As our students move forward in Social Studies, they have started their unit on World War II. To better understand events that led to the cause of WWII, Mrs. Hamm has began training our students on how to use chopsticks. Each student has been asked to use these chopsticks at lunch to eat “finger foods”….

Today we continued our use of the Foss application that be began yesterday. As with any assignment, you have students that finish their lesson way before others. In an effort to eliminate down time and the question “Mister, what do I do now???” today I put my kids to work. After each student finished their…

Hey how about that! Tie Tuesday fell on St. Patty’s Day (SPD) this year. If there is one thing to learn about ties and SPD, its that it is very hard to find SPD ties in department stores. I spent two hours looking for a shamrock, leprechaun, or any type of insignia that resembled SPD…..nothing….

Today in class we were able to utilize two different types of technology in our classroom. One being the note application provided by Ning. The second is a interactive multimedia application from Foss. Foss is a site for the inquiry-based FOSS science curriculum which we use in our class. We used this application to help…

Strike up the horns! Our sixth graders recently concluded their social studies unit on medieval studies. To help put a nice bow on this unit, our own Mrs. Hamm contacted some Norsemen reenactors from St. Louis, MO and Oklahoma City, OK to speak perform a demonstration for 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. Norsemen…

After our debate Wednesday, I held a very impromptu and informal debate in our classroom without an audience. I knew my students had become a little nervous from speaking in front of a crowd, so I allowed them to have another chance to argue with each other. For this debate, I selected a random topic…

Yesterday in science, we shifted gears as we move away from aquatic life forms and begin to look at the cell. To start this unit off, we took a look at our own cells. When we first started this investigation, students were not told we were looking for cells, just that we were looking for…

Finally the day has come! Today marked our first semi-formal classroom debate. My homeroom students were given a topic of school uniforms. We did have a audience for this debate, we invited Mrs. Polzer’s class (3rd grade) to listen in on our debate. I will say that we did not react well to the “live…

As we prepare for our debate (that has been moved to tomorrow morning), today we begin to finalize our thoughts about our arguments. In preparation today, students were asked to practice their arguments for tomorrow, below are a couple of short videos from my students. This will give you a little bit of a taste…

A couple of months ago we set the stage for today’s lesson. Today we will be looking at our mini-pods that we created all the way back in January. The students were given their mini-pods and asked to go on a “safari” to see what different types of organisms were alive in their pods. Students…