Classroom Agenda

Summer Trip to D.C.

This summer I had the privilege of traveling as a Teacher Leader to Washington D.C. for People to People. There I met 210 student delegates from all over the United States for 8 days of adventure across D.C. The sites were amazing and now I think I will take the rest of the summer to recover from the adventures we had!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Books, Books, Books!

Well it's that time of year where I'm going to start asking parents for help!

First, if you happen to notice any HMS books lying around your house, please have your child bring them back to my classroom. We have 100's of books missing from the classroom library and many students who admit they have one, two, or possibly even six lying around at home!

Second, every Spring I ask parents and students if they have any donations they would like to make to our classroom library. As our financial woes increase, the chances of new books making their way into the classrooms become smaller and smaller. I have found that the most sought after books are those donated by fellow students. Sooooo, if you happen to have books lying around the house that your child has already read, refuses to read, or just anything you personally would like to donate, it would be most appreciated!

Thanks!

USS Midway

While in San Diego, my dad took me to his favorite place, the USS Midway, a retired naval carrier, the longest-serving U.S. Navy aircraft carrier of the 20th century--a 47 year odyssey that spanned the end of WWII and the liberation of Kuwait in 1991!
Located downtown in San Diego at Navy Pier, the Midway provides a dynamic and enriching experience "from boiler to bridge." It is said that a visit to Midway instills a greater appreciation for courage, freedom, and service to country, and that was certainly the case for me. It was such an incredible, amazing thing to be able to walk through, and gain understanding of our military. The entire time I was there, I kept saying, oh I wish I could bring my students here, oh my gosh I can think of ten kids right now that would love this more than anything in the world, oh I wish we lived closer!

Unfortunately, we don't; however, check out this site: www.midway.org/ and even better, if you have the chance to go to San Diego, visit this incredible piece of history!

Yep, that's me in the captain's chair!

Spring Break in San Diego

To celebrate the near end of my National Board Certification process, my parents bought me a plane ticket to visit them at their condo in Coronado, across the bay from San Diego, CA. Here are some pictures from my trip!

The view from Las Flores #410, they got the fountain running, heated pool behind it,


and the ocean just beyond-it's heaven!

Jodi Picoult-What an awesome author!

For our final assignment in 3rd/4th period Mele Mele, students wrote letters to Jodi Picoult, the author of My Sister's Keeper. I found an email for Mrs. Picoult and asked if there was an address that we could send our class letters to. Within an hour of sending my email, I received a response from Jodi Picoult herself-from her Blackberry no less! She provided me an address, but explained that she would prefer email, so we decided to type our class letters and sent them by email at 11:00 a.m. today. Tonight I came home exhausted from three full days of conferences and decided to take a look at my school email. Imagine my shock when I saw that my inbox was full of messages from Jodi Picoult. She had responded to each and every one of my students. What an amazing author and role model for these kids. Here is a woman who is one of the most successful talents of our time, and yet she is humble and kind enough to recognize what a difference it could make to a child to receive word from someone of her stature. I can't wait to give my students the copy of their letter with her response, this has been such an awesome faith renewing experience reading her book and watching their engagement, and I am so grateful that I came across this author and this particular story!

In Ula Ula, we have just finished reading a wonderful novel called Stargirl. Stargirl is a great book by Jerry Spinelli that looks at society and ponders, "What would the world be like if everyone looked and acted the same?" In the novel, we meet a phenomenally free-spirited girl who calls herself "Stargirl." Stargirl teaches us about the dangers of conformity and how sometimes we just need to be true to ourselves! From this novel we also learned the benefits of doing things for others, Random Acts of Kindness. I encouraged students to create service projects to spread that kindness throughout the halls of HMS and furthermore to our entire community. Please see the Ula Ula link to discover the projects this class chose to complete (it will be updated at some point this week, it's conference week so I don't get to see them often enough!)

My Sister's Keeper

A few months ago I was trying to find a book that would interest my wide variety of diverse students in our community of learners. I spoke to a 6th grade teacher from Grandview Middle School and she told me how several teachers there were reading an edited version of Jodi Picoult's famous novel, "My Sister's Keeper." Though an adult book, the characters are richly developed and the plot unfathomable, and upon reading it cover to cover, I knew instantly that this story would captivate my learners like no other book had. So I took out my sticky notes and covered the pages not critical to the meaning of the story and away we went on this 424 page beast. Immediately the response to the novel was unlike anything I'd seen this year. Kids begged to hear more and held insightful, wonderful academic discussion about the characters and plot. Now we are finished with this story that is said to have, "one of the most shocking endings of recent novels." My students were left wanting more and fortunately for them, they'll have it in a movie version due out this summer. Until then we are left with one additional assignment, a letter they are writing to the author herself, Jodi Picoult. I will post many of their letters on the Mele Mele and Oma Oma links so check them out and see how advanced our students can be when they find a topic that truly engages and captivates their attention.

Recap of Last Two Months...

In Mrs.Walker's classroom everyone is typing a report on their favorite assignment from the past two months. Students are explaining the Dragon project, Parent project, Theme Message in the bottle and the Goldilock's project. Some students are adding surveys to their articles. There are different point's of view on this assignment which will make the reading VERY interesting. So enjoy this recap of the previous assignments we have been learning in Language Arts and Literature.

Sincerely,
Tyler,Trevor, Bailey, and Adrian.

Theme Message in a Bottle

Theme Message in a Bottle
On January 30th, a normal Friday in Mrs.Walkers class, we learned about theme message in a bottle. This project took from January 30th to February 4th in the year of 2009. In this project we learned how to read a story and find its theme statement and learned how to write about the characters and their different view points. We also could take two different stories and put them together. The two stories that we used werem "The Power of the Powerless" and "Mother and Daughter." Mrs.Walker said that she chose these two stories because she " thought that these two stories had connections that we could connect with. Particularly because bothe featured elements about families." Mrs.Walker said that she liked listening to the letters and she "thought the kids did a great job being creative."

After this project was due we interviewed the whole class for their opinion on the theme message in a bottle. 22 out of 25 students that did the project said that they liked it. In the class 18 out of 25 said that if they were to do the this project again next year they would do better than this year. 6 out of 25 students said that they would do the same than this year on the project. 0 out of 25 said that they would do worse on the project.

Even though the main reason for this project was to learn how to read a story and be able to know the theme statement(s) and know the different viewpoints of the characters or learning how to connect two different stories, many kids learned a variety of different things from this project. Taylor said she "learned more about theme statements while being creative." Kenzie said that she learned "that every story has a theme statement." " I learned how to express my feelings through a characters view point," said Adrian.

Our group feels that this project has turned out a success for Mrs.Walker!