May 21, by Diego

Today is the talent show try outs and I'm going to use the cello and I sure hope I make it. By the time I got to do my songs I had to wait an hour and a half! Today we started with our D.O.L. and with our mixed and quick review in math. Speaking of D.O.L., in our homework tonight we get to make our own D.O.L. I plan on making mine very hard for everyone.

By the time I came back to class from the talent show everybody had already finished reading our new story, Pocahontas. She was born in eastern Virginia by a lake in 1595.The new Jamestown colonists arrived in 1617 and they became friends with Pocahontas. She had a husband named John Rolf; he was a very wealthy tobacco planter,and they had a son named Thomas Rolf. When he was older he helped fight against the Indians. Pocahontas later died of smallpox when she was only twenty two.

Our next story is a play but i don't know if Mr. Kootman is going to let us act out the play. After reading the story we did our comprehension book on figures of speech. We then all made our own creative sentences. Next we went to lunch and by the time we went to recess the weather got really foggy and cold. The news said that it was going to rain and a chance of a tornado, but i don't think that is really going to happen.

When we got back from lunch we read Patty Reads Doll. Ms.Reed and all the family's were finally out of the snow and they were finally on their way to the mountains were they planned on meeting Mr.Reed. Mr. Reed went on ahead to Sutter's Fort after the insistent where he stabbed someone.

After reading the book we did social studies. We learned about very famous people in the gold rush. After that we went out side and people who did sign up for the Don Dornan games got to do a relay race and they got to use these really cool batons. The batons looked almost as if they could glow in the dark. And they also did tug o' war. The people that didn't do the Don Dornan games would go to the playground, but this time we got to play tug o' war too. Then we went home and I cant wait for the next week of school.

May 20, by Hunter

MATH!!!! We had our morning math and writing assignment. I won't have to do that tomorrow because I will be typing this blog! Every morning, we do a short math review and our DOL (daily oral language). After that, we did page 277 in our math book.

Then we had lunch. I had Funyuns, peanut butter crackers, Nutter Butter cookies and 2 Capri-suns. When it was time to go play I played soccer with Devin D. and all my other friends. I scored one goal. When we returned from recess, we read our class chapter book. In the book, Patty Reeds Doll, they were in 10 feet of snow and two of them died: Milt and Eddie's baby.

Then we had to write a quick summary of the chapter we read. We only got 10 minutes; I probably got about 85 words. After that we went outside to try out for the Don Dornin games (a mini Olympics) We tried out for the standing long jump. This is like the regular long jump, but without running. I got 55 inches; I hope I made it Then we all went home to rest our legs. Then we have to do our homework.

May 19, 2008- by Mattison

Watch out there's a math test coming out!!! Today for math we did review for "Understand Time." We did some problems on our white boards about elapsed time. Once that was done we checked DOL. It stands for Daily Oral Language. DOL is an activity where we have to correct incorrect sentence grammar and spelling.

When we finished at 9:35 we went out for the Don Dornan games practice. What you do for the Don Dornan games is you race against kids in different classes. The reason why we went out at 9:35 is because we knew it would be in the 90's. For reading we did Vocab and clues chart on "Pocahontas." The story "Pocahontas" is from The Virginia Colony. It is about Pocahontas's life. She had 3 names which Pocahontas was her nickname. Her names were Motoaka, Rebecca and Pocahontas.Pocahontas meant "the playful one."

After we did our Vocab and Clues chart we went to lunch at 12:20-12:35,then we went to lunch recess from 12:35-1:00.we get in the classroom at 1:05.Once that was done we read Patty Reed's Doll. It's about a doll who is talking in first-person.Cattle's are getting buried by sand,because the wind is blowing to hard that the sand is covering the cattle's. For Social Studies we watched a video on California Statehood,and we will be doing a Social Studies test on Tuesday. At 2:00 we went out to do some more Don Dornan practice.

May 16 was Miss Metcalfe's last day.She was our student teacher who helped Mr.Kootman and our class. I was unhappy to see her go, but glad that she has become a teacher. Finally we went home and did our homework.

May 15, 2008- by Christian L.

Man overboard!!! Read on to find out who got wet. First we went on our super cool FIELD TRIP! We took attendance quickly, then we got on the bus and drove to the Mechanized Museum and looked at some really cool Marine tanks and cars.

Next we went to Rancho Santa Margarita and were taught who owned this land of Camp Pendelton before us. Then we had people take us on a tour of Rancho Santa Margarita. We learned that a farmer's horse can go up to the front of the war and get shot and wouldn't always get hurt. In the Korean War, this was Sgt. Reckless. Then we saw a real cannon from the Korean war that was captured by Colonel Pendleton.

Lastly, we went to Lake O'Neill and ate lunch.THEN Hunter fell in the lake!!! Mr.Kootman made Hunter go under the water spigot to rinse off. Then before we got on the bus we had to let him dry. Finally we went outside and did the Don Dornan games. The athletes did the long jump and James jumped the longest; it was 9 feet 10 inches.

May 13, 2008- by James

History! History! Come aboard. Today we went on a field trip to Mission San Juan Capistrano. When we got outside there were only two buses. There were too many people on the bus already so our class had to split in half so every body could fit. Me and my friend Demar sat next to each other. The way there was good. When we got through the entrance a guy gave us a passport for the mission. The guy told us all the directions that you can't do in the mission. Christian R, Christian F,Devin, Demar and I were in Mrs. Meltcalfe's group. First we went to the picnic area to eat our snacks. I was so hungry because I had to share with Demar.
Then we saw a story about a guy that wanted the swallow to have a home. After that we saw a fish pond and there were koi fish. We saw a huge fish and it looked like it was trying to kiss us. We were there for about 15 minutes. When we left, the fish was following us. After that we went to an Indian exhibit in a room at the mission.

In the museum we saw how they slept and what they did to survive. Then we went into the church. We kneeled down on a stool and my group prayed. After that we went into a place were there were Indians who were working for soldiers and a priest was teaching them Catholicism. Then we took a bathroom break. Then we went to lunch. For lunch I had a sandwich, cookies, Cheetos, and a juice box. When we were done with lunch we saw another fish pond. We went over to the pond and there were a lot of fish in the pond.

We were looking at all the fish in the pond and we said if we wanted to be a fish which one would we would be. We called out the fish we wanted to be and I called the black and orange one. Everybody called the big fishes except Demar because he saw a huge black fish. We didn't like that pond so we went to the pond were the other fish were. We discovered a new fish that was gold and black. We stayed there the rest of the day.

When the day was over we got on the bus and I sat next to Demar again. When we rode back to school we made up some funny songs. When we got back to class we went over what we learned. At two o'clock we did Don Dornan games. The games have running, jumping, softball,and throwing. We started with long jump. I came in first place! All the people that did the games tried out for the long jump that day.

Finally the day was over and we went home.

May 12, by Samantha

MAY I HAVE EVERYONE'S ATTENTION, PLEASE? Our student teacher is going to leave in a few days! I need a good way to say good bye. Can you help me? If you said yes you are probably going to need some background, and I think I can provide most of today. OK, first, as I remember, we started with a page of math and D.O.L. Now you're probably wondering what a D.O.L is, and its a good thing too. A D.O.L is a small work sheet with grammar mistakes and often parts of speech questions. Sometimes I don't remember what the questions were specifically. Hey! I only said most background not all! Anyway, after D.O.L we had to do a math page 400 pages back from where we were. This page was on time if you can believe it! No hard feelings to anyone who's having a hard time on the subject, but I did it in second grade and now we're in fourth! So after the big blow up that I am currently having, it was easy! Maybe five minutes or less after D.O.L I was done.

Sometime after correcting morning work Mr. Kootman and our student teacher, I mean the one we might not see again, started to teach our math lesson, and when I see something easy I'm telling you, its easy. I'm not getting any ideas but that's the whole reason I felt like yawning. Sorry Mrs.Metcalfe and Mr. Kootman, it's just true! The whole thing was elapsed time. In my mind and surely some other people's I was wondering why the lesson had to take a whole hour and not 15 minutes. Well anyway, after the unnecessary time of our lesson MissMetcalfe made us do a few problems. Hey! Any ideas coming to your minds? If not continue thinking, time is running short. With problems out of the way you'd think it's free time but, here come the dump trucks!!! Wait, look, at least its just a little one. Math packet time is imminent. And it was as easy as the lesson. Well duh, it's based on the lesson. Math packet out of the way RECESS TIME!!!!!

All right Miss Metcalfe out of the room, recess is over, time to put our brains together, any ideas? You just had recess, no ideas. Wait, what did you say? A booklet? Great idea! We'll make MissMetcalfe a booklet out of pink paper. How about we each write a little note at the top saying 2 things we'll remember about her activities and her. Mr. Kootman told the class to do it, and we did. Some of our notes were funny and some of our notes were depressing but most of them were just plane " I'll miss you." and all the mushy stuff.

Soon too many people were coming into the room and Mr. Kootman was getting weary so he shutdown the activity. Quickly Mr. Kootman ran through the rules about not acting suspicious to MissMetcalfe when she came in one more time.Then he ordered us to take out our language arts books and tried to get us to do as much work as possible before MissMetcalfe walked in. As we did get much work done Miss Metcalfe came in. We all knew she would eventually, but she caught on fast to what we were doing. Good thing we weren't working on the booklet when she came in, or she would have caught on to the booklet! In our language arts book story was about the Mayflower. The exact title was The Voyage of the Mayflower but close enough. Even though we weren't reading the story yet we were doing a vocab and clues chart. When you are doing the vocab part you are supposed to look in the glossary of the language arts book to find meanings and parts of speech that belong to your vocab words. An example might be, "dunce, A noun, A person with a lack of intelligence." That is what it would look like. Then you copy it down on your piece of paper. Now the clues chart looks like a traced hand, cause it is, with information about the book and your prediction on what the story will be about.

With all of that out of the way lunch time was here. By the way, Miss Metcalfe still doesn't have a clue that we made her a book. Mr. Kootman dismissed our tables by the quietest table, table six , to go to lunch first. As soon as we got into the cafeteria it was LOUD! I mean the teachers shouldn't have to promise the quietest class a pizza party to be quiet! That's just wrong! I felt like somebody was starting another food fight.

Now that lunch is over and we are in our quiet, ear relieving class, Miss Metcalfe asked us to take out the class chapter book, Patty Reed's Doll,. In this chapter of the book the Reed's family was lost traveling through an unknown mountain range all because some dude wrote a book saying that way was shorter than the California trail and a promise to meet all people who decide to follow his advice at a fort for further instructions. But, when the man wasn't at the fort they had to continue on their own.

After Miss Metcalfe read that it was social studies time! Social studies was about how people got to California and why. We learned that people got to California by ether wagon or ship. Sometimes people start by ship then cross the Isthmus of Panama on foot then continue in a new ship. The most popular reason pioneers came to California was for land and the GOLD RUSH!

I bet I'm going kinda fast but I'm waiting for dismissal, Which is now! Bye every one and thank you for listening!

April 29, by Holly

Hello!!! I knew it was going to be a great day,and man it was a hot day too!!! I'm going to tell you about the class' great day!! First, we came into class, looked at the board and did our math and our D.O.L.

In math we were doing page 442, 445,446,and 23.4 in our math packet. The page in our math packet was about problem solving skills. After math we had snack recess and it was sort of windy. When we got back from recess we did our vocab. Our story is called "My Two Drawings." The story is only four pages, but it is a pretty nice story. Our story is about a little boy who wanted to be an artist. The little boy drew a picture of a fat snake because the snake ate a elephant. The little boy asked his parents if the picture was scary but they just thought it looked like a hat. After showing his parents the picture he said he's going to draw the inside of the snake so you could see the elephant and it doesn't look like a hat. He showed his parents the new picture and they said he should just give up, and guess what, he did!!!! He grew up as a pilot. He should have followed his dreams.

We had a science test before lunch. The science test was about rocks, but I'm not really good with science so I kind of got a bad score, but I bet other people got good scores so that's fine with me!!!!!! After the science test we had to get ready for lunch. It was really hot outside so we were happy to get in the cafeteria because there was a fan on the wall next to every table. When we were done with lunch we went up top to play, it was really, really, really hot, but we still had fun playing!!!!

After lunch and recess we read our new class chapter book, Patty Reed's Doll. After we read, we switched classes. We all go to different classes and do activities. It is so much fun!! I went to a class with math because I need to work on math. So you go to a class with something you need to work on. Well that was our great day!! I hope you comment on my blog. Bye Bye!!

April 28, 2008- by Christian F.

Today we ran outside. Mr.Kootman said not to run over the little kids. When we got back to the room we went into math and we learned about negative numbers and positive numbers. We also had a quiz on area and perimeter. Number 4 was hard, but the rest of them were not hard. A negative number is to the left of the zero position on a number line. A positive number is a number is farther to the right of zero.

Next we went in to reading and we had our comprehension test on the invention of aspirin instead of our story, Louis Braille The Boy Who Invited Books For The Blind. It's about a man who discovered aspirin I would rather have had a test on Louis Braille.

Next we played Wham! It's a game that you have to spell a word. One person says one letter once you finish the word. The next person has to say the word. The next person says "WHAM" then the next person who would go next is out. Afterwards, we had our spelling test and all the words started with "ex".

We had a quiz in science it was on the smart board, rather than paper. In our class chapter book, a character named Fudge ate his brother's turtle and he had too take all this medicine that helps get the turtle out of his stomach. Later at night the turtle came out and the next morning his father and mother came home with a lot of presents. One big one was for Peter who had a turtle. His father told him to put his hand inside and there was a dog. Fudge wouldn't eat a dog!

April 25, 2008- by Aiko

Up, up and away! Today is kite day and ,I, Aiko S. will tell you about Friday, April 18,2008. This morning at approximately 8:30am I did my morning work. I did a couple of division problems and some word problems. I thought it was pretty easy. Then, we did our lesson on finding a pattern; you mostly had to use a table to find the pattern.

Now we move on and we're reading. We're reading "Koko`s Kittens." It is about a gorilla who gets a kitten and treats her kitten like her baby. Sadly, later Koko got a call and found out that Koko`s kitten, All Ball, had died in a car accident. Koko was so sad, but after almost a year Koko got a new kitten named Lipstick. So after the story we had recess and I mostly had to be in the office because of my diabetes. I have to prick my finger. If my blood sugar is low I have to eat sugar. If it is high, then I have to bolus insulin into myself; pretty tricky.

After recess we went to music class where we sang a song called "Viva La Musica". When music was over, we took a tests on spelling and I did horrible I think. Ding! The bell rang! It was the most important moment we all been waiting for; it's lunch!

As I was walking up to the lunch room I saw my mom. We had lunch together but nobody came to the lunch room. After lunch I went up top and saw A LOT of kites; almost a hundred or maybe a thousand kites. I started my kite by the second water fountain and it didn`t do a very good job but when the wind picked up I did great.

I started to let the string go and it went high. It flew for an hour then we had to go in. When we were in we read a story called Tails Of A Fourth Grade Nothing. It was about a kid who has a brother and he is crazy. He also swallowed a turtle... weird. Then on our white board we saw a video and PowerPoint from Ms. Metcalfe (our student teacher ). Her dad is a geologist so we had a better slide show than we otherwise would have.
The slide show was on rocks. on a rating scale it rates a 1,000,000000,000! It was awesome what can I say. But then I realized that it was a lesson on erosion. Erosion is when wind or water can create a hole or form a different rock its cool.

Then it was HOT time, HOT time means homework on time but I forgot to do part of my homework so I had to go to another persons class. when I was there they made me write a paper on the rules for school. Ding! The bell rang again and the day was over!

April 24, by Arabelle

Look Out!! Man what is wrong with that STAR TEST? What is all the fuss about anyway?

But anyway in math... AHHHHH!! Sorry the star test is still on my mind!! Math was all about temperature in Fahrenheit and also negative and positive numbers. We are also practicing for the star test. Yikes that star test just dose not want to stop. But lets get back to the school stuff.

When we went into reading, we talked about this weeks vocabulary words which are: raised print, determined, pattern, improvements, and cell. The story was about Louis Braille, the boy who invented books for the blind. Louis Braille started Braille writing when he was fixing Captain Barbier's nightwriting.

In writing we did pg.180 and pg.181- Writing a Bibliography. Bibliographies can be used to show information on a subject, for example lets say you had book one of a series and the book was about Greek gods and a Half-Blood named Perseus Jackson, you could probably find book two in a Bibliography about books with Greek gods and Half-Bloods.

WHOA!!!! HERE COMES THE STAR TEST RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!! DUCK!!!! OK that was a close one; better get to the class chapter book before the STAR test comes back. In our class book, Tales of a Forth Grade Nothing, Peter's dad took Peter and Fudge to the movies. On the way to the movie, A Bears Life, Fudge was jumping in the puddles so when they got to the movies Peter's dad stuffed Fudge's pants with paper towels to soak up the water.

After all that was done it was time to pack up and go home I made sure to watch out for the STAR test on my way home.