5/6C’s Class Blog 2008

We’ve lost another student. Zack has moved to another school, and we will miss him. Our class discussions will be a lot quieter now, without Zack’s insights and comments.

Zack, we hope you have a great time at your new school. Don’t forget you can send us comments on our blog, or email us, so we can keep in touch.

Picture Credit: Suitcase II, Carl Street, Originally uploaded by heather

This site, ClassTools, is a great way to make Flash games, activities and diagrams which can then be easily put on your blog. Best of all, you don’t have to sign up for anything - just get on there and play! Here’s a Venn diagram I put together in just a couple of minutes; it’s much quicker than the involved diagrams we did earlier this year, although they did look better.

Click here for full screen version

Cute animation, isn’t it? But it does keep changing very quickly, so here are the questions for you to consider typed out so they don’t keep disappearing on you!

• DId you enjoy your holiday?
• What do you most want to learn about this term?
• What new skills would you like to acquire?
• Which skills would you like to develop further?

Post your answers in a comment here.

Animation made with Fodey

There really is such a thing as a four leafed clover - here’s the evidence (this came up for discussion in class recently). There are lots of lucky charms and traditions for wishes - we read about some of them in Felice Arena’s book, Wish.

Some people think it’s lucky to carry a rabbit’s foot. I don’t think that’s very lucky for the rabbit, though!

What do you think is lucky?

Picture from SuperFantastic

Look what I “found” in a newspaper. An amazing story. 

Image made with Fodey

Here’s a great program to make easy comic strips with; it’s called ToonDoo. Grade 5/6C, you can use this program to make comics after you have drafted a storyboard of your planned comic. First though, it’s always a good idea to have a play. So follow this link to ToonDoo, then click on the blue Tools tab. Go to the top choice, ToonDoo Maker. It will ask you to log in - use the username and password that is in our Collaborate forum.

1. Use our class username and password, and start ‘tooning! (Remember the rules - polite, clean and friendly).
2. When you are done, save it and view it.
3. When viewing, you’ll see a group of icons on the right hand side of your cartoon. Click on the bottom one, “Embed in your blog”. Copy the bottom set of code.
4. Make a new post in your blog. Give it a heading and do any typing you want about your cartoon. Then go to the HTML tab on the top right of the editing section. Click below any typing you have done and then paste (right click to paste, or CTRL+V) the code in. Save your post and voila! You’re a published cartoonist!
5. If your cartoon is too big to fit in your blog, you can also save the cartoon as a picture. Save it to your own work folder, then you can upload it to your blog as you would any other picture. This option lets you resize the cartoon to fit your blog.
6. Post a note in the collaboration forum to let us know you have a cartoon done.

The most popular books being read at our school so far are The Potato People, by Pamela Allen for the juniors and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl, for the middle school. In the senior school there is a very wide range of books being read, but the one read by the most students (three!) is Specky Magee by Felice Arena and Garry Lyon.

What’s your favorite book? Why is it your favorite?

Photo credit: Cat Reads, Originally uploaded by Litandmore

It was a very long second term with twelve weeks and lots on. The highlight was our school production, Circus Splendida. What a night! Check out our posts on the production on individual student blogs.

At the end of term, which was also the end of semester one, we reviewed our goals that we had set at the start of the year. Some people had met their goals well, some had not met them but had made some progress, whilst others had forgotten that they had set goals at all! We learned that goals are only useful if they are revisited and reviewed regularly.

So now we are on our two week winter break. Some of our students are travelling, some are staying home, others are visiting friends or relatives. I went on a quiet trip with my husband to the Grampians and Sovereign Hill, which is very different without dozens of children in tow! I also set a goal for July - to clean my desk at work (stop rolling on the floor laughing, grade 5/6C - I mean it this time!). Here’s some proof that mine is not the messiest desk on Earth:   

What are you doing these holidays? Where are you going? Have you goals to achieve? Post a comment!

Picture credits: corner desk from photobucket, picture by melheadzk92; paper pile from www.winona.edu; computer desk from www.macandphoto.com

Freya is leaving us to travel through Asia for the rest of the school year - what a fantastic adventure. We hope she will keep in contact through her blog. Have a wonderful trip, Freya; you will be missed! When she returns, Freya will be going straight to high school.

On her last day, following our new tradition, Freya got to be “Queen of the Chair” - that means she got to sit in the recliner whenever she wanted to. She made herself a crown and generally did whatever she wanted (within reason, of course! Freya was Queen of the Chair but Mrs C remains Queen of the Classroom!)

Picture from Classroom Clipart

Mrs C has set up Google Analytics to look at the statistics and information of our site’s visitors. Since April 5, we have had visitors from 33 different countries! If you are a visitor from anywhere other than our school, please post a comment telling us where you are from and how you found us. Here are our visitor stats for the last 11 weeks, according to Google Analytics:

As well as these multiple visits, we had single visits from Malaysia, Philippines, Romania, Dominican Republic, Turkey, Norway, Denmark, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Pakistan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Slovakia, Poland and Israel.