Your band of the week is The White Stripes
The White Stripes are an American rock duo, formed in 1997 in Detroit, Michigan. The group consists of songwriter Jack White (vocals, guitar, piano, and once bass) and Meg White (drums and occasional vocals).
After releasing several singles and three albums within the Detroit independent music underground, The White Stripes rose to prominence in 2002, as part of the garage rock revival scene. Their successful albums White Blood Cells and Elephant drew them attention from a large variety of media outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom. The White Stripes use a low-fidelity, do-it-yourself approach to writing and recording. Their music features a melding of punk and blues influences and a raw simplicity of composition, arrangement, and performance.
The White Stripes’ discography consists of six studio albums, two extended plays (EP), one concert film, 26 singles and fourteen music videos. The band has sold approximately 12 million albums worldwide, two million in the US alone, and their latest three albums have each won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. You can check out their song “Fell in Love With a Girl” below.
Mr. McClung
Lesson One – Groundhog Day
Well it’s official…Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and according to folklore we are in for 6 more long weeks of winter. Yay! Earlier this week Phil, the groundhog, saw his shadow and by some weird turn of fate this fat groundhog in Pennsylvania has determined that we are not quite done with winter. So, bundle up and get ready.
Lesson Two – Tie Tuesday Goes Worldwide
Mr. Lamshed has done it…he has officially taken our little personal Tie Tuesday holiday worldwide. Mr. Lamshed, our friend in Australia, has made it a goal this school year to incorporate Tie Tuesday into his weekly activities with his year 6/7 boys. I am so excited that the has decided to join us in this weekly holiday, but there is a small problem…as you can see from the pictures above, they are beating us at our own game.
As our school year continues to drag along, we have slowly gotten out of the habit of participating in Tie Tuesday. So I’m going to take this opportunity to challenge MY students to step their game up and become more involved in Tie Tuesday. So with that said, we need to take care of business and not let the Aussies beat us at our own game.
Lesson Three – Speak Up
Recently my students learned the various levels of government representation from the city level all the way up to the Senate. We discussed how these levels are there to basically represent us at the different levels, and a part of representing the people means that you need to listen to the people…and we need to speak up. My students practiced their right to speak up by writing a letter to a representative at either the city, state, or national level. These letters were written so that my students could voice their opinions about things they would like to see changed. The letter below is from one of my students writing to the Mayor of Fayetteville.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Lionel Jordan
Mayor, Fayetteville, Arkansas
1600 West Arrowhead Street
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
Dear Lionel Jordan,
Hello, my name is Andrew , and I am a 14 year old citizen of Fayetteville, Arkansas. I was born in Fayetteville, and I have lived here all my life. I could never imagine living anywhere besides Fayetteville. However, Fayetteville may be a great city, that doesn’t make it a perfect city by any means. And there is one thing about our city that drives me crazy more than anything.
There is absolutely nothing to do in Fayetteville. I am a sports fan, and there are Razorback games to go to every now and then, but that’s only IF you have tickets, and only IF its the proper season and what not. The Razorback games don’t supply enough things to do for everyone in the city too. There really isn’t anything else to do in the city though. Fayetteville can get boring extremely easily. There should be more things to do in this city, because if that were to happen, then there is no telling how great Fayetteville would be! If we were to get something along the lines of an Amusement Park, or a Water Park, this city would be the best! And not even like a top of the line Six Flags, but just something fun and something else to do would make the city amazing!
Fayetteville is one of the most amazing places I have ever been to and could ever dream of. But there needs to be more to do. This town can get old and become boring extrememly quick. I would greatly enjoy it if our city were to change in a positive way of things to do in this town.
Andrew
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Mr. McClung
Students, the Worldle above contains all the vocabulary words that we have covered to this point in our studies of electricity.
Mr. McClung
Series circuits explained
Today my students took a further look at circuits. We focused on two different types of circuits, series and parallel. Today we discussed how these two circuits are built then my students spent sometime constructing their own circuits. The video above is from one of my students explaining a series circuit.
Parallel circuits explained
We also spent some time constructing the more complex parallel circuit. The video above is one of my students explaining a parallel circuit and the advantages of using one versus using a series circuit.
During our circuit practice, I also introduced my students to switches in a electrical circuit. Switches are used to cause a brake in an electric circuit…as you can in the picture above, the switch is in the up position meaning that the circuit is broken. Because the circuit is broken, the electrical current stops at the switch meaning that the light will not light up.
The picture above shows the switch in the down position. Because it is in the down position the electrical current is able to pass through the continuous path that has been created, thus making the bulb light up. Tomorrow we will continue to build circuits and will take a short assessment.
Mr. McClung
As we continue to talk about electrical currents, today we held a class lab to demonstrate the affects diameter and length of an electrical wire have on a current. To demonstrate this we used a balloon to simulate our voltage source, our rubber tubing served as our conductor (wire), and the air inside the balloon represented our electrical current. Above is a short video from two of my students explaining how we used these materials and what we were testing in this lab exercise.
Mr. McClung
Find more videos like this on Mr. McClung’s Class
As I’ve stated several times on this blog, right now we are currently studying electricity in my science classes. It just so happens that another teacher in our building is also focusing on electricity and performing daily projects that mirror what we have been doing in science class. Right now they are constructing miniature electric motors and the video above is an explanation of how their motors work.
Mr. McClung
The Arctic Monkeys are your band of the week.
Arctic Monkeys are an English alternative rock band from High Green, a suburb of Sheffield, England. Formed in 2002, the band currently consists of Alex Turner (lead vocals, guitar), Jamie Cook (guitar), Nick O’Malley (bass guitar, backing vocals), Matt Helders (drums, backing vocals) and John Ashton as a touring member (keyboard, guitar, backing vocals). Former members include Andy Nicholson (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Glyn Jones (lead vocals, guitar).
Their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, released in early 2006, became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history, surpassing Oasis’s Definitely Maybe and remains the fastest-selling debut album for a band in the UK. Since then the band have released two more albums: Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007) and Humbug (2009).
Arctic Monkeys are heralded as one of the first acts to come to the public attention via the Internet (fan-based sites rather than from the band), with commentators suggesting they represented the possibility of a change in the way in which new bands are promoted and marketed. You can check out their latest single Crying Lighting below.
Mr. McClung
Caden & Gaddy explaining our lab activity from today.
Today in class we continued our conversations about currents and creating circuits. Today we explored what type of materials serve as good conductors and what materials do serve as good insulators. Students were asked to create a circuit, much like the one from last week, then use one of three materials to continue the electrical circuit. The three materials used were a piece of wire, rubber tubing, and mechanical pencil led. The video above is a couple of my students explaining what exactly it was that we were testing.
As you may notice, these two boys have a hard time taking things serious…and trust me they took plenty of takes to make this one video. Above is one of those outtakes, enjoy.
Mr. McClung
The video above is a review discussion with my Arkansas history students about early Arkansans.
Mr. McClung
Lesson One – It’s Snowing In The Mid-West
You may be wondering why my lessons learned are being posted on Monday and not Friday as usual. Well I’ve been a little preoccupied…as you can see from the blurry picture above. With snow totals in Northwest Arkansas reaching anywhere from 5″ – 8″, we have not been in school since Thursday and will remain out of school until at least Tuesday. With our corner of the state receiving quite a bit of snow there has been not shortage sledding and snowmen. So, wherever you may be I hope your staying warm and dry…and for our students, enjoy it while it last!
Lesson Two – Air Mouse
Lesson two gets me excited just thinking out about it…
This week I was turned on to a new app by a fellow classmate and teacher…that app is Air Mouse. For those not aware, Air Mouse is an app that allows you to control the features of your computer (over a wireless network) from your iPhone or iPod. This app allows me to move about the classroom while having full range of motion of my mouse (even on extended screen display), control my iTunes library, and create hotkey buttons for all of my favorite programs on my computer.
This tool is a must have for teachers for the fact that it is a dialed down version of an interwrite pad and less complicated. All you need to have is your iPod/iPhone, wireless network, a quick download from the Air Mouse website, and about 5 minutes to set it up.
So, if your in the market for a wireless tool to improve your teaching mobility in the classroom or if you are interested in an interwirte pad but don’t have the funding, I highly recommend you check out this app.
Lesson Three – The Classroom Outside The Classroom
Quite sometime back, I posted about the implementation of using a class Facebook account with my sstudents. The reason for implementing this social networking tool was to improve student/teacher interaction and to be able to share more information to my sstudents through a medium that they use on a daily basis. So far this implementation has been working very well and I would like to share a success story of using Facebook.
One tool that has really worked out well for me is the chat feature. This feature allows me to talk with sstudents in real time and provide quick feedback to them. Recently we had a quiz in my science class. I logged on to my class Facebook page to update some information with I was instant messaged by one of my sstudents that was confused about a certain concept she was going to be quizzed on. I was able to talk to her in real time and help her better understand what was giving her probelms even though it had been hours since school let out.
By having this option to help a student via Facebook Chat, I was able to provide additional help to a student that otherwise taken her quiz without understanding what was being asked of her. Being able to share information with sstudents outside the classroom really expands the classroom and makes tudents think about learning and school that much more…and that’s always a good thing!
Mr. McClung
