September 3, 2008- by Monique

It is the second week of school, and everything is going great. In writing we learned about Analogies. An Analogy is something like this: Blue is to ocean as brown is to mud. They get easier when you get the hang of them. We also did our D.O.L, which stands for Daily Oral Language. Afterwards, we switched to Math. We learned about Place Value, Expanded Notation, and we had a Math Test, which had only 20 problems. It was divided into four pages, which probably intimidated some people in the room. When we are done with our Math Test, Mr.Kootman lets us get a book from his library, which has a lot of classic choices. We corrected our Math Test after everybody was finished, and almost EVERYBODY had some mistakes in their seemingly corrected test. It was pretty funny. A few minutes later, we went to recess. Some of us went to the picnic tables to eat, while some of us went up to the blacktop to run around. However, we only got 15 minutes. All of us rushed to our lines as fast a rabbit could run. Mr.Kootman picked us up at the blacktop where we were quietly waiting for him.

When we entered the room, Mr.Kootman told us to take out our reading books to talk about and read the story, "Toto." The story was about a boy and a baby elephant named Toto. Toto had lost his mom by wandering off too far. A trap caught Toto's foot, and the boy frees him. However, Toto does not leave the boy alone, so the boy had to lead Toto back to his habitat. The whole thing took place in the grassy plains in Africa. We talked about it for so long that we only heard 47 seconds of the story. Then it was time for lunch. The whole class lined up on the railing, and the WHOLE line took up almost half of the elevated concrete, and it was confusing to find what side the end was.

The cafeteria was very crowded, and loud too. It was as if we were being crammed into a box with a bunch of barking dogs. The benches were small as well, it was hard to find a spot, but everybody found one, eventually. After about 15 minutes, our table was dismissed, and we went to Lunch Recess. I spent my time just walking around, but the others, they ran and played on the swings; they went everywhere. Time just flew by without us knowing. The bell rang, and we had to go back to our lines. As soon as we sat down at our desks, we finished off "Toto", then read a chapter of Room One. Ted brought food to April, who has no money, and lives with her mom and brother. Ted had bought a ton of bizarre food to give to them. We couldn't see why they would want to eat that daily. Mr.Kootman closed the book, and turned on the projector, which showed a Brainpop page. He clicked on the hand, and the video froze. He had to restart the computer ALL over again. It took quite a while to get it working right.

The first video we saw on Brainpop was about Presidential Elections. We learned that every four years we pick a new president to be in charge of our country. You have to be at least 18 to vote, and you have to be at least 35 to run for president, you also have to be naturally born in the United States to run. There are two Major Political Parties: The Democratic Party, and the Republican party. Each Political party has their own symbol to represent them. For the Democrats, they have a Donkey as their symbol, and the Republicans have an Elephant as their symbol. These are known as the Democratic Donkey and the Republican Elephant. There are lesser parties, but they never win Presidential Elections. They may win Mayor, though. The race starts with tons of people who want to be president. The people who win move on, but the others lose. Then it all comes down to two candidates. One Republican, and one Democrat. The two candidates battle it out in a series of speeches. The one who wins that struggle gets to be president. Voting can be hard for some people because its hard to choose between the candidates. Some people are nervous to see how it turns out, while some people are confident in the people they voted for.

The second video we saw was about Synonyms, Homonyms, and Antonyms. A Synonym is a word that means the same thing. For example: Beautiful=Pretty. The list goes on. A Homonym is a word that is spelled the same as another, but means something else. An Antonym is a word that is the opposite of a word. For example: Up=Down. At the end of the day we had drawings. About half of us won something. Finally, we took a Spelling Pretest, and then we went home.

Image Credits: http://www.wordgames.de/Bilder/advanced/synonyms.jpg,
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/primary/african-elephant2.jpg

http://bluebook.state.or.us/images/national/donkphant.jpg