November 14-18

This week was an interesting week, to say the least. I have a student who has a strange affinity for plastic spoons. This student has been stealing spoons from the cafeteria and has been drawing faces on them to create a colony of "super spoons". Thursday was the most interesting day. This same student used two spoons, drew eyes on them, bent the handles, and held the spoons to his eyes with his eyelids to make it look like he was wearing glasses. He claimed that he was "blind" and could not do his work because he couldn't see his work. Like I said, interesting week. This is also the week before Thanksgiving break, so I'm telling myself this is why my students have been acting stranger than usual. Bring on the turkey!

November 7-10

This was a very short week, but an awesome one. The students were introduced to the computer program Starlogo and began manipulating the foodweb within this program. The students, at first, were very concerned with how to use the program and were getting frustrated with it, but soon began to see that this seemingly complex program was actually very logical if you broke down each part into small steps. Wednesday, my mentor teacher and I got some very exciting equipment in the mail. We recieved waders, and probes for the stream testing we do on Saturdays with a group of interested students. On our planning period, my mentor teacher and I decided to open the packages we recieved and try out, well play, wth the new equipment. We both put on the waders and showed them off for the rest of the school. The science Edline page now has a picture of me and my mentor teacher wearing the waders. It was a good day. We also took a group of kids to the stream to try out the new equipment. They were excited to use the new probes and waders to test the stream. We collected a variety of data which we will analyze later in the school year.

October 31-November 4

This week, we finished the roller coaster projects and each student got to present their finished product. We had guest judges come into the classroom (other teachers and pre-service teachers) to judge the roller coasters. Each group was given five marbles to test in which to test their roller coasters. If the marbles made it to the end of the track three out of five times, it was considered "functional". We had the guest judges vote on their favorite roller coaster based on functionality and the students also got to vote on their favorite roller coaster in each class period. The two winning roller coasters from each class period are now being displaying in the media center. The students were so excited that they were going to get to show off their roller coasters to anyone who walks into the media center. At the end of this week, we had a benefit spaghetti dinner for the Watson family. The school was a mad house (in a good way) with so many people coming and going, trying to get their spaghetti to support the Watsons. The school raised over $30,000. What an amazing accomplishment! It was a good week to be a Suncrest Seal.