My class along with Mrs. Cabrera's students just had their Explorer Treasure Chest Tour. We braved the cold temperatures in our courtyard while the 5th grade students from Mrs. Helter and Mr. James class came to view the finished projects. We were freezing but it gave us a chance to show off all the hard work that was completed.

Power Writing is a quick writing activity that get students excited about writing. Students have a choice of 2 words that we pull from a bowl, and they have one minute to write as much as they can about one or both of those words. If students get off the subject that is alright just as long as they keep on writing. Students perform these one minute quick writes three times and then after each minute, student count and graph the number of words of their graphs. It is great to see the students get excited when they go up in the number of words they write. Students also analyze reasons why they went up, maintained, or even dropped in their word count.

After those 3 one minute writes, the students then write for 10 minutes elaborating on one or more of their quick writes. Again students count and graph the number of words they wrote during the ten minute writing. Power writing is done in our classroom three times a week. Students created a web describing the reasons and benefits on why we Power Write.

Oh Boy, It is October 31st and my students are excited! This week is Spirit Week, and today was 1980's Day.
Ask your parents what they were doing during the 1980's. I can't wait to see what Wacky Wednesday will be like in school tomorrow!

What do you think about KIDBIZ 3000? Here is what a few of my students have to say...

Grant says...

KidBiz 300 is a website for school children all across America.When you first log on, you have to type in your name and your password.From there, it takes you to your account homepage. Ot has a greeting and some links to assist you. If you go to the mailbox you will see that Kid Bizsends you messages regularly.Our teacher assings us to reply to the e-mail.It asks you a question and then you respond to it and click the article link. You read the article and if you don't know a word it has a vocabulary guide at the bottom and it tells you definitions for important or hard words. When you're done reading the article, you take a test on it , send an answer to another question , and vote on a poll.KidBiz teaches students new vocabulary,thinking skills, and comprehension skills. If you want to be a better reader, KidBiz is for you!


Jordan says....

Kid Biz 3000 is something on the computer where you get e-mails from someone.Lets say
like your dad,mom,my homeroom teacher Miss Gergus,my science teacher Mrs.Cabrera,my math teacher Miss Helter,my principal Mrs.Dallas,and my reading teacher
Mr.James.It's a program where somebody writes about going fishing.They are saying have you played football and why do people like watching football on telivision? What I did was I went fishing one time at my trip to Texas and I caught 25 fish!



Allison says...

Kidbiz 3000 is an education system. When you on to Kidbiz you will get a story that you have to read and then answer questions about the story. Kidbiz will help you pay attention to the story that you are reading. If you don't you won't get a good grade on Kidbiz.The stories are just about 5 sentences long but the questions are still hard.Kidbiz is a really fun game to play.It will help you to get smarter. You will love the game if you try it out. But first you need to have a login your name and a password if you do Kidbiz. Trust me you will love kidbiz 3000!!!

Wow, we just finshed listening to our very first Podcast!!! I am so proud of my students for writing and recording a wonderful podcast about Phoenix, Arizona.

Here is the host for that podcast, Katherine.

All we did was talk about some famous people, landmarks ect. As the host it felt really good talking into the headphones and hearing myself on the computer. Everyone did a part, and all together we pulled it together. I had so much fun.

My class has just finished recording their very first podcast for Our City Podcast which will soon be found on learninginhand.com. Just click on Our City and you will find not only our podcast on Phoenix but many other classrooms podcasts on their home towns.

What is fluency? Do you know? How does fluency affect reading comprehension?

My reading class participated in a Reader's Theater of "Henny Penny". They read and read and read the play over and over and over. Then I decided to have them create a puppet for their character. The kids loved making their puppets.

Then the time came to read the play to me with out their puppets and then again with their puppets. I took note of the students' fluency as they read.

Do you think the puppets had an impact on the student's fluency?