The Great Adventure

In our quest to become outstanding readers, writers, and thinkers, we challenged ourselves to each read at least 40 books this year, about a book a week.  As with any big goal, it is helpful to break it up into small pieces.  Right before Christmas break, we paused to celebrate that everyone in our class had passed 10 books so far.

We had a Cricket in Times Square friendship party, with Chinese food, chopsticks, and orange soda, just like the friends in the book.  We followed with a craft time together.

Our class is full of amazing readers!

Here are our first QuadBlogging partners introducing themselves:

Hello from one of your QuadBlogging partners in the UK!

We are the Saplings from braishfield Primary school near Romsey in the South of England.

We use our first names only on our blog, and we have one big blog for our entire class of 28 pupils. We are aged 7,8 and 9 years which is Year 3 and 4 in the UK. We are a small school with 4 classes.

At playtime (recess) we like to play football, tag, skipping, pretending, hulahoops, basketball, rugby, netball, tennis. We’d love to hear about some of your games! What’s Gaga?

Braishfield is a village in the countryside, its popular for farming but we don’t have mountains or snow!

Common animals near us are cows, horses, pheasants, sheep, pigs, peacocks, garden birds, owls, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, badgers, hedgehogs and deer. We were VERY excited to hear you have bears, chipmunks and moose. We had to Google chickadees!

We can’t wait to read your blog more. We have a challenge for you if you check our blog!

Saplings

Welcome to QuadBlogging!  We are matched up with three other classes from around the world, and each week we will focus on one group’s writing pieces.  Three weeks of reading and making quality comments are followed by one week of receiving comments on our writing from all of them!  We can’t wait to meet them, to read their work, and to hear what they think about our writing.

Friends make us better than we could ever be without them.

This is my tech friend, who is also a forever friend as well.

She is a model of the best when it comes to sharing and inspiring.  She transformed my technology life as my tech mentor, coming alongside me to model a new practice, then to assist me in trying on my own, and finally to problem solve with me as I worked independently on each new skill.  She peruses a constant flow of  books, blogs, and websites and passes on great ideas.   She knows how to sift through the zillions of tech applications available out there and focus on the ones with great possibilities for a particular group of students.  Just a few minutes with her energizes you to take on anything!

She has walked the whole blogging path with me over the last number of years.  I initially learned to blog from her as we worked together on one of her grant ideas.  We have explored many ways blogging can be used to promote writing enthusiasm among students.

One key problem has been persistent.  You need commenters to maintain the energy.  Having a global audience for their writing catches students on fire for writing, and I have had trouble consistently finding partner classes over the years.

My tech friend never gave up looking along with me, and over Christmas break she discovered it!  She sent me an e-mail with a link to  . . . . . . QuadBlogging!  Stay tuned as we put QuadBlogging into action and meet our new blogging friends from around the world.

So thank you, Friend.  I look forward to tackling the next tech challenge with your brain to keep me company.

The FLIP camera I won at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference arrived,

and we already have so many ideas!  Stay tuned . . .

On the day before vacation, we drew our praises to the Lord as we listened to the Christmas story from the Jesus Storybook Bible.

Every Christmas my niece Gloriana reminds me what it is to worship with the heart of a child. We have a collection of manger scenes, and the adults always set them up so neatly.

Ever since Gloriana was old enough to toddle about on her own, every time we turned around, all the manger scenes would be rearranged.

She still does it at eleven, and I hope she always does.  Every time I see these adoring circles, I pray that I will single-mindedly focus on my Savior with every breath I take for every day of my life.

As Lloyd-Jones says in the Jesus Storybook Bible, “They gazed in wonder at God’s Great Gift, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

Mary and Joseph named him Jesus, ‘Emmanuel’–which means ‘God has come to live with us.’

Because, of course, he had.”

My small town of Andover, NH, has the most wonderful local newspaper. The Andover Beacon started a new feature recently, “The Yankee Trader”, and I spotted a find!  Not only did I get to explore a new road in my town, meet some delightful neighbors I hadn’t yet met, see their raspberry field, and listen to the lively stream behind their welcoming New England home, but I snagged a bargain for our school.  Here is our new elementary school weather station!

Mr. Ralph very graciously agreed to puzzle out the instruction manual and do the installation before the snow piles up on the roof.

Mr. Ralph took us out with him so we could watch some of the installation.  My students are used to hearing, “Math is everywhere!”, and he explained some of the math and science involved.

After determining the dominant wind direction, he built an extension for the cupola so that the wind vane and anemometer can flow freely in the wind.

He installed a metal bar to hold the rain gauge so that we can reach it to clear the hole of debris from time to time.  It has a nifty self-emptying feature that we want to read more about.

Since it was only a day away from the shortest day of the year, he showed us how he used science to help him decide where to install the main instrument which includes the thermometer.  It cannot be in the direct sunlight, so since the sun is at its lowest arc in the sky right now, he used the shadow to help him determine a good location.

And now it is just about ready to use!  Thank you, Mr. Ralph, for your hard work and dedication to our learning.  And thanks to the Andover Beacon for matching us up with a Yankee bargain just right for our brain adventure.