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.