The Last Lap

I’ve heard from friends who have run marathons that the last couple miles are the hardest. It certainly feels that way in school. In the last couple weeks summer vacation seems so close you can almost taste it. But we still keep on doing our best to try to not waste on second of school time.

Today we started out the day in Tech Center. We had not been there for at least a month because of the play and the Tech Center. Mr. Riko had the students finish and publish a few projects and reminded them of all the neat things they can do over the summer on the Computerwise Kids website. Returning to the classroom, we read and discussed the final story in the Treasures anthology about Benjamin Franklin. 

After recess, we turned out attention to Science. The students were given the challenge of creating a circuit, including a switch, the could both light a bulb and run a motor. The groups tried hard, and most figured out that they needed an extra d-cell to make this happen. 

One hyper achieving group even figured out a way to light two bulbs as well as run a motor. Of course, this required an additional d-cell. 

After lunch we reviewed a bit about ratio and dividing decimals. These are late fifth grade skills, but most of our students have them down cold already. After a bit of physical education, we had our final session with our reading buddies from room 2. 

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 1-7 ten times each and do a sentence for each one. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Make a chart of ten problems and Franklin’s solutions for them. (4) Do the milage and map activity sheet. (5) Do the Connect Main Ideas section only on page 352 of the Social Studies book. (6) Do the Ratio paper. (7) Do the Dividing Decimals worksheet. 

Two and a Half Days

Sigh. Once again your intrepid blogger has to make up for some lost time. First of all, I was happy to see that rooms 18 and 19 had the biggest and baddest bouncy at our 90th birthday party celebration last Saturday. Thanks for all your contributions!

Yesterday was a blur of three performances. Our students did an amazing job at their dress rehearsal. Mr. Pratt helped get them all psyched up and ready!

Our leads were wonderful.

Today we had another performance. Room 18 provided the leads today and they were absolutely fabulous. We worked on switches in electrical circuits - not sure why I forgot to take pictures of this - and also we took a math quiz and worked to peer revise our compositions on water conservation from last week. We finished the day today with our reading buddies. They were sharing their animal reports and other projects with us.

Homework: (1) Finish final drafts of the conservation paper. (2) Do the science questions and study sheet. 

Static

We’re pretty close to melting after four insanely hot days. Once again, we did try to get a little outdoor time early in the morning, but the rest of the day we stayed inside being grateful for air-conditioning. We didn’t have that when I first came to Third Street School, many years before these students were born.

Most of the day was pretty productive but not all that thrilling. We checked, corrected, and discussed homework. We read the last chapter of By the Great Horn Spoon!  The romantic ending - the butler Praiseworthy marries the semi-impoverished aristocrat Miss Arabella in California - had the students pretending to be appalled, but, of course, they really liked it. We discussed the causes of World War II and its effect on California. 

The most fun thing we did was to start exploring electricity by talking about static electricity. The hot dry weather was pretty good for showing how electrons can transfer from hair to a balloon and create a negative-to-positive attraction. 

Homework:  Students had a lot of time this afternoon to finish a bunch of assignments. Many are finished, but a few are still doing one or two. 

Two Hot Days

Yesterday was about nothing except play practice. We’re almost doing dress rehearsals right now, and we’re using props for all the performances. The backdrop is scrumptious and we can hardly wait to do our full performances next week.

Today, on the other hand, was mostly about orchestra. Tonight is the performance and we had a sort of dress rehearsal with Mr. Mason this afternoon.

We did some early morning PE as it is so brutally hot today, and we read another chapter of By the Great Horn Spoon! We did a Science activity with magnetism, and we read about the Great Depression in social studies. Along the way I tried to give them as much time as possible to get a good head start on homework. 

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 11-15 ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each word. (2) Do Great Horn Spoon 17 chapter 17 study sheet. (3) Do “Women’s Suffrage” activity paper. (4) Do “Great Depression” study questions. (5) Do the decimal division worksheet. (6) Do the problem solving worksheet. 

On Stage

Other than a trip to the library this morning, we spent most of the day today in the auditorium practicing the play. It’s getting pretty good, but there are a lot of rough edges to smooth out. That’s what we worked on today. I was generally pretty proud of the work our room nineteen students did - they’ve come a long way since we started this in January.

We finished the day in Dermoudy Court with a pep rally for our upcoming 90th Anniversary Party for the school. A big thanks to all the families who have contributed to our booth. I am confident we will have one of the very best there. We had some special guests for today. Fred - a famous YouTube guy - and Debby Ryan, one of the stars of Jessie, a Disney channel show. You should have heard the screaming. My ears are still ringing!

Homework:  Have a great weekend!

Autry Trip

It seemed for a while this morning that our field trip to the Autry Museum might not happen this morning. Our bus was supposed to be here before nine o’clock. When we called a little after that, the Transportation Branch admitted that they had neglected to schedule us for today. We were lucky that they managed to arrange something at the last moment, and we made it to the museum just in the nick of time. Once we were there the classes were divided into groups. Some went off to work on the Gold Rush and develop gold panning skills, while other classes - including the one I shadowed - explored the museum first. 

We had some really great docents. Here on of the docents is showing the students a Plains Native American dress and explaining how it was made. 

This resulted in a great discussion about the buffalo. Our guide called the bison the “Super Wal-Mart” of the prairie peoples. 

Students also learned more about the role of the stagecoach in the development of the west.

Of course, that mode of transportation depended on a good supply of horses and riders. The students were able to get a bit of the feeling of riding on a horse.

They saw exhibits that went over some of the key parts of a western town such as the saloon and the jail. They enjoyed their time in jail!

The other part of the trip was learning about the Gold Rush and learning to pan for gold. We had one of the museum’s resident teachers to guide us through this part and she was great! So were our students who answered every question correctly! They rocked and I was so proud of them. 

At our “sluice” we were joined by Ruben, another one of the teachers. He explained the finer points of panning as if he were old Quartz Jackson himself!

Our students picked it up pretty quickly and were finding nuggets of “gold" in no time. 

Of course parents, before you decide you can retire early, it was really only pyrite. But it was still fun to find those nice glittering chunks. they got to keep the two biggest pieces. 

After this we had lunch and then boarded the bus for home.

Homework:  Some students may need to finish the essay they wrote when we returned to school. Most are already finished with it. 

Breaking the Force

It’s been just crazy with all our preparations for Annie in the last couple weeks (not to mention testing and other nonsense like that), so it’s been hard to keep up with poor old blog. I’ll try to do better….

Today we did one of my favorite Science demonstrations. It’s called “Break the Force”. The students were given a balance with a pole magnet on one side. On that side they put a magnet in the cup. On the other side they slowly put in big steel washers. They wanted to find out how many washers it would take before the two magnets separated, before the could “break the force” of magnetism.

After they did this the first time, they put in small plastic spacers between the two magnets to see how distance could weaken the force of magnetic attraction. They experimented by placing more and more spacers between the magnets and recording the results. 

After they had done the activity six times, they graphed their results.

The students concluded - quite correctly - that distance significantly weakens the force of magnetism. 

The rest of the day was spent doing a bit of this and a bit of that. We went over homework, we read and discussed another chapter of By the Great Horn Spoon! and we started reading about the Progressive Era in California history. We also learned about how to calculate balance in rectangular prisms. 

Homework:  (1) Do By the Great Horn Spoon chapter 16 study sheet. (2) Do the Hetch Hetchy response sheet. (3) Do Changing Times study guide. (4) Do Magnetism review paper. This will be a kind of “take home” test activity for them. (5) Do the Volume math papers. 

Too Darn Hot!

Well,we are trying to survive this miserable heat. I hope the rest of this summer isn’t like this. 

Speaking of survival, we also somehow survived the field test of the Smarter Balanced tests. Our class was fortunate enough to be able to take these new online assessments in the computer lab where not only did the workstations connect reasonable well to the server, but the students could actually read what was on the screen. The students who had to use the iPads were not so lucky. Another reason why buying iPads for students is a poor idea…. The test itself was not that bad. In many ways, it seemed frankly easier than the old CST test. 

Today was not that exciting a day. We spent a lot of time going over homework and reviewing for the social studies test. We went out to PE early in the morning, but the boys still had the usual number of arguments over the fine points of scoring. The students also read and discussed a chapter in By The Great Horn Spoon!

Probably the most interesting thing we did today was in Science where we started our unit on electricity and magnetism. Today the students checked out a variety of materials to determine what was magnetic and what was not.

We used this data to make some generalizations about magnetism. At first, the students decided that metals were magnetic. But they later decided that this could not be the case because the aluminum and the copper materials were not magnetic. So they came - pretty quickly - to the conclusion that it has to materials made of iron.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 16-20 ten times each and do the sentences in cursive as well. (2) Do pages 353, 356, and 357 in the Practice book. (3) Do the chapter 14 study sheet of By the Great Horn Spoon! (4) Do the crossword puzzle in the back of the Social Studies Weekly paper. (5) Do Views of Solids worksheet. This is a little preview from the fifth grade math book. (6) Do the Fraction Review for today. 

3 D

Welcome back! We started today by sharing our Spring Break experiences. Some of our students had a perfectly fabulous time. I’m deeply jealous of one trip to a resort in Mexico. Other students stayed home but still mostly enjoyed a few days off. For those of us who did not have the perfect spring breaks, we started by describing the one we wish we’d had in our journals. We shared these with each other and the class. After that, we read and discussed “The Rouge Out-Rogued,” chapter 10 of By the Great Horn Spoon! It was a fun chapter. 

After recess, we read about the growth of agriculture in the years after the advent of the transcontinental railroad and the creation by the dastardly Big Four of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Students were outraged by their treatment of the farmers at Mussel Slough. 

We are going to be starting a look at volume soon in math, so I wanted them to start looking at the world three dimensionally. So we did an art activity to help them do that. The students had to pick any object in the room and look at it from different angles. This student picked the clock and had fun trying to see it from the bottom.

After looking, they drew three views of the object. This student, for example, did a stapler from the side, the top, and the front. 

We will be starting our spring testing soon. We are technically having a “field test” this year with all new test materials and an online format for testing (not sure how well that will really work). Even though these scores will not be reported to families, we would like our students here to do as well as they possibly can. So we spent our last hour of the day doing an old CST math practice test as a review for it.

Homework:  (1) Do the chapter 10 study sheet for Horn Spoon. (2) Write five simple sentences and five compound sentences. This is a review - we will be starting to look at complex sentences tomorrow. (3) Do More What’s X? 1. (4) Do Exponents 1. 

Short Day, Short Post

It was pretty calm and focused for the last day before Spring Break! We checked, corrected, and discussed homework. We went to the library. We took math tests. We watched the last part of the American Experience film on the transcontinental railroad. We finished final drafts of our comparisons of Dolores Huerta and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Homework: None! Enjoy the break!

Humpty Dumpty

Today we had tested Humpty Dumpty inventions. Students from rooms 16, 18, and 19 participated. The students took an uncooked egg - still in the shell, of course - and put it inside some kind of protective “apparatus.” They could design their Humpty Dumpty any way that wanted as long as it was not too large. 

Mrs. Cha climbed up on a ladder and started dropping the Humpty Dumpties. 

We all waited breathlessly as each one fell to earth.

After all of them had fallen, the students began to open their apparatuses to see if the egg was still intact. There were big smiles if it didn’t break.

Sometimes even the egg seemed to be smiling.

There were some unusual things used to protect the egg. Sometimes borrowed footwear worked surprisingly well.

So did peanut butter, though taking the egg out was vaguely disgusting.

Of course, there were some disappointments when it turned out that Humpty Dumpty could not be put back together again.

The rest of the day was pretty ordinary. We corrected and discussed our homework, watched another part of the American Experience documentary on the Transcontinental Railroad, did a quick Science demonstration on acid rain, and talked about using logic to solve problems in math. 

Homework:  (1) Do pages 348 and 349 in the Practice book. (2) Do the railroad time table activity paper. (3) Read the section in the Science book on weathering and answer the questions on the study sheet. (4) Do Rational Numbers 4. (5) Do pages 460-463 in the math book. 

Remember, tomorrow is a MINIMUM DAY. Dismissal at 12:35. 

Breaking Up Rocks

Today was a pretty uneventful day for the students at Third Street. The arrival of the “ESL Police” from the downtown offices drove the adults a little nuts, but the students will happily unaware of all that drama.

Our most fun thing today was working on weathering rocks. We’ve been talking about the rock cycle and how different rocks can turn into other rocks. We also have talked about the importance of weathering here. Today we let the students experience it by putting some pieces of limestone in a plastic jar and shaking them as hard as we could.

It was noisy!

Afterwards the student emptied out the jars and looked at the residue with a hand lens.

Homework:  (1) Do pages 343 and 345 in the Practice book. (2) Do the By the Great Horn Spoon! study sheet for chapter 9. Also do the activity sheet on drawing the Lady Wilma and If I Found Gold. (3) Do Rational Numbers 3. (4) Do page 457-458 in the math book.  

Granite and Railroads

Our day started with some independent work from our Treasures book. It’s interesting for me as a teacher to discover just how much of this material they can master on their own! Maybe that is because it is easy; more likely we just have a lot of smart kids in room 19. So we went on to reading and discussing chapter 7 of by The Great Horn Spoon! 

After recess, we figured out what minerals make up granite. The students figured out that they could eliminate calcite as a possibility if they used the acid test - soaked it in vinegar and looked for evidence of bubbling. 

In History, we started our look at the great Transcontinental Railroad. The students learned not only about the making of the railroad, but also about how it tied into the civil war. Notice that none of the route even come close to the Confederacy.

And as always, they were disappointed to learn that the golden spike is now in a museum and not some place where they can dig it up and get rich quick!

Homework:  (1) Do pages 338-340 in the Practice book. (2) Do Great Horn Spoon chapter 7 study sheet. (3) Do "Linking East to West" study guide. Also do the crossword puzzle in the California history newspaper. (4) Do “Finding Combinations" on 452-453 of the math book. (5) Do the Ratio and Percentage sheet. 

The Egg Drop is Thursdays. This is NOT an optional activity. 

After the Festivities

Those of you who were able to make it to Open House last night saw not only some great regular work the students had done, but also saw a few outstanding Science Fair projects in our classroom. Congratulations to all our students who decided to participate:  every one of you did a great job.

Today was rather less exciting. We went to library as we usually do on Fridays, and Mrs. Denson read a bit to the students when they were finished picking out their own books. 

The rest of the day was mostly spent taking reading, spelling, and math tests, and, of course, also correcting and discussing them. The results are already on the grade book. 

In the afternoon, we had a little bit of time in the auditorium to work on Annie. The play is coming along quite well.

Homework:  Weirdly enough, none today. Enjoy your weekend. Hope to see many of you Sunday at CicLAvia. 

Open House Today

We started out this morning with a variety independent work time activities. The one the students liked the best was creating word searches of their own out of their spelling words. The ones they made were WAY HARDER than the ones I make for them. They exchanged them later in the morning and tried to solve. Of course, words written on the diagonal BACKWARDS were hard to find!

In Science, we practiced identifying minerals again. We are looking at the different minerals which make up granite. The students did a remarkably well in identifying feldspar, hornblende, and mica as well as figuring out which one was actually the granite.

I hope to see many of you at Open House this evening. Upper grade visitations are from 6:00 to 7:00.

Homework:  (1) Do the final What’s X practice sheet for the week. (2) Do Guided and Independent Practice on pages 444-445 in the math book as well as Test Prep on 438-439. The answer sheet has the wrong page numbers, alas. 

Getting Ready

There’s sooo much stuff to do to get ready for Open House. I sure wish I had a week more. So, let me assure you that we did some good solid work today, and just list today’s homework.

Homework:  (1) Do the By the Great Horn Spoon! study questions. (2) Do the “Butler” page. “Latitude and Longitude” is optional. (3) Do the “New Links to the East” comprehension sheet. (4) Do the Morse Code activity paper. (5) Do “What’s X?”. (6) Do “Rotational Symmetry” on 442-443 of the math book. 

Quick Post

Homework: (1) Write sentences using the homophone pairs. (2) Read "In Search of Gold," pages 706-707. (3) Do pages 326-328 in the Practice book. (4) Do What's X?" (5) Do 440-441 in the math book.

LACMA

Today was our field trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We walked there as did the students from room 16. It is not altogether easy walking 60 students and 10 or so adults two miles safely, but our students and our parent docents did an admirable job of ensuring student safety. We are so lucky at Third Street that such amazing attractions as LACMA are within walking distance from our school. At my old school, the closest place of interest was the Farmer John plant. Needless to say, we never went there for field trips!

At the museum, the students were divided into seven groups and assigned to a docent. Each docent picked slightly different pieces from the permanent collection to show their students. I went with one group. We started out by looking at and discussing David Hockney’s Mulholland Drive on the Way to the Studio, one of the museum’s signature pieces. 

To contrast this modern piece with an ancient one, we looked as this Assyrian bas relief from the ancient city of Nimrud. The students were intrigued to learn that the little marks in the center are actually writing in the ancient Akkadian script. Surprisingly, they never asked why this rather masculine god was carrying a purse. Most years I hear somebody ask that. 

We went to take a look a very different portrait, this time the Pompeo Batoni’s Portrait of Sir Wyndham Knatchbull-Wyndham, a young English aristocrat just completing his Grand Tour. The guide explained this portraits like these were kind of like pictures they might take to help remember a trip to Disneyland and helped them see the significant details in it. 

We looked a very different port air, Amadeo Modigliani’s Woman of the People. The students discussed why the artist might have drawn her eyes in such a peculiar way and made her chapped hands so prominent. 

We looked at a kind of un-portrait, Rene Magritte’s The Liberator. 

Lunch, of course, is a highlight of the day. 

We returned back to school where we had some time for PE, a chapter from By the Great Horn Spoon! and a little study hall so they would have less homework tonight.

Homework:  (1) Read pages 698-701 in the Treasures book. Copy and answer the questions on page 701. There will be a quiz on this story and “Leah’s Pony.” (2) Do "Identifying Minerals" questions. (3) Do the social studies review questions. There will also be a test over chapter 6 in the History book on Friday. (4) Do the Factors review sheet.