy. He had some very funny jokes that he told us! I hope that he comes back next year because I think that those kids will like him too.   

We hope ya’ll enjoyed this Weekly Update, brought to you by the harry Harrison and the marvelous Mychal. If you liked this week’s Weekly Update stay tuned for the next Weekly Update (in three weeks) that the brilliant Beatrice and jazzy Jade will write. Comment what you doing for spring break.

Time For Pi!!

Get ready for Pi Day tomorrow!

)

Checking Out Our Artwork!

Check out what's on display in the Administration Office!  What great looking stamps from i308!

Rock Star of the Week, Vainavi!

Vainavi's Rock Star Wordle

The A Team's Weekly Update

Hi, and welcome to this week’s Weekly Update. This is Alexa and Anushka, known as the A team. Some interesting things have been happening here in Mrs. Clayton’s class, like the Awesome Ape Challenge, Fantasy writing, and Wacky Hair Day! We have come to report these things to you. This week has had ups and downs, with hard challenges and fun things. Read on and find out about the glorious week! On Monday, we had our last session in gym B for PE, the rockwall gym. On the same day, we also had our Awesome Ape challenge. We were really lucky since we were in that gym, we got to practice for the Awesome Ape. Other classes never got to practice. We have 3 girls and 2 boys who got in to semi-finals in this class. Their scores were INSANELY high! Most of them got across that wall in less than 20 seconds! Also, the class got to practice their climbing skills, which strengthens both upper and lower muscles. Even though not everybody could get into the Awesome Ape, kids got good scores. There are still many more things our cool teacher, Mrs. Wenstrom, has to teach in PE.  

On Thursday, we had our final edit for our fantasy writing. We have been working on writing a fantasy story for an entire month now, and it felt kind of good to stand back and see your finished work. We learned about the punctuation for dialogue and different formats for dialogue. For example, instead of saying the person who is speaking before or after the sentence the person is saying, you can put the speaker in the middle of the context of the dialogue. In the past lessons, we have also learned about spelling and describing characters. These lessons are not only for fantasy writing though, we can use these helpful skills in the future a lot. We will all keep these revision skills in mind. Everyone has been working very hard on their writing and should be very proud of themselves. It is so exciting!

On Friday, if you saw our class with the weirdest hairdos ever, it’s because we were having Wacky Hair Day! Alexa’s amazing mom won this fun opportunity for us at the County Fair so we got to style our hair in any CRAZY way we wanted! (applause please). Some of us came in with wacky hairdos. A few people had dye in their hair and a few others didn’t. We had a range from mohawks to two ponytails. Two ponytails to ten ponytails. Ten ponytails to ponytails hanging over the head. Ponytails hanging over the head to hair sticking up! People even made their hair look like bed head (A little nicer though)! Some of these ideas were ones that we would have never thought of! It was interesting to see how creative people can be. Maybe you could use some of these ideas for your next wacky hair day!   

Well, that brings an end to the Weekly Update. This week was an amazing week for the class. We had many activities, but these were the best highlights. Come back to know about our next fantastic week (we can’t wait for it) being reported to you by the clever Harrison and the awesome Mychal. Have a wonderful weekend!

Can You Imagine?

I know there are A LOT of animal lovers out there and so I ask you this.  Can you imagine what would it be like to be a dog that has never had a chance to run?  Or has never set paws on to grass?  
Why do you think this happens?  Do you think it's right or wrong?  Maybe even a better question would be,
what can YOU do to stop this from happening in the first place?

Wacky Kids!

A very WACKY thank you to Alexa and her parents for generously bidding on this super fun day.  HAPPY WACKY FRIDAY KIDS!

Yummy....Part 2!

Oh my goodness!  These DID make us smarter for our Math test!  Thanks to Beatrice and her mom for thinking of us and making these delicious treats!  I think we should conduct a study to see if having treats before math tests consistently make us do better.
It could be a fun study!

When's Your Birthday?

What a treat to learn more about Young Seo today from his parent's powerpoint!  I can't believe how many kids didn't know their zodiac signs.  Here's a picture and a quick link to learn a bit more about your sign as it relates to your birthday.  It's fun to check to see if you match or are the opposite of the supposed characteristics.

Five Things....

A fun lil' rap to help you think
about the elements of a story!

a

Awesome Ape!

Congratulations to these Awesome Ape Competitors and good luck next Thursday!  We hope you're among the top three boys and girls that qualify for the Finals on Friday.  Happy climbing!

Rock Star of the Week, Young Seo!

Young Seo's Wordle