Top Ten

A friend of mine, Eric Langhorst has a podcast that he produces that is unbelievable. If you want to check it out, go to http://www.speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/ . Many of the ideas that I use in class, I have “borrowed” from him. I have been lucky enough to attend several technology conferences with Eric and many times I get more out of our conversations than I do from the sessions. Eric has been named the Missouri Teacher of the Year and I cannot think of anyone who is more deserving.

Recently on his website he talked about his top ten pictures from 2007. I thought this was a great idea. Anyone who knows me knows that I take a TON of pictures. (1500 in a week at Disneyworld, another 1200 in a short week for the space shuttle launch, 800 over two weeks of class in Colorado Springs with the majority of those being taken while scared to death going up Pikes Peak.) I thought it would be a cool idea to do a top ten pictures of 2007. Now I will say that I didn’t take all of these pictures. I will give credit where credit is due. Some were taken with my camera, just not by me. I may end up adding a couple others later just because it was SOOOO hard to narrow it to ten. Here they are.

Number 10
This picture was possibly taken in 2006 but it was really close to midnight. This one was actually taken by my wife at my cousin’s wedding. On the right is my dad, and on the left is my uncle Paul who has since passed away. Even in the last year of his life, he was one of the toughest guys I have ever known. He had the strongest hands of anyone I've ever met.

Number 9
This picture just makes me smile. I took this one using Steve’s camera. Steve is the guy in the picture. Steve has a great camera. While I was in Florida for the space shuttle launch, we had some time to go to the beach. I don’t swim so I became the official group photographer. I think this picture looks great, like a real surfing picture. I say a “real” surfing picture because the truth is that while they were really surfing, where this picture was taken they were close to shore and there was only about a foot of water. Number 8A

Okay, so I was having some technical difficulties in finding the picture I really wanted to use for number 8 so for now I've included this one (which is one that I wanted to include anyway but didn't know where). This is of my wife, brother, and sister-in-law. The part that I really like on this one is where it was taken. It was taken by my cousin at a creek near Jefferson City. Actually near my mom's hometown of Loose Creek (this might actually be Loose Creek). Anyway, when my brother and I were kids my dad would take us to this creek to skip rocks. I was way better than my brother.

Number 8
This picture was taken actually by nobody. While we were going up Pike’s Peak, we stopped at this beautiful valley (not really a valley but I’m not sure what else to call it, actually it was more like the top edge of a valley or at least we could see the valley below.) No one took this picture because we sat the camera up on a mini tripod. I love this picture because even though I’m smiling, I’m scared to death. The actual name of the place where this picture was taken was Devil’s Playground and it is the last stop before you get to the top of Pike’s Peak.

Number 7
This one was taken from the rehearsal dinner at my wedding. In it are my dad and brother, my cousins, Mr. Eltiste, my wife’s brother and cousin, and a couple of my other good friends. We had given everyone baseball bats as gifts for being in the wedding.

Number 6
The only thing I don’t like about this picture is that it is taken over a parking lot. What you want to look at are the clouds in the sky. They actually aren’t clouds. That is the trail from the Space Shuttle 4 or 5 hours after the launch. They were completely lit up at sunset. It took us a long time to get back to Cocoa Beach after the launch and we went to this little place on the beach to have dinner and as we were walking to the car we noticed the clouds, there hadn’t been another cloud in the sky all day long. It was an absolutely perfect way to end a great day. Number 5
This one was taken by the photographer for Zero G. I just love this picture because I think it pretty much sums up the microgravity flight.
Number 4
Okay, so I had to include a couple of Disney photos. I read that something like 4% of all pictures taken are taken at Disneyworld! I don’t doubt that, I definitely added my to that total. I actually don’t know the name of the person that took this one, it was a member fo the Dream Squad. As my wife and I walked into the park these two people came up to us and asked us if we were going to be riding one of the roller coasters. We said yes and they asked us which one. We told them Tower of Terror. The whole time I’m thinking, “sweet – we’re going to get front of the line passes” Boy was I wrong, they asked us to help open the park. We got to be the first ones into the park, had to say some lines for the opening ceremonies and got to ride in Walt Disney’s car to the front of the Tower of Terror. Then we were the only two in the car to ride it. Talk about amazing. This picture is fairly rare, notice that there is no one in the background. You never see that, there are always people in all of the pictures. Number 3
I took this one and it is one of my favorite pictures of all time. My wife, Sarah, latched onto this HUGE stuffed animal and started to give me those puppy dog eyes. It is a good thing that we flew to Florida because otherwise I’m pretty sure that Eeoyore would have been coming back to Liberty. Number 2
Nothing can ever come close to capturing the power and awe that you experience at a Space Shuttle launch, you truly have to be there. I love this picture, it is one of only 4 that I took during the launch. The first three just show little bits of smoke coming out and then I got this one.

Number 1
No explanation needed.

Internet Safety Night

Tonight is Manor Hill’s first ever internet safety night. I am really excited about this event, I think it is going to go really well. My only concern is how many people are going to show up. I know that other schools have had similar events and have had really low turnout. I think this is an incredibly important topic, one that a lot of parents are not aware of. If you were on the fence about coming, even if you have smaller kids, I would definitely encourage you to come. First let me say that there is going to be free babysitting for school age kids available. Second, we are going to be giving away a door prize to someone that comes tonight. Office Depot donated an MP3 player for us to give away. Finally, I am doing the first 45 minutes of the presentation and I frankly, scared myself with some of the information that I found. I like ot think of myself as a technologically savvy guy. I use technology extensively in my class and at home. My wife and I actually set up a wiki page so that we could keep track of shopping lists, recipes, etc. I was absolutely amazed at some of the things I learned while researching this presentation. I read three different books and looked at a bunch of different articles and web sites and every one of them presented something new. I am anticipating many gasps tonight when parents see what I have in the presentation. I have some acronyms that kids are using for text messaging that will blow some people away. I surveyed the entire 5th grade at Manor Hill about internet safety and the statistics are startling! Next, I have a mini presentation called “The Orange Penguin” that shows one scenario of what could happen online. Finally, I end the presentation with a list of hints for parents to help keep their kids safe. Many of them are common sense things but I am hoping that after the first part of the presentation they will really sink in. I told my class yesterday that don’t be surprised if their parents come home tomorrow night and want to talk.

The presentation tonight will end with Mrs. Green, our school librarian giving a talk about all of the really cool things that can be done online. She is going to show how to access some of the library resources, pay lunch accounts online and hopefully end the evening on a really positive note. If time permits, I also want to show a short (5 minute) video called “Shift Happens”. There are two versions of this video and I like the original better than the updated one. They both have basically the same information in them. It is basically statistics put to music but they are amazing, especially when you put them into the context of what our kids are up against in a global society. I don’t have a link to put below but if you search on youtube for shift happens, you will find it. Also, check out the link below to the Internet Safety Night web page I have set up that has the handouts and presentations that I will be using tonight.

Internet Safety Night Web Site

Post Number 100

This is officially my 100th post. I never dreamt way back over the summer that I would actually get to 100 posts. Not much to say today, other than thanks to anyone out there who is actually reading my ramblings. It seems like I have gotten a lot of great opportunities since I started writing this blog and I have really enjoyed sharing them. I know many days it is just about the normal stuff going on in Room 42. I hope that in the future I will have more interesting adventures to post on here. Nothing really big coming up yet, other than a few presentations that I am making. Next Tuesday is Manor Hill’s first Internet Safety Night. I am actually really excited about this and hope that we have a great turnout. We just found out today that we will have an MP3 player to give away that night to someone in attendance. I am also presenting a broadcast “how to” session at a technology conference in Lee’s Summit next month and probably will be doing the same presentation at our Empowering Excellence conference in February. KMH: Patriot News, the broadcast club that I sponsor was selected to go to Jefferson City at the end of January to present to the state legislators. And finally, I am presenting a microgravity class in march at a gifted student conference. As you can see, even though I don’t have any immediate plans to see a shuttle launch, or be weightless, it is already a busy 2008. Thanks again for reading!

Triangle Trade and Millionaire Project

I wanted to post a couple of pictures of the triangle trade lesson we did today. I don’t know that you can really tell what is going on. To illustrate the triangle trade I put pictures up to represent each of the countries involved (Africa, Colonies, Britain). Then I strung yarn across the room representing each of the trade routes. Then I hung signs and arrows on them telling the goods that were traded and the direction. The coolest part of this (besides having yarn strung all across the room) is that to illustrate what happens when one of them decided to not trade any more, I cut one of the strings. We then see that quickly the rest of the triangle collapses.

We also worked on the millionaire project today. I have put most of the information online. Click on the link above to go to the class web site and then click on Millionaire. This is where all of the information is housed. Ask your child what there theme is and how they think they are going to spend their million dollars.

Less Zombie Like

The kids were definitely less zombie like today. We were able to get a lot accomplished. We learned to use slide rules today to add and subtract fractions. This was the first of many steps to becoming proficient in addition and subtraction of fractions. Next up will be common denominators. I like the slide rule lesson, even though it can be confusing, because it really shows that we are putting the two pieces together to add. We will be using the slide rules later in the year to add and subtract positive and negative numbers. Today we also started working on another science experiment. This one involves lifting books to see how much force was used. We didn’t get to the experiment today because we spent our entire time planning the experiment. We had a little trouble with the fact that “hard” or “easy” aren’t measureable and we need to use terms like more force, or less force. Tomorrow we should get done with the planning and actually get to the experiment.

Zombies

I guess I should expect this a little bit but the kids were a little on the zombie side today. I’m always excited to start back and I had a work day on Friday of last week to get back into the swing of things, which helped. The biggest thing that we accomplished today was reviewing the expectations. I literally pulled out my list of procedures and expectations from the first day of school and went over them. I always like reviewing those when we start back. We also had a good discussion today about forces that effect movement, mainly gravity. We had a lot of fun figuring out how much we would weigh on different planets and the moon. Just think, Hope would only weigh a little over three pounds on Pluto (I know, not technically a planet but old habits die hard, and I have a letter from Jim Christy who discovered the moon of Pluto)

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a great break, ate a lot of good food, got some rest and is ready for a great 2008. I had an awesome break myself. I got to spend a lot of time with family, got caught up on some sleep, and did a lot of stuff around the house. I am totally recharged and ready to get started next week. We will be finishing up a few units when we start back as well as starting a few projects. The biggest project will be the millionaire project. There will be lots more information about this later but basically each kid will need to spend a million dollars on one theme.

Already looking at my calendar for the next couple of months, it is going to be a busy 2008. January 15th is the first ever Manor Hill Internet Safety Night. I am busy working on a presentation for this evening. I applied and was accepted to present at a technology conference in Lee’s Summit in February and I will be doing the same presentation on February 15th at our district in-service, Empowering Excellence. And the most exciting news, that I just found out today, is that KMH: Patriot News has been accepted to travel to Jefferson City to present to the state legislators at the Show Me TechKnowledge Student Showcase. We have done this before and it is a really fun day for the kids. We will probably be leaving really early in the morning and coming back late that night. It is a really long day but a lot of fun. I will be putting more information up about that, and will likely blog while we are there.

Happy Holidays

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. With the holidays coming up it has been busy and my wife and I have both been sick. (As of this writing, we are both on the road to recovery). I wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a happy holidays. I hope that everyone has a chance to spend time with family and have a nice, relaxing holiday. Eric Langhorst, a teacher at South Valley Middle School – and the Missouri Teacher of the Year, recently put a podcast up about sharing and recording family histories. I think this is a great idea, and one that I have been trying to get my dad to do. My dad has a ton of great stories and I am trying to get him to record them. I am hoping to get more of his stories on tape over the break. I encourage you to listen to Eric’s podcast about how to accomplish this. While you are there, you should listen to some of his others, they are absolutely amazing. You can get to Eric’s web site, Speaking of History, by clicking on the link below.

http://www.speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/

Also I wanted to put up a few more pictures of some of the science expereiments that we have been working on. Have a great break!

Reading Buddies

Here are some pictures that I promised the kids that I would post last week and just didn’t get a chance to put up. Every student got a brand new reading buddy. This is a friend that loves to listen to student writing. I really want the kids to get into the habit of reading what they write out loud. It is amazing how many mistakes you catch when you do this. Enjoy these pictures or Room 42 with their reading buddies.

Two Weeks Left

We have two full weeks left until the holiday break. I know that I am looking forward to the break but I am also looking forward to the next two full weeks. We have a ton to get accomplished. Today we took a math test and I have a feeling that this group is going to do really well in Unit 6 which deals with data and probability. We are also jumping into colonies with a giant poster project. Not only do I mean that this will be a large project but also, the finished posters will be huge. We had a great discussion today about some of the errors the kids made in the science work that we did this week and the kid have an opportunity to re-do one of those assignments. Next week we will continue our work on forces and begin to look at simple machines. Enjoy the weekend, and hopefully the weather will be nice. I’m heading north to Des Moines, Iowa to meet Brooks Robinson, Baseball Hall of Famer. I’m hoping for nice traveling weather tomorrow.

Snowball Fight

Today we had a giant snowball fight in Room 42. We did this to practice calculating speed. We did not go out side and get snowballs (no matter how tempting that would have been) instead, we made due with indoor snowballs. We also went through our Newton’s Third Law sing along again. Ask your child to sing you the song about Newton’s Third law, they would love to sing it for you!

Quick Notes

I just want to mention quickly that there are some changes on the horizon for collecting homework and makeup work procedures. We had discussed this earlier and it looks like we will be trying out the new system either next week, or the week before break. I am excited about this system and I think that it will work well and shouldn’t impact grade at all, especially if the kids are turning assignments in on time. More to come on this topic later.

Multiple Topics

Where do I begin? I have a bunch of different topics to talk about today.

Adopt a Soldier
First, we are going to adopt a soldier for the holidays (our package won’t get there until after Christmas). I am collecting different items to send over. There is a whole list on the newsletter for last week. Mainly we are looking for non perishable stuff that we can send over. Beef jerky, crystal light packets, granola bars, CD’s, DVD’s, etc. What I told the kids is to think of what would put a smile on someone face. I am wanting to send the package sometime at the end of next week. Also, anyone that wants to contribute a dollar to the postage fund, it would be greatly appreciated.

Roller Coasters
Below are some of the pictures of the Roller Coasters that the kids turned in today. I have not graded them yet but I can’t wait and I wanted to post some pictures. Newton’s Laws

Newton's Laws

Today was our first day of studying Newton’s Laws. We did this by completing a series of observations including yanking a tablecloth out from under some dishes. I did tell the kids not to attempt this at home (we had plastic dishes). Here are some pictures also of the kids working on these centers today.

Roller Coaster Mania

My wife and I in front of our favorite roller coaster from our honeymoon, Expedition Everest!

I have a room full of roller coaster engineers. Today we learned how to calculate speed, velocity, and acceleration. I decided that instead of just giving them a bunch of problems to do I would have them create their own. The students had to design a roller coaster. Let me tell you, I will need a vomit bag and a helmet to ride some of them. Then they had to decide how long their track was and how long it would take the coaster to travel the track. From this information they then have to work out the speed, acceleration, and velocity. I can’t wait to see the finished products on Monday. I plan to post pictures on here of their work.

Thinking

I did a horrendous thing today. I made the kids think. The fifth grade team of teachers recently planned out our new science unit. We planned several activities and experiments and one of the things that we planned was reading from the science book. I know that this reading can get complicated and a little dry at times so I try to spice it up a little. For example, tomorrow the kids are designing roller coasters. Today, however, I created an activity guide (fancy name for a worksheet) that guided them through the reading. It had a series of questions on it that were not directly in the text, they required the kids to actually read and understand what they had read in order to answer the questions. We went over part of it in class and the kids did great on the first question and everyone missed the second one we went over. The reason they missed the second one was because they didn’t go back and use what they had learned in the first question to answer the second. I was really happy with the effort the kids put in and I can’t wait to see their finished work tomorrow. I also can’t wait to see their roller coasters.

Another Eggsilerating Day

Okay, I will spare you the egg jokes today. We did finish up our Eggsperament (not a joke, the actual name of the lesson). The biggest thing that we worked on today was graphing. Remember when you were in school, or for your job, when you make a graph you color in the little bars. Apparently the people that wrote the MAP test didn’t like that part of graphing so the kids will actually be counted off if they color in the bars and go even slightly outside the lines. So to eliminate any chance of a kid loosing a point for something silly like shading we are practicing drawing graphs without the shading. This makes for odd looking graphs but if it helps us on the MAP test, I’m all for it.

Today we also finished taking notes on our second explorer. The kids are choosing two explorers and eventually will write a compare and contrast essay about them. The last two days we have been taking notes. Tomorrow we will begin to work on the compare and contrast part and if time allows we will even begin writing our introductory paragraphs. Be watching for drafts of this essay to be coming home soon!

An Eggstra Eggciting Day in Room 42!

You guessed it. Today we did an eggsperament involving eggs. We had to be eggstremely careful not to break them. The students eggsuded confidence as we eggstended our science knowledge. I started the lesson by eggsplaining the rules and safety reggulations for the day. I didn’t want anyone to eggsploit their opportunity to use the eggs. I also didn’t want anyone to drop an egg, say an eggspletive, and get sent into eggsile (safe spot) for not following direggtions. There was no eggscuse for not handling the eggs properly. I know that the kids were eggsausted from the holiday break but we all need to just eggshale and get ready for our eggscursion into the wonderful world of science. The actual eggsperament involved the kids using their eggstremeties to take a hard boiled egg and spin it. They then had to eggsamine what happened when they stopped the egg. After that, they eggschanged the hard boiled egg for a raw egg. They then repeated the process being sure to be eggsact in their measurements. The entire process today was absolutely eggsilerating, and that’s no yolk!

What did you do over the break?

I hope that everyone had a great break. I know I was able to get caught up on some stuff here at school, plan some new lessons, spend some time with family and even go on a camp out. Yes, that is right, I camped out Thanksgiving night at Nebraska Furniture Mart. I didn’t even really have anything big on my list. My best friend wanted two of the big TV’s that were on sale so I camped overnight to help him get one. There is just one word that sums up the opening of the store. ZOO! It was absolutely crazy. After that, I don’t care if I ever go shopping again. Not for groceries, clothes, anything.

Today I stressed with the class that we have four full weeks of school left and that we have to be productive every day. No taking time off because we are tired, the room is hot, it is a Monday, or the day after a break. Also, just a hint about tomorrow, it will be a very Egg-citing day in Room 42.

Weather Changes

With a big weather change heading in and a break coming up, things have been a little kooky here at school. We have been going on business as usual but some of the behaviors have been a little off. We had a discussion today that just because Turkey Day is coming up that is no reason to quit early. These are two valuable days of school that we will be using this week.

Today we continued our focus on note taking in social studies as well as kept working our way through fractions in math. I am dead serious when I say that this group is picking up on fractions faster than any group I have had before. A great example was today. Instead of me teaching the class how to convert between fractions and mixed numbers, most of them figured it out on their own. I then had a student review it with the class. I think we have fractions down.

Math Party Day

What an awesome day of math games! Thanks to all of the parents who came in today to play math games with us. I think it is awesome that as a school we had over 150 parents show up to play math games with their kids. What a great message to kids that math is important enough for my parents to come to school during the day. Below are some pictures of the day!

Veterans Day and the Chiefs

As everyone knows, I am a Broncos fan. I have been since I was in kindergarten. My best friend moved to Denver and brought me back a Broncos shirt and ever since then I have been a fan. I had an opportunity to go to the game yesterday. I have included a few pictures I took. The reason I mention this is actually to complement the Chiefs. Not on their play (the Broncos pretty much beat them up) but for what they did at halftime. Yesterday was Veterans Day and they had several really cool things going on. First, there were a ton of soldiers that watched the game from the sideline which I thought was cool. There was a fly over by the Stealth Bomber. Way cool! The biggest cheer of the day was for a WWII veteran that had been shot down over Germany, captured and was a prisoner of war. Everyone stood up even though they made no announcement asking everyone to stand. It was by far the loudest cheer of the day. At half time they unfurled a big flag on the field and had a tribute to fallen soldiers. It was really moving. As the players came back onto the field, almost all of the Chiefs stopped at the sideline and watched, rather than warming up. I was really impressed by this. Like I told the kids today in class, take a minute to thank a veteran for what they have done, give them a hug, buy a buddy poppy. They didn’t do what they did for recognition but what they did was a huge sacrifice and should be honored. Happy Veterans Day.

My wife and I at the game. Notice, she didn't wear Broncos gear. She is a Chiefs fan.

Giant flag unfurled at half time.

Hat I got signed before the game. Two coolest autographs John Lynch (Big J toward the right side) and Pat Bowlen the owner of the Broncos (upper left part of the bill)

Photo Update

Here are some pictures of things that have happened in Room 42 in the last couple of weeks!

Mayor Steinkamp with KMH


Dan Mears AKA: KC Wolf with KMH

KMH preparing to interview KC Wolf

Interviewing the Mayor of Liberty

Happy Halloween - no, this is not our normal school atire.

Mummy in the making

Little Red Goldie Hood

Our Udderly-Amazing room mother who put together our Halloween Party

Mr. Cool Guy hanging out at the St. Louis Arch two weeks ago.

Slacker Part 2

Wow, I did so good for so long and the last two weeks have not been good for updating the blog and a lot of stuff has been going on. I will work backward starting today with a quick run down of events.

Thursday – Today we had the Mayor of Liberty come in to do an interview with KMH. He was incredibly nice and was great with the kids. I always think it is amazing when people take the time out of their busy schedule to come in and talk to the kids. Today we also finally finished our oil and water experiment. I found the video online of oil and water in microgravity. Drum roll please . . . They MIX! They do not separate in zero gravity. That really surprised the kids today. We watched the video and finished up our experiment pages.

Wednesday – I was gone for a meeting in the afternoon and in the morning we worked in the computer lab and the library learning about our visiting author, Roland Smith.

Tuesday – We held small meetings to discuss writing. We also worked on classifying monsters in a dichotomous key.

Monday – My birthday and I had a meeting in the afternoon. The meetings I was in this week were to evaluate companies for a new attendance and grade book programs for the district.

Slacker

Okay so I have been slacking this week and have not updated the blog. Not to make excuses (but here they are) Monday I was worn slick after CHAMPS, Tuesday I was sick, Wednesday was Halloween and I forgot, so here is the post on Thursday. It has been a busy week. First, let me say that we had an outstanding day of CHAMPS, one of my all-time favorites. The kids followed directions, we had a great drug awareness assembly at the end and in general I think the kids got a lot out of the day. Second, I want to thank Mrs. Callstrom for hosting the Halloween party. Parties are always hectic but this one ran really smoothly. I will post pictures later. Today I was gone half a day for a meeting, and I missed half a day on Tuesday because I was sick. The kids did a great job for both subs. That is always a great sign of how good a class is, by how well they do for a sub. So far we haven’t had any problems. Keep up the good work. I also finally found the oil and water video that I have been looking for. I am planning on finishing editing it tomorrow and bringing it in so we can finish our experiment.