Wednesday

January 26, by Seth

This is what Ms.Betty says about room 40’s line,”Mr.Kootman’s class has one of the greatest lines in the whole school.” That takes a lot of work putting 35 kids together in one huge line!

Well at the beginning of the day, we did a Quick Review (it’s a small review on what we’ve done so far). After that we did a math lesson on the mean of a number. Let me explain it to you, the mean, or average, is the number found by dividing the sum of a set of numbers by the number of addends. Don’t worry, I had troubles with this at first too, if you didn’t get it that quickly. Next we did a spelling pretest on the /ch/ sound. Most kids thought it was easy as pie, but some thought it was as hard as Mr.Kootman’s rules!

Afterwards, we did a clues chart on the story The New Doctor. I accidentally traced my hand (where we write stuff down on what the story could be about) like a Gorilla’s hand! When we finished that, we did some vocabulary words. On my side of vocabulary, it’s a little boring.

In Social Studies, we learned about how people lived in early California. Then we all rushed to line up for lunch and lunchtime recess. When we got back from lunch, we read A Week in the Woods. In A Week in the Woods, Mark is trying to be nicer, but that is not working out for him. Right after Mark tries being nice, his parents leave for a few weeks. Wow, he may be rich, but very lonely. When it was almost time to go, Mr. Kootman was nice enough to give us all Social Studies activity books to keep. Then we all went home.

January 23, by Briana

I’m 50 dollars richer then I was when I walked in the door! Almost every body got extra money, at least ten dollars!!! First we did math, like we always do. In math, we learned about placing zeros in Division Lesson three. That means how to do a math problem with a zero in it. Then we read Emily’s hands on science experiment in our Open Court book. It’s about Therapeutic Touch. For example; put some bodies hands facing palm up under your hands facing palm down. Every body in class tried it, even Mr.Kootman!!! And at the end Emily made up a new experiment using magnets. Next we did writing. In writing we had to write our spelling words five times each. I’m sure every body’s hands were hurting because I know mine were. It was actually for our homework but some people did it before we went home.

After lunch, we read our class chapter book called A Week in the Woods. When we left off Mark was trying to make new friends. He made a group of friends and tried to make friends with his teachers too. He also learned how to snow shoe and he wanted to show his parents but they weren’t there to see it (Poor Mark). That was our super perfect exciting day in room 40!!!

Thursday

January 22, by Sparrow

Today, some people took a one hundred word spelling test for the Spelling
Bee tomorrow! In the morning, we did a quiz on multiples. Then we learned dividing by one digit numbers. After, the class did their math packets and then went outside to recess wild as monkeys. Right after recess, most kids were getting ready for the spelling bee. Mr.Kootman had to say one hundred words, sentences, and how to spell them one hundred times. Mr. Kootman was very worn out after that. Only eleven people got 95% and up. When we were done, my hand was hurting so badly. Finally, when it was over, it was time for lunch. “HOORAY!!!”

Once lunch was over, Mr.Kootman read A Week in the Woods. Right after Mr. Kootman read that, he told the eleven people from the spelling bee to come in front of the classroom. Mr. Kootman had to test the eleven people and get some out for the spelling bee. Mr.Kootman didn’t really want to get some people out, but we couldn’t have eleven people from the same class on stage for the spelling bee. Then, we had to stop the spelling bee during class because people in choir had to go. While choir was going everyone did their clues chart and their C.L.A.S book, and learned about facts and opinions. Then the bell rung at exactly two thirty, and that’s the end of our day folks.

January 18, by Sam

Today, it was so cold people were going to freeze. In the morning, we came in the class room and we did our morning work, which was math. After that we corrected it. Then in our new math lesson we learned about mental math division. This involved rounding and estimating. Then Mr. Kootman went on a website called AAA Math where we reviewed the terms divisor, dividend, quotient and remainder; then we worked on our math packet.

Later we read The Bridge Dancers, which was about two girls, Callie and Masie. Then we did a tree map on it. We also did a summary on it. Then we went to lunch.

When we came back we finished chapter 4 in A Week In the Woods. Then we reviewed our flow maps. Next we did an experiment in science. The experiment was on layers of soil. Mr. Kootman had got some soil and put them in a cup. Then he got them wet then you could see all three layers. Finally every one got paid. After that our crew packed up and we went home.

Tuesday

January 9, 2007, by NIck S.

Today we watched a movie about Elvis Presley! Elvis Presley was famous for being a rock singer. Did you know that Elvis died by getting overdosed by medicine? First we reviewed for our math test on factors and multiples. For writing, we did analogies. After that, we did yoga in the cafeteria, we learned a new pose called tree pose. In yoga Mr. Kootman and other teachers thought we were loud. In language arts we learned idioms. In a book called More Parts the neighbor said this joke will crack you up. This book had very funny examples of idioms.

For reading, we read a long story called Sewed up His Heart. Sewed up His Heart was about Dr. Dan doing heart surgery. In our class chapter book, A Week in the Woods, there is a kid that moves a whole bunch of times. In this part of the book he moved to New Hampshire.

After lunch, we had a fire drill and no one new about it! All in all we made some marbles in the jar, but a lot of kids were talking so we lost some also.

Monday

January 5, by Alex

Today it was so windy, it looked like everybody was going to fall down. Mr. Kootman taught us how to find prime factors, and man it was so hard. Then we did a math page called Finding Prime Factors.

After that we did a quick write called… “What is the difference between a muffin and a cupcake?” That was sort of fun once it got to the writing part. Then we went to morning recess and guess what? It was so windy, almost every body fell down.

After all that we went to yoga, and everybody got their mats. There were a lot of mats there because there were so many kids absent; maybe because they were just sick, or they thought that its still holiday break.

Now you are going to laugh, during when everybody was doing the math packet
Mr. Kootman just jumped out a window because there were four first graders beating each other up!

Our class chapter book that we read was called A Week in the Forest.
We didn’t really do science because Mr. Kootman wanted to go outside instead of doing science, and I was thinking, man Mr. Kootman you read my mind.
And this was a cool day because this was the first time for me to do the class blog.

Wednesday

December 15, by Nick F.

Today almost everybody in class moved to a new seat. We only do this three times a year. First we did a four questioned science quiz. Next our class practiced doing awesome multiplication facts. Then we did all the usual poses for yoga and when it was time for pushups everybody exploded with talking. We then did the definitions of our vocabulary words and a clues chart for the Milkmaid and Her Pail.

Next, we went to recess and one round of handball lasted for the whole recess! Everybody then read our class book fable The Milkmaid and her Pail. After reading it we made a flowchart of it. In the flowchart we put the order of the Milkmaid’s ideas.