Miss Mullen's Last Day and Project Blog

Tomorrow will be Miss Mullen's last day. I think that she has done a good job. If there are any comments that you would like to share with her, post them here--I get an email before they get posted below.

Project Blog

Starting Thursday, we will begin a project that will take us to the end of the year. Part of the project will incorporate the use of a Project Blog. You can check it out here. I'm pretty excited about starting this. We will also be using a Wiki for the project. Has anyone heard of a wiki before. I'm sure you have all heard of Wikipedia. We will be building our own Wikpedia for this project. Click here to get a definition of a Wiki. Click here for our wiki website.

What Do You Need From School

Watch the below video and think about how it relates to you. When it talks about students, it is talking about you!! What do you think school needs to be like for you to be successful in the future? Please comment. You can do so anonymous or you can include your name.

Where Have I Been??

Well, it's certainly been a long time. So many things have happened since I last blogged. The Gators won ANOTHER national champions--which means Ohio State, sorry Jansen, lost another. My daughter Julianna is 1 month old today. Miss Mullen is now teaching the afternoon 7th Grade Social Studies classes. We can't forget Spring vacation and now we're in the middle of 1/2 days. Crazy!!!!

Have You Seen Mr. Fausnaught?

Have you seen Mr. Fausnaught lately. Now that he's been doing the "Walkthrough" obersvations, he certainly has a lot of free time. I was looking for him the other day and found him, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Conoway in his office. Look and see what I saw.

March Madness

Are you ready for March Madness? Special thanks to Dylan, JP, Janson, Shariq and Spencer for posting the tournament bracket. Everyone has different predictions for who will win. The person who gets furthest in the bracket will get a free lunch from Joe's Pizza.

• Jackson--University of Texas
• Evan--University of Kansas
• Janson--Ohio State University
• Garren--University of Louisville
• Doug--University of Memphis
• Austin--Duke University
• JP--University of North Carolina
• Shariq--University of Oregon
• Spencer--Boston College
• Dan--University of Texas
• Dylan--University of Kansas
• Mr. Ellis--University of Florida
• Mike Kinney--Georgtown University?????

Julianna Kathleen is Here!!!

Yesterday, my daughter was born at 1:31 A.M. Everything is going very well for her and my wife. My other to kids, Jaime and Jack, were so excited to see her. At least they were for the first 15 minutes.

The PSSA's are Here!!!!

Well, the PSSA's are finally here. All of our students are ready for the tests, and I know that they 're going to do a great job. During class today, I noticed that the anxiety level really varied among the students. Some student were not worried at all, while others said that they probably wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. And, others felt like they were ready to take them right then and there!!!

What to Do to Be Ready:
We spent most of day to day talking about what we needed to do to be ready to do the best jobe we could on the tests. We came up with two different lists: 1) what to do before the test 2) what to bring with you to the test.

Here is what you need to do before the test:

• Get a good night sleep. Remember what I told you about how my kids get when they don't get enough sleep. We don't want that to happen to you.
• Eat a good breakfast. Nobody wants to hear their stomach growling during the middle of the test.
• For breakfast, don't focus on high sugar cereals. I can't believe I'm saying this but don't just eat a bowl of Lucky Charms. Make sure to eat some fruit or toast.
• Make sure to get a drink and us the bathroom BEFORE the test begins.

Here is what to bring with you to the test:

• Bring a #2 pencil. Remember all of the mechanical pencils are #2. Make sure to bring extra lead.
• Bring an extra eraser. I know that you all know where to get extra eraser caps. The big cube erasers will work well.

Good luck tomorrow. I know that you will all do very well!!!

Ready, Aim, Fire Your Marshmallows!!

The day has arrived to launch the Popsicle catapults. We had launches of all different kinds. Some went backwards, some went straight up in the air, and some went a pretty good distance forward. The kids realized after their first launch that the ones with the lowest arc went the farthest. They quickly tried to make adjustments. Here are some pictures of the catapult launches.

Here are the winners from today's catapult contest. The overall winners were JP, Dylan and Doug. They launched their marshmallow over 37 feet. Here are the winners for each class.