Yesterday we went to McDowell. I think it went fairly well. When we first got there we went and sat down, then listened to the boys choir. I couldn’t help but laugh at that because they would be really loud then get quite. After that we went to the gym and listened to the school instructor tell us a little about McDowell and our schedule for the day. Next Mr. Congrove talked to us. He’s awesome and funny. I’m actually the most excited for him.
After that we went to Mrs. Caudill’s classroom. She is one of the language arts teacher. She was telling us what the basic stuff was that the kids in her classroom did. Next year in language arts is going to be very different considering it’s a shorter time and we won’t have computers. We’ll have to use the computer lab if we want to do anything with computers.
After Mrs. Caudill’s room we went to Mrs. Griffey’s. She’s one of the social studies teachers. She basically did the same thing as Mrs. Caudill did, except one thing she did was give us some advise that some of her students wrote for us. I thought that was pretty cool.
After Mrs. Griffey’s room we went to other classrooms but they all did the same thing. Our last class was really the only different one. That was art. It started out the same as all the other classes but ended differently. She made us draw an Indian. That was fun because my Indian looked like a balloon head. Its head was huge!
One thing that every teacher said was that our classes will be 50 minutes each. They also said we need to bring jackets with us because it’s air conditioned there and gets really cold. I’m kind of looking forward to McDowell but then again I’m not. It’s just going to be really different.
Well, since we’re in sixth grade this year we are going to be going to McDowell Exchange School next year. Wednesday, May 9th we’re going over there to have a look around. I’m not very excited for next year.
The thing that I’m most excited about is trying out for softball and volleyball. I’ve watched my sister over the past 4 years playing softball and volleyball and to me it looks like she enjoys it way more than playing for Laurelville.
Seventh grade is going to be really different. I guess that’s why I’m not very excited. I’m looking forward to making new friends, and meeting new teachers. That should be fun. My biggest worry though is, not being able to get my locker opened. Out of all the things that could go wrong that’s my biggest worry.
I guess the best thing to do is wish for the best…
This is my D.A.R.E. essay. I’m going to be telling you about my experiences, what I’ve learned and how D.A.R.E. has helped me. I want to first start off by talking about how I feel about the D.A.R.E. program. I thought it was a really good program for us. It taught us a lot about drugs that I’m sure we didn’t know before. I thought it was a good program to persuade us not to do drugs or drink alcohol. I know it persuaded me that I’m never going to do drugs. There are some serious health risks and death risks. Doing drugs and drinking alcohol won’t just affect you but it will affect the people around you. A great example of this is drunk driving. You could just be driving along happily with your family and then out of nowhere here comes a drunk driver and crashes into you. My advice is don’t drink and drive you’re not just hurting yourself. Now I’m going to talk about experiences I’ve had in D.A.R.E. class.
One time in D.A.R.E. class we had a chance to walk between two pieces of tape wearing DUI goggles and then catch a tennis ball. The DUI goggles makes you experience a drunks vision. I would be a really bad drunk because I didn’t stay inside the tape and I didn’t catch the tennis ball. It was cool but I would hate to actually walk like that. Words can’t even explain how weird it felt to have that vision. We also talked about the jar of tar. That was nasty! Tar comes from marijuana smoke. There’s more tar in marijuana smoke than in tobacco smoke. Marijuana is illegal in the United States if you didn’t already know that.
Another thing we talked about was Mr. Dip Lip. He had yellow teeth that were really gross and his lip had sores on it from tobacco. Over 400,000 people die from tobacco related causes. That just proves how many people use tobacco. But the only good thing about tobacco is it’s illegal in the United States to sell tobacco to anyone under 18. There are over 200 known poisons in tobacco.
Now I’m going to talk about alcohol. If you’re the age of 21 or older you are legally allowed to drink.That doesn’t mean you should that just means it’s not illegal any more. If you’re still young DON’T DRINK!!! It affects a teenagers body more than an adults because our bodies are still growing and maturing. Alcohol really slows down the brain and body examples of this are:
- Loss of Coordination
- Slowed Reflexes
- Loss Of Self-Control
- Poor Judgement
- Memory Lapses and
- Slurred Speech
Now I’m going to talk about peer pressure. We had a D.A.R.E. class where all we talked about was peer pressure. There’s 5 kinds of peer pressure. 1. Friendly Peer Pressure 2. Teasing Peer Pressure 3. In-direct Peer Pressure 4. Heavy Peer Pressure and 5. Positive Peer Pressure. There’s also 9 ways of saying no to drugs or alcohol. They are avoiding the situation, strength in numbers, walking away, cold shoulder, just flat out saying no, giving a reason or fact, changing the subject, repeated refusal, or keep saying no (Skipping CD) and lastly using humor. These are all good ways of saying no. When we were talking about all the ways to say no and peer pressure, we made our own little play. Everyone was put into a group of two or three people and we had to use one or more of the ways of saying no to drugs or alcohol. It was really fun.
Next thing that I want to talk about is how the D.A.R.E. program has helped me. I’d say it has helped me in many ways. I know more about drugs than I did before. Truth be told I didn’t even know that much about them, just that they’re not good for you. I think the most important way the D.A.R.E. program has helped me though is teaching me to say no to them, stay away from the people who do drugs, just because I have goals in high-school. I want to play volleyball and softball, and I don’t want to ruin that by hanging around drug addicts.
The last thing that I want to talk about is Deputy Thomas. Deputy Thomas was just an awesome teacher. He came and taught two sixth grade classes a hour a piece. Gave us extra recess if everyone in our class wore their D.A.R.E. shirts except for two people. What I’m trying to say is, thanks Deputy Thomas! I’m sure everyone really appreciated it because I know I did, and at that note, I pledge to never do drugs.
The things that have made me most successful in sixth grade are my teachers. I’ve had an awesome year with them, and they’ve taught me a lot. I don’t think I could have made it this far if it wasn’t for them. They’ve made learning fun and exciting but yet we’re learning at the same time. That’s the main reason why I’m successful.
Another reason why I’m successful is because I try my hardest. I try my hardest to get good grades on all the things I do. But the steps to trying my hardest include: going back in the selection and finding the answers, checking over my work, making sure I don’t skip any questions and lastly I use my sources that I have. Being successful isn’t hard if you just try.
One last thing that has made me successful is my friends. School would be really boring if it wasn’t for them, therefor I don’t think I would too amused with school. My friends are always encouraging me and other classmates as well to be successful. Thanks guys!!!
In The Reading Workshop we had an assignment, here’s what it was “Here’s a chance to help your peers, Reading Workshop students. What advise do you have to help your classmates on the reading test?”
The advise that I would give my classmates is just to take take their time and don’t stress it. Yes, it’s a big test but there’s no reason to be nervous or stressed out about it. Plus it’s like Mr. McGuire said, they’re not testing you to see how smart you are in language arts, it’s to see how well you go back in the selection. Which takes me to my next advise.
Another tip that I would give them is, read all the questions, re-read them, go back in the passage and always check over it. Maybe even do like a triple check. Another tip would be to read it out loud if it helps you. (Just don’t read too loud, you might distract your peers!) I would give these advises because if you don’t go back in the selection you’re most likely not going to get the question right. Or you may skip a question and not know it because you didn’t check over it.
My last advise is to pick a spot in the room that’s not going to distract you. If sitting by a window will distract I wouldn’t recommend sitting their because you might waste your time looking out the window. If sitting in a corner is going to make you feel trapped I wouldn’t recommend sitting there. I’m sure you get my point.
https://www.universitylifecafe.k-state.edu/bookshelf/strategies-test-taking/
It’s just around the corner,
Teachers are frantic,
Kids are excited,
To get this thing over with,
Reviewing,
Reviewing,
Reviewing,
That’s all we’re doing,
Please OAA,
Could you hurry up?
I have 3 words,
For this test,
BRING,
IT,
ON!
In The Reading Workshop we had an assignment, and our assignment was to comment what strategies we used for our practice OAA. I hope maybe my strategies will help you on the real OAA. Down below is my comment of my strategies.
I used many strategies. I would have to say the one that I used the most was crossing out answers that I knew couldn’t be the correct answer. That was my number one strategy for this practice OAA test. Once I got rid of 2 answers, it made it easier to pick the correct one and because I had a 50/50 chance of getting the question right. I’d have to say this one worked well for me considering I didn’t miss too many multiple choice questions.
Another strategy I used for the practice OAA was going back into the selection and finding key words to help me find the correct answer. This strategy worked pretty good too. Doing that gave me a pretty good idea about what the answer would be.
The best strategy I used though was taking my time, going over the whole thing multiple times, making sure my answers in the booklet matched the test document, making sure I knew where I found my extended response answers and making sure I backed my extended response questions up. I spent my whole last half hour doing all those things. I tried to do the best I could and to me, that’s all that matters.
http://www.nmerrickschools.org/webpages/lcasillo/our_reading_and_writ.cfm?subpage=748702
In The Reading Workshop we had to write a letter to Mr. McGuire about the weird, strange, exciting and the totally unexpected parts in our book.
March 19, 2012
Dear Mr. McGuire,
I know you’re a huge fan of reading and I just got done with an awesome book. I’m pretty sure you haven’t read this book, but it’s called Dear Jo. It was written by Christina Kilbourne. This book was kind of sad but at the same time exciting.
The one thing I found totally unexpected was the farmer finding Leah dead while walking his dog. That part was so unexpected! I didn’t think the guy would kill her, let alone hide her some place in the forest in the middle of winter where no one would find her for a while. I actually thought they were going to find her, but yet her still be alive. She’d been lying there for months. No one could see her because she was buried under all the snow and leafs. When all the snow melted, all that was left was her bones.
The most exciting part of this book was the end. The end was the most exciting because that was the part where they found Leah’s killer. Leah’s killer was actually going to try and take Maxine too. Maxine was Leah’s best friend. Maxine got really paranoid when she went missing and all she wanted to do was find who killed Leah and kill him. The Police and Detectives wanted Maxine to set the killer up because they actually thought they knew who it was. It ends up they did and they caught him! The plan was to make the killer think he was going to get Maxine too, but actually it was just a set up so all the cops could trample him when he tried taking Maxine to his car.
The weirdest part would definitely have to be Leah’s killer pretending to be a 16 year old boy just so he could get the younger girls and kill them. Leah and Maxine always got on this website where you could chat with people and that’s how they found Leah’s killer. But when he was suppose to meet Maxine at the mall he told her that his son (Brad was who he was pretending to be) had an accident at hockey practice and that he wanted his dad to go and pick up Maxine.
If you think the book sounds good from just those parts you should totally read it because it gets way more exciting than that.
Sincerely,
Lexi E.
In exactly two weeks I will be in Tennessee. I’m so excited. Except I’m not really looking forward to getting up at 4 a.m. to leave but I’ll live. I’m going to Tennessee with my aunt, uncle, baby cousin and two other people. We’re going to leave Thursday and come back late Sunday night. We’re staying in a cabin with a hot tub and game room! I’m going to have so much fun I’m glad my aunt and uncle are taking me.
My aunt and uncle have already talked about what were going to do when we’re down there. I’m pretty sure we’re going to the aquarium because my uncle wants to. 🙂 We’re going to do a lot more stuff too.
The best part is I get to miss school. 🙂 But it’s only going to be two days that I’m missing, no big deal. I’m soooooooooo excited!!!
In The Reading Workshop we had an assignment. We had to choose which series was our favorite out of the series poll. Down below is my comment and why I like series. If you click on the link to The Reading Workshop you’ll see the choices we had. The picture below is the choices that my classmates chose.
The series I chose was Dreamhouse King series. I chose them because they were really good and I never wanted to stop reading. They were so exciting. The series didn’t really start making sense until the second book, so having those books as a series was a good choice.
In my opinion I prefer series. I prefer series because to me they make more sense because you have more than one book to explain the whole story. I also think the books in series are more exciting, most of them are but not all. I’m not saying that all the books that aren’t series aren’t exciting but it seems to me that they’re pretty exciting and just helps me understand the books way better. I think I would rather read series than single books.
Image from http://www.thereadingworkshop.com/
Lucky Lexi 