This week we collaborated with our 5th grade friends at Pemberton Elementary. We read three different stories, then met with Mrs. Schmidt’s class through the website Type with Me. It was exciting to talk about the characters, setting, problem and solutions to our stories with another class. We learned how to justify our comments and communicate our ideas! We hope we can learn with them again!

Imagine four schools that had a partnership/agreement that would mean that for a four week cycle, each school’s blog would be the focus for one week out of four. Each school in the Quad would spend some time visiting the blog of the school for that week, leave comments etc. After that week, another one of the four schools would be the focus and this would be repeated for the four week cycle and then repeated. It wouldn’t take the pupils long to work out that during their week, they would get a boost in visitor numbers and comments. This would give a real focus to have posts online ready for this bulge in visits. During the other three weeks, pupils get to visit and comment on other blogs in their quad.

From David Mitchell’s website http://quadblogging.net.

We are very excited to have the opportunity to join three other classes in a QuadBlogging journey!  We are partnered with Mr O’Connor’s class in Canada, Mr. Kilgour’s class in the United Kingdom, and Mr. Sumner’s class, also in the United Kingdom.  We are looking forward to learning with all of them as we visit each other’s blogs very soon!

In our reading this week we learned that when the Tucks drank from the spring in the wood, they stopped getting older!  We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of staying the same age forever.  Take a look at our thoughts……

Advantages of staying the same age forever:

These are our thoughts on the disadvantages of staying the same age forever:

Would you like to stay the same age forever?  Why or why not?

Today we were challenged with building a structure out of raw spaghetti, string, one yard of masking tape, and a marshmellow!  In the end we learned that the structure wasn’t the important part of the task.  We learned that collaborating with our team mates is what brought us the most success.

What do you think is the most important characteristic of good team work?

The Marshmellow Challenge! on PhotoPeach

The First Week of School! on PhotoPeach

We are very excited to be joining a Global Read Aloud program for the first time this year.  We will be reading Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.  Students from around the world will be reading and responding to this great book together.  We are especially excited because we will be collaborating with Ms. Kim’s 5th Graders in Seoul, Korea!  Visit Ms. Kim’s classroom blog for a peek inside their classroom!

While we wait to get started, here’s something to think about:

What is your favorite thing about reading?  What do you like best about reading?