Mrs. Scholl's Classroom

When you walk into Mrs. Scholl's classroom you see neat and nice rows of smooth and shiny desks in neat rows. You also feel warm air brush your skin with warmth. If you turn to the left you see a overhead and a whiteboard that smells like multiple smells of exp markers. If you turn back around to the right you see cupboards with nice, and neat stacks of paper. In and on the cupboards are critical thinking games, math books, and stacks of homework. If you feel the carpet it is rough and rugged. As you walk through the desks they feel silky smooth, oily, and you can see your reflection. They smell like expo markers. As you get to the back you see Mrs. Scholl's desk. It has many neat stacks of paper and pencils, pens, and pictures. Behind it is filing cabinets and books.
When class has started you hear talking and whispering, writing, and rustling of papers, books, and writing utensils. Half way through class you hear questions being asked and answered. Most of the time you hear Mrs. Scholl speaking with a firm but nice and helpful voice. When you walk out of Mrs. Scholl's classroom you take one last glance. Then enter the hall to start new adventure!

Noah S.

Going to the lake

Boring, boring, yawn, I am so tired! "I hate this three hour trip."

   We pulled in the drive way, there was a bunch of cars, I saw. We got our bags of clothes, our laptops, and everything else out of the car. We walked in and their was my cousins grandma, she showed us around the house. Then  Lauren, Hannah, and I put on our swim suits, we ran down to the beach and swam 75ft out to the raft, there we saw, her aunt Angela and her son, Conner. Here comes her other cousin, Kyle, in the paddle boat. I hopped in and drove it around. Before I drove it back to the shore, I looked at the view of the lake, and saw a bunch of boats and people behind the boat tubing.

             The next day, we woke up and ran to the house (because we slept in the trailer outside in the woods) had breakfast and jumped in in our swim suits and ran o the water. Couple minutes later we were getting ready to go tubing. We had three tubs, one-one person one, one two person one, and one flat one for two people. I went with on the flat one with my cousin, Lauren, Hannah and Matt went on the double one, and Kaitlyn went on the one person tube. We went really fast and of course I fell of first because my cousin was taking up all the room and my swim suit bottoms were slipping off. 30 minutes later we parked the boat and us three,  ran into the shower and stood there getting warm.

           The next 2 days we did the same thing but tonight we did something extraordinary we did karaoke at midnight! Before we went to bed Lauren's uncle, Chris, told us about the "Swam Monster" because there was a swamp by the drive way and the camper was some what near it. Half an hour later we were watching movies on our laptops. Then all of a sudden we here knocking on the camper door. 2 minutes later, Lauren yelled,"stop or else I am going to rip your head off!" so they stopped.

     The morning were the same and that morning I went skiing. Then after that I buried dead fish that I found on the shore.

            Fourth of July! We went tubing, the wave looked like it was going to sallow you up . No one fell off the tub until I did a flip off my tube it gave me a huge headache. That night we connected 2 pontoon boats together we sat and watched fire works.

      The next day we packed up and said our good byes. We packed into the car and drove off.

                          Fun, fun, fun I don't want to leave!

Jenna K.

The Funny Car Experience

When I went to Cordova, Illinois for the World Series of Drag Racing, it was pretty mild until the funny cars. When the funny cars would start up in the pits you could smell and taste the nitrous fuel. It was terrible. It would make your eyes water and your nose and throat hurt. Surprisingly, a lot of people like it.

When these monstrous cars would race with 2 daring drivers going 260 MPH. Imagine the intensity in the car and the wind coming  in the stands. The cars look like 2 fast moving flames. In the night it is the best. You can go to any IHRA or NHRA drag racing event. You will love it!

Ty S.

Courage articles

Please leave a comment on this post telling about the article you read and your thoughts about the article.

If you found your article online, you can copy and paste a link to the article in the comments. Do that by highlighting the web site address (URL), going to your edit menu, clicking "copy," clicking into the comment box, going into the edit menu again, and clicking "paste."

Here is a picture show how you should fill out the comments box:

Tips for commenting on MrGoerend.com

This weekend, I will ask students to comment on a blog entry. A couple of tips and ground rules for commenting: the commenting system I installed on the blog will ask for a name and and email address. Remember that for your name, students need to use first and last initial only followed by your period number. For example, Scotty Jones in my 3/4 block, would sign his comment SJ3. When the form asks for an email address use student@mrgoerend.com. This is a dummy address that does not actually work, but it fills the requirement for an email address.

Parents are encouraged  to comment and can use any form they'd like. One idea could be Mom of SJ3 or Dad of SJ3.

I hope that helps avoid any confusion.

Students blogging their descriptive writing pieces

We are beginning a descriptive writing piece. Today, students worked on choosing a topic. We will be focusing on using details and sensory words in their writing to aid the reader in painting a mental picture.  We will also work on organization.

Students will be blogging their descriptive writing pieces on this blog -- MrGoerend.com -- which was created and is moderated by me. All comments to the writers and posts by the writers are moderated by me before they show up on the blog. We have discussed in class the safety and privacy issues surrounding a project like this. Students know they will sign their blog posts and comments with their first and last initials only. If you have any questions, please talk to your 6th grader about our classroom blogging discussions, and feel free to contact me. We hope that you -- parents -- will participate in our blogging experience as well, not just by reading, but also commenting on our students' writings to share in this positive experience for our students.

Students need to be writing for the authentic audiences they will experience for the rest of their lives. We live in a world that is getting smaller -- in a good way. As you can see in the visitors map on our blog, we have people from all around the world visiting our blog. This "small world" is something we as educators need to embrace. A recent article in Wired magazine has this to say about the freshman class at Stanford University:

The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.

from: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson 

A little late, but better than never

Some great ideas here for starting off the year on the right foot.

10 Tips to Start the School Year off Right

Here's one I really liked:

3. Don’t ask your kids about grades, test scores or homework.  Instead, focus on the content of the subject. (Instead of “What did you get on the test?” say, “What are you learning in science?” If you are connected to some school communication tool (like Schoolloop) you can look at homework assignments and grades privately. Benefits: you are teaching them to take ownership of their own schedules. You are letting them manage their own time. You are taking the focus off scores and putting it on learning. You are alleviating stress in their lives.

I'm a believer in this tip. We need to stress to our students that learning the content, concepts, and skills is what's important, and that when the content, concepts, and skills are learned, the grades will be where we want them to be.

I encourage you -- parents -- to contact me about your students' grades. I understand that grades are the quantifiable measure of their learning. But I also want you to engage the content, concepts, and skills they are learning. That engagement is truly what I hope this blog can be for you. I would also encourage you, though, to take the information I give you and focus the conversation with your students on the content, concepts, and skills.

As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me. If you're feeling adventurous, you can leave a comment on this post and get a conversation started!

Courage Wordle 3rd period

3rd period visited the library yesterday, so we did their courage Wordle today.

Social Studies test tomorrow!

It should be in your students' planners, but if not, there is a Social Studies test tomorrow. Studies can use the study guide we checked over in class today to study.

Courage Wordle 5th period

I've been putting up grades on PowerSchool

Parents and students,
Please realize that overall grades will fluctuate wildly these first few weeks as I'm putting up more grades. My suggestion would be to focus on each assignment at this point -- actually that's a decent suggestion to stick by all the time. If you focus on each assignment, your overall grade will be where you want it.

Mr. Goerend

Journal Topic 9/4/09

Any big plans for the long weekend? If not, what do you wish you were doing?

Have a great weekend!

Description mind map

Today we used Bubbl.us to create a mind map of our discussion on description. This map would be something worth going over with your students tonight after school.

I just realized that one of the "easy" bubbles was covered up when I exported the mind map. Unfortunately, I've already closed the map so I can't retake the picture. Sorry!

Magazine Sales

Magazine sales started yesterday. You can find out more information on Ms. Graham's wiki .

Journal Topic: 9/2/09

In one paragraph, describe a scene from any sport. Include these words:

• bounced
• struggled
• spied
• roared
• collapsed
• giggled
  

From: Unjournaling: Daily Writing Exercises that Are NOT Personal, NOT Introspective, NOT Boring!

Descriptive Writing

Today in Language Arts, students wrote descriptive paragraphs about something in our classroom. The goal was for them to be specific enough that the the "something" could be guessed, but vague enough that we wouldn't be able to guess it on the first few guesses. Because of shortened schedule, we won't have time to guess them today, but you can ask your student to read it to you and attempt to guess what it could be yourself!

Journal Topic 9/1/09

How many ways can you find to say no? Write ten sentences that say no in various ways, but without using the word no.

From: Unjournaling: Daily Writing Exercises that Are NOT Personal, NOT Introspective, NOT Boring!

Tour of MrGoerend.com

A quick tour of this blog:

The first thing you should do is subscribe to get updates sent to your email. You can do that with the Subscribe gadget at the top of the sidebar to the right. As the year picks up and we quickly move from procedures to content, I will update more often with what we're doing in class.

I don't plan on updating this blog with a planner-like list of daily homework assignments. One of the expectations I have of my students is that they keep an updated planner for themselves. I give them time at the beginning of class to copy from the white board each class's agenda. Parents, this is something we can both work on to hold our students accountable. As I take attendance each class period, I walk around to make sure students are writing in their planners. Ask to see your student's planner at night.

Next on the sidebar is Search This Blog. Use this if you can't quite find something you know you saw on our blog. It only searches this blog.

After that are the Blog Archive and Labels. These are two ways to navigate and find things on the blog. The archive organizes blog posts by date. The labels organizes by the labels I put on each post. You can think of labels as folders. I'll put a couple labels on each post. For example, I'll label this post "tour" and "blog." As this blog grows, more posts will be added to each label. So, if you want to see all posts about this blog (new features, etc.) just click the label "blog."

Double click any word! is my favorite little toy on this blog. If you double click on any word, it will give you the definition of the word. As a Language Arts teacher, how could I not love this!

Last, but definitely not least, in our side bar is Call for help! If it hasn't been made obvious yet, along with a love of reading writing, I have a passion for technology. When I got my Google Voice account, I was extremely excited for the possibilities it held. If you ever have a question for me, click on that gadget, put your number in, check the "keep my number private" box if you'd like, and hit call. Within seconds, you will get a phone call. Answer it and it will connect you with me. I want to be accessible to students and parents, but I'm not ready to give out my personal cell phone number to all my students and parents. This gadget gives me the opportunity to open up that accessibility, while maintaining my privacy and yours. Use it when you need it!

That's it for this tour. If you have any questions, leave a comment!

Toy Paragraph

Students in Language Arts (I think their schedules call it English, but I must be old school; it'll always be Language Arts to me) have been writing Toy Paragraphs these last few days. It is a combined personal essay/comparative essay. I use "essay" loosely as most of the writings are a paragraph or two long. This is just what we're looking for at the beginning of the year. We would like to see where our students are as writers and this essay gives us a bit of a pre-test.

So far, students wrote a first draft, then shared it with partners using "pair-share" to find out what their readers felt were their best comparisons. After that they wrote a second draft emphasizing more detail on those comparisons. We're now working on getting rid of dead words, and students will hand in a final draft on Monday. The final draft should be either typed or written in blue or black in. Cursive or print is fine. In a final draft, I'm looking for a student to take pride in submitting their best work. I hope this pride translates into few if any punctuation and grammar errors and writing they have spent time polishing.

Ask your student to read their Toy Paragraph to you!

Wordles

As part of our classroom decor, I put up these "Dead Wordles." I used the website Wordle.net to create them. The biggest word is the "dead word," a word that is so overused it has nearly lost its meaning. The smaller words are "live" synonyms. Students can refer to these while writing.

Today, students created their own with paper and pencil. Look forward to pictures of their additions to our Wordle Wall soon.
The Wordles students created should be in their writing folders in their binders. If they brought their binders home, ask to see their Wordles!