Weekly Update 2/24/12 by Mick, Jasmine, Shane, Nicholas, and many others

In LA we started our literature circle groups today. We are reading five different books in groups and responding to them on Edmodo.  We can post like on Facebook, except it's for school.  We can also ask our group questions as we're reading.  Our books are all historical fiction set in the places we are studying this year in world history.  

 The Kite Rider group (China).  "I like the setting in China."  ~Shane

The Ties that Bind, Ties that Break group (China).  "I like how it's a flashback." ~James

 The Goddess of Yesterday group (Greece).  

"It uses a great way to tell the story through flashbacks." ~Elton

"I like the setting in Ancient Greece."  ~Stephen

The Golden Goblet group (Egypt).

"We like the mystery--and the name Gebu."~Mick and Josh

The Crispin group (Medieval England). 

"So far we like the plot and details of the story.  It caught our attention right away."~Nicholas

 Ties that Bind, Ties that Break group 2, minus CiCi (China).

"I like how the Chinese words are translated into English." ~Jasmine

 Catherine, Called Birdy group (Medieval England).

"I liked how Catherine always says things like 'Corpus Bones' when she's angry." ~Morgan

Crispin, group 2 (Medieval England).

"I found it interesting how the main character's mom got paid very little." ~Anna

In music we are using hand motions to warm up our voices.


Elton and Nicholas got medals for a violin contest.  They both got first place.  
Congratulations to our talented musicians!

Weekly Update 2/16/12 by Kyle, James, David P., Andrew, and CiCi

In social studies we shared our Egypt projects.  Instead of a test at the end of our unit, we chose a topic from a list of ideas or structures or beliefs in Egypt, did research, and presented to the class.  We got to choose how to share our research.  Some of us made movies, podcasts, or animated keynotes, and some of us made models or wrote postcards or scrolls.

Max with Tutankhamun's tomb.
 Max added lots of jewels and made detailed statues for his project.

 Mili made a mummy with clay canopic jars for her project.

Hannah made a 3D model of the Sphinx. It looked very realistic and interesting. 

We were all digging for treasure in Anna's project, the Great Pyramid of Giza!

Josh made a sculpture of a sphinx!

Samson and his awesome news article about the Rosetta Stone.

    Lucas made a scarab out of Model Magic and gold paint and created a googledoc presentation, too!

Matthew made a very detailed clay pyramid.  We put it near the heating vents and it started cracking, but we thought that made it look even more realistic!

Our book orders came in for our "Bring on the Books" Community Project!  We will soon be delivering them to Patton School and to the Reading Tree, a charity that provides books to needy children.

These are Patton's books.  We ordered some of our very favorites, including The Hunger Games trilogy, the Lightning Thief series,  Smile,  and Wonderstruck.

These are our donations for The Reading Tree.  Some of the best books we ordered were the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, some Junie B. Jones books, A Light in the Attic, and a Greek mythology book.

We decided that two of the books we ordered were too mature for elementary kids, so we donated them to our LMC at Thomas.  Here Lauren and Katherine are giving Behemoth and Goliath to Mr. Hillmer.

For Valentine's Day cards we took special pictures using perspective to make it look like we were handing lollipops to our parents.   Then we wrote messages and decorated our cards.

Happy Valentine's Day from Nicholas

Mili

Jake

Sammi
 

David

Shane

Kevin

 Katherine

Cici

Max

and Samson.

We have been very busy in music, creating music in Garageband for our Kraft commercials and exploring rhythm patterns by playing boomwhackers and drums.  Check back soon for the winning Kraft commercials for each product as voted on by our class.

Nick (in green) and Lucas (in black) working on their garageband music for their KRAFT commercials.

Playing with "BOOMwhackers" during music class

Playing different drum patterns in music class.

Weekly Update 2/10/12 by Mick, David R, Lauren, and Katherine

This week's Community Project update is from the "Bring on the Books" group.  Last Friday, we had our Activity Night with proceeds going toward buying books for Patton's library and the charity, Reading Tree, which donates books to needy kids. We raised $171 dollars!!  We ordered lots of books and will distribute them as soon as they arrive.  

We want to thank all of the people who helped us, including Mrs. Goumas, Dr. Olson, and Mrs. Melamed at Patton; Mrs. Bingaman, Mr. Aho, Mrs. Ziegenfuss at Thomas, and all our classmates and parents who came to help.

This is us planning out the activity night with the awesome Mrs. Goumas and The Official
Principal of Patton, Dr. Olson!

This is also a picture of us planning on the day before the activity night
so that we made sure that we got the OK on everything.

This is Mick and David holding up the cool signs we made for the gym and movie.

This is Katherine, Lauren and Hannah making a sign.

This is Katherine, Lauren, Anna, Hannah, and David counting the money.

This is another picture of counting money.

                                                   Two boys who came to the Activity Night.

Katherine and Hannah counting more money.

Anna, Lauren, Hannah, Katherine, Mick and David.

The boys playing basketball.

Here we are announcing the raffle prize winners.

Field Trip!!!  On Thursday, Feb. 2, we walked to the Wheeling Township Food Pantry to deliver 628 items collected by our two Food Pantry community groups.  Mrs. Bingaman drove over with the boxes and we unloaded them and brought them into the pantry.  Then we got a tour of the pantry and saw the new, bigger room being built.  Some interesting things we learned are that they're really low on shampoo and conditioner, that they go through food really quickly, that people can "shop" there like it's a grocery store, and that homeless people get special bags of food that are easy to open and eat.  

Some of us plan to volunteer at the pantry soon!

Sigma walking to the Wheeling Township Pantry.

Wow! Look at all the boxes!

 A few out of our many cans!

Listening to Maryann from the pantry explain how our visit would work.

Lots and lots of cans, and some empty shelves.

Us asking questions about the pantry and its clients.

Maryann  telling us about the pantry and about opportunities for us to volunteer there.

In LA we started our Informational and Expository Writing unit.  We are excited to be reading The Secret of the Yellow Death.  We have a lot of questions about it and are looking forward to learning the answers by reading the book and also by doing independent research. 

 Here are some questions we hope to answer:
How did yellow fever stop,  if it did?
How many people did it kill?
How did the bacteria spread, if it was spread by bacteria?
How did they cure it?
Is yellow fever still going on today?
Is this the same fever as in Fever 1793?
When did this happen?
Why is the eye on the book cover yellow?
Why do all of the scientists have mustaches? :)

In social studies we finished up our study of Ancient Egypt and are now moving on to Ancient India.  

Here are a few more of our skits about social classes in Ancient Egypt.

This is Josh, Kevin, and Mick acting out peasants working in the fields and chanting.
Stephen and Jake are pretending to be cows. :)

Jake, Nick and Stephen present what the artisans do for a living.

Sammi & Gina tell us about artisans' unique tools and materials, such as copper.

We are very proud of Andrew, who entered a Hunger Games writing contest with his own dystopian science fiction story titled "The Scavengers."  We wish Andrew good luck with this great story!

 

 In music class we have been working on GarageBand to put music to our Kraft commercials.  We are really excited about how our packaging and commercials have come out. 

Puppets by Gina, Anna and Cici.

In math we are working on fractions and decimals.  As part of our choice projects for this chapter, some students put on a play or a puppet show.  Here are three of our friends who explained how to convert fractions into decimals.