March 3, 2008- by Max

Buy some magazines, come on, I know you want to. We are selling magazines for a fundraiser, we can get a lot of prizes. In math we did test review, we are doing fractions in this chapter. After the test we did 2 Brainpop videos!! Then we did a spelling pretest on double consonant words. A lot of people did well and got 100%s. Next we learned about prepositions, prepositions are a relation of place and location words. Then we did another Brainpop video, I can't believe it. At recess I played football with Hunter, Nic, Connor, James, and Demar.

Next we read our anthology book, our story is The Big Wave. It is about a boy named Jiya, and his parents die in a tidal wave. Then we did our vocabulary and clues chart, that is when we find the definition for all of our vocab words and figure out the genre and the author. Mr. Kootman says the clues chart is a good idea because it helps us learn about the story before reading it. Then we explained response to literature, we explained it because we are having a star writing test tomorrow. Afterwards Mr. Kootman handed out a worksheet called May the Force be with You, we didn't get to it because it was time for lunch. For lunch recess I played football with the same people.

When we got back into the room we read The Report Card. In The Report Card Nora's mom and dad get mad at her because of her bad grades. Then they call the school to discuss her grades. So the parents and teachers have a meeting about it. Next, we finally got the science page. When we finished it we did another science page, this science page was about water vapor.

Afterwards we had another Brainpop video, WOW! This is a really good day for Brainpop videos. The reason why was because we got over the line in our marble jar. If we get over the line we get some Brainpop videos, and extra play time. Finally we cleaned up the room, packed up and walked, rode, and got on the bus to go home and that was my day.

February 29, 2008- by Charlotte

PRIZES! PRIZES! PRIZES! The first thing my class did was go to an assembly. The assembly was about a magazine sale. Last year we had to sell 100 magazines to get all the prizes! That's a lot isn't it?! But, this year we just had to sell 15 magazines to get all the prizes! That is pretty cool huh!

Next we came in and the homework checkers checked our homework. Then we did our daily math. Today we did MAKE A MODEL! When making a model the[down denominator up numerator]denominator is always is how many parts there are.The numerator is how many shaded/unshaded parts there are. For example...5/8 this is five eights. So there are 8 parts,and 5 shaded/unshaded parts.

Then we moved onto language arts. In language arts we read ''McBroom And The Big Wind.'' It has lots and lots of humor!!!!!!!!! Guess what the kids names are! Its FUNNY!!!! It is... willjillhesterchesterperterpollytimtommarylarryandlittleclarinda! That is lots of kids names too!That's a long name isn't it? After that we took a test. It was a tiny bit hard... okay a little bit harder... okay a lot. but I got through it!

After that we lined up to go to... music! We learned Dynamics. Dynamics is the volume of the sound. For example .........!!!!!!!!!!!!! see the . are soft, ! are loud, so that is Dynamics.

YUM! Then we went to lunch. We had a choice between nachos, uncrustable P B and J,yogurt and graham crackers,or my personal favorite, Bean and Cheese Burritos! Then we had a half an hour to play outside, I played in the spider, and hung on the push up bars. I was playing with my friend Joey.

Then we read The Report Card. It's about a girl with a lot of knowledge and she got D's and C's [she just wants to be average] so she does not want to read them! She tried to get D's and C's on purpose so she's not the center of attention!

We did not have PE, Social Studies,or Art, so that is what we did today, see you next time!

February 27, 2008- by Deisha

Tomorrow is the District Spelling Bee; I'm so excited! The worst part is hundreds of people will be watching; it's going to be scary! Eek! For today, first we did QR and MR. QR means quick review and MR means mix review. Quick review means that there is a few quick problems like 123 times 8. Mix review means that there are some problems that you did in a lesson from your unit and it's also some quick problems mostly word problems, but there are more problems on MR than QR.

Today we are learning Compare and order fractions. For example: 2 out of 3 2/3 first you have to order that. Then you have to compare the fractions and find the equivalent denominator.

I bet most of us can't wait for yoga tomorrow. Some people don't like yoga, so if Mr.Kootman forgets and someone says "it's yoga!" the others will say oh man. But, I'm always ready for anything anywhere. When math was over it was recess. I know everybody loves recess especially when you get to see your friends. Afterwards, we had to take out our Open Court reading book and we read "McBroom and the Big Wind" that was such a funny book, that type of book is called a tall tale.

Then we opened our CLAS book. CLAS means comprehension language arts skills. We opened to a page called Exaggeration. On that page we had to read the sentences to see if it was exaggeration. I had to go to the office to see if I have everything ready for the spelling bee tomorrow.

We are all writing a summary about a book called "Arctic Explorer." It is about a man named Matthew who is an African American that learns Eskimo language and has to learn survival techniques. Mr.Kootman said we can type it so that's what most of us did. Then Mr.Kootman told me to do a blog so I was confused because I had to do a blog at the same time. That's hard because I think the summary is important but a blog is important too.

Next it was lunch time. It was okay but not as good it will be tomorrow. Some people think orange chicken is nasty, but that is their opinion; I think it's delicious. When we went for lunch recess it was better than snack recess because it is longer than snack recess. It was so hot I thought spring is coming real soon and I was right spring is coming March 21.

After that we were reading The Report Card by Andrew Clements; his books are always interesting. We read until it was library which is at 1:30. Mostly boys get more of the interesting books, but girls get interesting books too. Then we had to open to our social studies book to page 61. Yesterday we learned about Celebrating Mexican Independence because California territory was Mexico's before we got part of it. So they celebrated Mexico's independence from Spain.

When that was done we had to go home. As usual it's pretty boring when we go home. I like school better than going home because you learn stuff and I like education subjects. Some people ride the bus to go home and if you live in Deluz than you can walk home. Some people go to MC CS, which is a daycare, if your parents don't let you stay home until they come back.

So we went home like always and that's not really fun for me. Mr.Kootman wants us to work on our Mission project when we get home so I better work on it. I bet we all had a great time at school get home safely!

February 26, by Diego

Our class was lucky to get three of our students in the school spelling bee! Deisha even went on to the district bee!

Our mission projects are do in two full weeks. I'm doing my project on the mission called Santa Clara De Assis and I am going to do my project out of foam.Today, we started out with some of our new fraction packet. I cant believe I finished three pages from the packet from our new fraction packet. I Also got them all right. By the time that we finished the packet and by the time we finished correcting it,it was time for yoga. When the time came around we went to yoga but we just happened to be ten minutes late. Lucky,we were the first ones inside the cafeteria. The younger kids had an assembly while we had to do work. After we came back from yoga we went to recess.

When we came back in from snack we had our writing trimester test for the year. We had to summarize an article about beavers. I had learned a lot about beavers I had learned that a lot of things about their body and their life. I still cant get over that because we did that from recess all the way to lunch. After the trimester test, I read with the class which was called McBroom and the Big Wind.

The story was about a man who owns a one acre farm and with the best soil in the country. McBroom also has eleven kids; their names were Will, Jill, Peter, Polly, Tim, Tom, Mary, Larry and little Clarinda. He claims his wife is one of the best cooks in the world, but he says that her biscuits are awful heavy and their older son Peter put the heavy biscuits against the door and the biscuits kept the door closed. The only bad part was the roof that they had just got and then built of every little nail that set on the boards filled in every beaver hole in the county. But one day a big wind came and at the end and McBroom slipped in the hole and thats how he broke his leg.

On our way to to lunch, I was talking to my friends and I also had the pleasure of sitting outside. As we were eating our lunch a crow dropped a strawberry lollipop on to the floor. It almost sounded like a Cannon going off inside your ear. Almost everybody got so scared they almost flew to space. After lunch me and my friends discovered a big hole in the ground. We spent the whole recess digging for different things but so far we will keep on digging.

After lunch we got fifteen more minutes for the writing test on the beavers I had talked about earlier. After that we read a book called The Report Card. So far we learned about a girl named Nora. She is a very smart girl but she does not like much attention so she likes to copy other people because she just wants to be like the other boys and girls. When she brought her report card home she had to show her parents those C's and D's that she got on her report card just like the other kids. She had refused to show her parents the bad grades that she had got on her report card. Her sister Anna got all A+s but she had got an A minus in drivers Ed. Her brother, who is in middle school, had grades that were good but his grades were not as good as his sisters. He had gotten all A's and one B and his parents got mad at him! Now they said it was Nora's time.

After reading The Report Card we did our CLAS book which is short for Comprehension and Language Art Skills. We started to learn about conjunctions and interjections. We learned a few words for a interjection like loud phrases like oh no! Happy Birthday! After that we did some social studies on the missions. At the end of the day we went out side and played catch with tennis balls for about for five minutes, but those were short five minutes. Mr.Kootman said maybe we could finish tomorrow. Now I could go to day care and I will see you tomorrow and I can't wait for HOT time tomorrow!

February 21, 2008- by Jackson

PARTY IN THE HOUSE SAY WHAT? WOO THERE IT IS!! today we had a band named the Crew coming to our school. Before school started we got to see them see them set up on stage.

We started the day with a math page on division and averaging. That was sort of a warm up for the test later that was on the same thing. We couldn't finish the test all in one though, we had to split it up between our assembly. The test seemed very long compared to any other math test we took.

After our math page we did two pages on hyphenated compound words. We learned how you would say them with out them being compound at all. The meanings had to be small but detailed, for example a goldfish is a fish that is gold.

At 9:45 we had an assembly. A band named the Crew came to our school. During the assembly they played music on trash cans and brooms. They did a really cool performance while drumming on a metal pole and a metal can.They also played games with us. There was a basketball game on who could get more hoops. If the boys won, the girls would have to do the chicken dance. If the girls won, which they did, the boys would have to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. They told us to be drug free too.

Lunch was good because of pizza. Every body likes pizza so that made us happy. After a great lunch, we went out for recess. The grass was muddy and slippery. If you ran on it you would find yourself slipping in mud.

After recess it was time for social studies. We had a video based on a quiz. After we saw the video we realized that it was the wrong one. We just had to assume most the were right and wrong. Some answers were given though.

Our class chapter book is called; The Good Dog. The author of this book is Avi. Right now McKinley knows that Lupin the wolf's pack is dying out. Even Lupin herself is injured. So McKinley explained that to the other dogs. One dog named Redburn was the cause of this trouble. It started when a mistreated dog named Dutchess wanted to be free. Redburn tracked her down, putting her back into her old life. Dutchess was staying with the wolf which made the humans hunt her. The dogs thought of Redburn poorly now. That was how the book ended.

Before we went home we had HOT time. HOT time is when you get to play outside if you finish your work. When the kids in our class went out we had to go in and watch a movie because it rained. Then we went home.

February 12, 2008- by Samantha

Love is in the air! Valentines day will raise your hair! Thursday through Monday no school! But before we can talk about that we have to start from the beginning. So let's start with math. First we did a couple quick review and mixed review problems. Quick review is 5 math problems that you might have learned in the last few chapters. Usually its easy. Mixed review is when you take all that you've learned from that chapter and review it all. During that time the pink group,a group of people on the bottom of the name list,went onto the computer. We had sub with a really long name so that made things a bit more difficult. But we found a solution! We just called her Mrs.V.

At about 8:45 am Mrs.V took lunch count. Lunch count is important. For example, if you forget to raise your hand when you want to buy a lunch you'll probably end up with one of those small weak peanut butter jelly and gram cracker bars. OK,enough of the lunch in the morning and back to math. After correcting the Quick and mixed review Mrs.V handed out a rounding quiz. It was easy for a lot of us, but for others just the opposite. We're almost through math. Next we did a rounding quiz. It wasn't too hard,but still difficult. Next we did our chapter 16.3 math packet. As you can guess, it was on rounding. Now math is out of the way it is recess time! At recess Arabelle, Reina, and I played an animal game.

After recess, Mrs.V asked us to get out our language arts book. Our Language arts book is a big book with a bunch of stories in it. Sometimes the stories are chapters from other books. For example, Escape, was a story from Charlotte's Web written by the the author of Stuart little and Mouse on the Motorcycle.As good as E.B White's books are, we were reading Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O' Dell.This story was about a young girl abandoned on a deserted island when her family was escaping the Aluets, who were trying to make slaves out of them. She took a canoe and almost made it to the country in the east,where her family was. Then her canoe sprung a leak and she couldn't make it to the land. She turned around and when she got to the deserted, savage island she hugged the sand like it was the feet of her father. We went outside to read the story. I'd say it was probably the second or third longest story in language arts. When we finished the story, Mrs.V reviewed and discussed the story.That was fast! And now it was time for lunch. For lunch we ate pizza bread sticks which are just a couple of long strips of bread with cheese in the middle.

After lunch Mrs.V read our class chapter book. Our class chapter book is a book that the teacher reads to us. In this case the book is The Good Dog.The book is about a malamute husky,McKinley,and his golden Retriever and Greyhound friends Aspen and Dutchess. Dutchess is a dog that has been mistreated By her owner, Pycraft, and wants to run away and join Lupin, the wolf. In this chapter, Dutchess was trapped in her dog house and McKinley set her free, but then got himself trapped.

During social studies, we reviewed our vocab words, which related to Spanish settlements in early California. Finally, we went outside and played warball for PE. Three kids said that their knees got hurt, so they didn't play. IF Mr. Kootman was here, he would have made them play anyway. Lastly, we went back to Room 40 and gathered our things to go home.

February 6, 2008- by Isabella

If you like school come read this. We had miss Metcalfe with us today. She is a student teacher, which means Mister Kootman teaches her. I love student teachers because they are nice to me. If I'm stuck or one of my friends are stuck she well help us.

To start things off today we did morning work, chapter 13 "Understanding Division." This is how to do problems step by step. I think it is fun to do division. Do you think it is fun to do division?

Today we are reading "Susan La Flesche Picotte." She is the first native American doctor who earned a medical degree. We did a circle map and clues chart on what we learned about her from the story.

How did early Europeans effected Indians ways of living? I'll tell you how early Europeans affected the way they lived.They encouraged them to be Catholic,they made some of them slaves,and they told the slaves what to do. But some of them did not wont to go so they just stayed where they had been living.

After lunch we read a class chapter book. We are reading The Good Dog. It is about a dog who's name is McKinley. He is the leader of his pack of dogs. He found a wolf named Lupin. He wants to help her but she is picky. He thinks and thinks and he said "you have to be in a house or the hunters will find you."

It is Wednesday so we went to the library for our last activity of the day.

February 12, 2008- by Hunter

YES!! I got an INTERCEPTION at morning recess. I played football. It is very exciting when someone gets an interception because it gives them a chance to get a touchdown. To start the day we came in and sat down. Next, we did a page in our math packets: 14.2 Divide Three Digit Numbers. We also did some morning work; it was pretty easy like 49 divided by 7 equals 7. Then, we did a vocabulary and clues chart on the Island Of The Blue Dolphins. We did not read the story yet but we will tomorrow. I hope it's good! Then, we had lunch; I thought it looked pretty good but unfortunately I brought lunch!

After that, we read The Good Dog by Avi. Lupin (a wolf) has been shot and she needs help she needs water and shelter then they found an abandoned house that lopin could heal in but she needs food and water. Afterwords, we did social studies. We did a quiz about California when it was ruled by Spain. We also did a project about our vocabulary words; we had to write a synonym for the words or a definition and a picture. Then, we did some biographies about important people like Juan Cabrillo and Mr.Kootman did some funny voices and told us some history about them. Then we got ready to go home. I'm the custodian so I have to see who's desk is dirty and make them pay 20$ in class money. After that, we all went home and did our homework and got to go outside... well I did! I can't wait until tomorrow.

February 5, 2008 by Lauryn

My class couldn't believe it! This morning when everyone went to go inside the bells didn't ring, the class still thought it was time to play. The bells have already been off for a week. Ms. Betty, a teacher that watches us so we don't get hurt, blew her whistle to let us know it was time to go in but, not everyone heard the whistle, some people were talking to their friends and some people were playing with their footballs instead of lining up.

After we got in, we did our morning math review and it was about estimating quotients and the quotient to a division problem which is your answer,but not everyone finished in time. Some people were playing but most people finished and people who didn't finish in class have to do it outside for recess. The people that didn't finish didn't think that was fun at all. Everyone had to get ready for our test on Thursday.

Afterwards, we read a story called "Shadow of a Bull", it's a story about El Magifico, he was Spain's most famous bullfighter and he died and he had a son and everyone wanted him to be a bullfighter like his dad. But he wanted to be a doctor. Maia Wojciechowska the author of this book had 72 jobs in one year. Some of the jobs were bullfighting, and race car driving. She was born in Europe.

In yoga we were doing a lot of exercises like the shoulder stand, push-ups,and crunches. After lunch our teacher, Mr. Kootman, read us a story called The Good Dog and it's about a dog named Dutchess, who met a wolf. Dutchess's friend McKinley tries to help her out of trouble and the wolf gets shot. Last, we did Social Studies, and we learned that there are 21 mission's in California. I really enjoyed today because our class learned a lot.

January 31, 2008- by Devin P.

Wow!!!!!! We actually had time today to do social studies!!!

We started our day with a math mixed review, quick review and another mixed review. Mixed review is where multiplication and division problems are mixed up. Quick review is just problems that you multiply like 8 X 2=16, those are the easy problems. After we did our morning work we did our regular math. The lesson that we did was division with remainders. The first time I saw the lesson I thought it looked easy and I was right.

The first thing Mr. Kootman let us do for that lesson was get our white boards, markers and erasers out. On our boards Mr. Kootman told us to write down a division problem. It was 73 divided by 6; the answer was 12 remainder of 1. Then Mr. Kootman thought that we were good at it so Mr. Kootman let us do our math packet for division with remainders. That math packet was so easy that I finished like a snap. During the time we were doing our math packets Mr. Kootman took us for a jog around the play ground and back. I thought it was a fun course.

After math we read our comprehension story for the third time this week. The story this week was a biography on Susan La Fleche Piccote, it is based on her life and the medicine she used. First before we read the story Mr. Kootman went over the vocabulary for the story, they were physician, ominous, reservation, desolately and maneuvered. Physician means doctor, ominous is threatening, reservation means a land set aside for Native Americans, desolately means in a hopeless or lonely way and maneuvered means that you move. We did not just read the story we listen to the CD for the story. Then Mr. Kootman asked a couple of questions.

Soon it was recess time; I played basketball. My classroom was the first one out on the playground. I played with Curtis, Demar and Jody. We played knock. How the game works you get in a line then the first person shots the ball and if they miss they keep shooting until you make it. Then if the first person is still shooting then the second person shoots the ball if the second person ball goes in first, the first person is knocked out.

After we had recess we did our spelling and vocabulary. What we learned in that book was time and order words. The main time and order words are today, one month, before and last week. Then Mr. Kootman usually has us stand up and act like parrots where we reapeat everything he says, so it will sink in our brains.

Then we went to lunch. Today was popcorn shrimp day, but I had brought my lunch and I had pizza rolls. Pizza rolls is pizza just wrapped with the cheese, sauce and the crust but the cheese and the sauce are inside and the crust is outside holding the cheese and sauce. We were the second table to leave the cafeteria to go play outside. I played handball but Devin D. kept calling my name to help him because he was getting chased by the girls. But, then the bell rang so we had to stand in line for class.

All that was left to do for the day was social studies. But before social studies Mr. Kootman had a surprise for us; he had biography cards for us. Then after we went over the biography cards Mr. Kootman went over social studies vocabulary. Our vocabulary was mission and missionary. Mission is a place were missionary’s teach about their religion and missionary is a teacher who teaches about thier religion. So that was the end of social studies.

Then we watched our movie that is called Bullwhip Griffin. The movie is based on a book we read called By the Great Horn Spoon. It is about when this butler and this boy end up on a boat that had a bad guy aboard but that’s how far got. We ran out of time and packed up to go home.