Mrs. Fessenden’s Fifth Grade

Today we had a great fine arts assembly.  What was your favorite instrument or part of the assembly?  Here is a link to Mr. Green’s website where you can read about all the instruments and hear samples.

http://www.toddgreen.com/

While I was busy in meetings at school yesterday I think some of you went to see the movie for City of Ember.  How was it?  Was the movie how you visualized the book?  How do the events in the movie compare to the events in the book?  Don’t give away the ending to the kids who haven’t finished the book and to those who haven’t seen the movie yet.

http://www.jeanneduprau.com/books.shtml

How was your weekend?  Mine was busy and good.  Matthew was sick and since he’s only two that means he needs lots of attention.  My husband had a birthday so we had friends over for dinner and we played Pictionary and Sequence.  Sunday we had a big picnic thing at church.  Yesterday my husband and I went out to eat Mexican which is our favorite!  I cleaned a lot!  I hope your weekend was great.

Well, finally we got this working!   Remember don’t use your name, use your number.  What are you reading during independent reading time?  Tell us a little about your book and what you think of it so far. 

This may be an old way to do things, but I would greatly appreciate it if you would do the wish and star for this week’s class.  What do you wish we had done?  What was something you learned or what aha moment did you have?  I’ve greatly enjoyed this week and hope that you have too.

How is it going?  Do you have questions about your portfolio project?  Do you have other projects you would like to try while we’re in class together before you try them with your students?  Hopefully you feel a little more comfortable with blogging and with using Voicethread (even with the glitch).  Another thing we could do is create a podcast.  Let me know where you are with your portfolio and how much time you need for it tomorrow.  If you’re pretty far along, then tomorrow we can do some more fun hands-on experiences!

It seems like today everyone is relaxing just a little about the portfolio. It isn’t as overwhelming once you get started and understand the whole thing. What goals do you have for using technology in your classroom next year? Will you be able to use any of the ideas from this class? What things would you like to learn that involve technology?

Technology can be an overwhelming topic.  It seems the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.  To make matter even more complicated, technology changes at a rapid rate.  What do you expect to learn from this course?  What obstacles to you face as you implement technology in your classroom?

Did you feel the earthquake?  I did not.  I must have been sleeping like a log.  This morning when Son #1 went to feed the dog the neighbor told him about it and we read about it on the Internet.  You can read about it on local news here: http://www.wgem.com/News/index.php?ID=23764Do you know what causes earthquakes?   Post what you know about earthquakes.