The Winners - Cinquain Poetry

My 5th graders wrote cinquain poems today. Here are two that stood out! These students followed directions, were thoughtful in their writing and worked diligently to finish in the alotted time frame.

Cassie's poem

Victor
feisty, playful
eating, playing, sleeping
- a special cat that's always there
friend

Jordan's poem

Dragons
enormous, strong
flying, fire-breathing, eating
- a creature that never was
snake

Cinquain Poem: pronounced "cin-kain"- a diamond-shaped poem with 5 lines
Directions for writing a cinquain poem can be found at: Spot Those Turns

Consumer Choices Have Consequences

“Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles.”

~David Suzuki
(Canadian environmentalist, scientist and broadcaster)

______________________________________________________

Assignment for middle school students:
Document requirements: Vedana, 12 pts, spacing 1.5, black or dark blue.
Standard heading (name, grade, date, TKC) as required by school

• 6th - What are examples of "consumer choices"? Give 1 example of how our lifestyle choices affect us in each of Suzuki's catagories.

• 7th - Find background information on David Suzuki via approved search links listed below. Describe David Suzuki and be sure to include answers to the following questions:

1. What are some of David Suzuki's accomplishments?
2. Where was he born and where does he live now?
3. How old is he?
4. What is his educational background?
5. What are his passions? What are his concerns?
   
6. Describe his "Nature Challenge"
7. What are consumer choices? Give examples.
8. What does this have to do with being Catholic? (hints: Catholics on the Environment)
   

1. http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
2. David Suzuki (Time Magazine & CNN)
3. David Suzuki (cbc.ca)
4. David Suzuki Tree Hugger
5. Museum of Broadcast Communication

• 8th
  

• Give examples of how our lifestyle choices affect us in each of Suzuki's catagories.

• Find background information on David Suzuki via approved search links listed below. Describe David Suzuki and be sure to include answers to the following questions:

1. What are some of David Suzuki's accomplishments?
2. Where was he born and where does he live now?
3. How old is he?
4. What is his educational background?
5. What are his passions? What are his concerns?
   
6. Describe his "Nature Challenge"
7. What are consumer choices? Give examples.

1. http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
2. David Suzuki (Time Magazine & CNN)
3. David Suzuki (cbc.ca)
4. David Suzuki Tree Hugger
5. Museum of Broadcast Communication
   

2 part EXTRA CREDIT for 6th, 7th and 8th: Read the following quote
(1) describe how is David Susuki's philosophy is different from Christianity.

"Native people refer to the Earth as our mother and tell us we are made of the four sacred elements: earth, air, fire and water. On reflection, I realized that they are absolutely right and that science corroborates their insights. We are created by the air, water, earth and sunlight." (from an interview with American Scientist Online)

(2) Can people with different philosophies and religions work together towards a common cause? Why or why not?

The Moral to the Story is. . . .

This picture tells a story.

These men have been working hard. They have just finished setting those black steel posts into concrete to prevent drivers from pulling up next to the building. It looks like they are cleaning up and getting ready to go home. What's wrong with this picture?

Our 2nd grade girls class wrote a “moral to the (picture) story”!

"Be careful with what you are doing and THINK BEFORE YOU WORK!"

Technology Class - Skills to Last a Lifetime!

Our teacher at FTCM told us, "90% of education is knowing where to find it."

Knowing how to utilize technology adds speed and accuracy to "finding it"!

I LOVE TEACHING TECHNOLOGY!

Why Integrate Technology into the Classroom?

I believe the #1 reason to integrate technology into the classroom is to help students become good researchers.

Research is an extremely important reason to use the Internet in education.

Students have a wealth of information open to them. Often, when they are researching obscure topics, school libraries do not have the needed books and magazines. The Internet helps solve this problem.

Part of my job is to help students determine whether their information is from a reliable source. This is also an important lesson for them to learn for research in college and beyond.

The possibilities for assessment and sharing of research on the Internet are endless, many of them involving other forms of technology like

• Power Point presentations
• video presentations or
• publishing research on class websites.
  

Other ways we assess and share information include

• essays
• debates
• panel discussions
• role play and
  
• through presentations in front of class.

A 2nd reason to incorporate Technology into the classroom is to

• teach students to create a website AND to
  
• utilize student and teacher created websites
  

Integrating technology gets exciting and creative when students are able to build websites. They can also plug into school or teacher websites that are created with their curriculum in mind.

We have begun gathering work from students and will publish it in our website in 2008.

Paper Box - Caja de Papel

How to Make a Paper Box - gotta love it!

Safe Blogs Used Successfully in Schools!

When sixth-grade teacher Rachel Yurk created a blog for her classroom this year, she began the online learning experiment with a simple, engaging question: "What's your favorite book and why?"
By that night, Yurk's e-mail had exploded with about 200 messages - each one notifying her that another comment had been posted to the online discussion.
Safely nested in Virtual Office, a secure system, Yurk's classroom blog engages students in a common discussion tool without exposing them to uncensored activity in the real-world blogosphere.
"Blogs, or online discussions have struggled to gain acceptance in mainstream K-12 education." said David Warlick, a North Carolina public speaker and author who's working on the second edition of "Classroom Blogging: A Teacher's Guide to the Blogosphere."
But new educational software, such as Virtual Office or Moodle protects students by letting them "publish" their writing within a secure server where teachers can monitor the comments.
Student Kristin Hesselbach, 11, said she finds the blogs "more helpful" than talking in class because "you can hear more than one person's opinion on a question or conversation.
What teachers are saying:

• "It's a nice chance for everyone to see what kids do when they have the ability to become published."
  
• "The idea of students being accountable for what they write, and for that information to be instantaneously published, is more of what the real world is doing today."


• "The students are more willing to talk about things, and they can type so fast!"


• "Communication via our computers is the way of the world now. Students know that and respond to it."

Cory Peppler, an English teacher at New Berlin's Eisenhower High School, maintains a class site for the juniors in his advanced placement language class. You have to remember, K-12 education is aways slower to incorporate these new technologies than the business world.

original article by: ERIN RICHARDS edited by: Peggy Cortez