Monday, March 10, 2014

Quadblogging Week 3

This week, we're moving to the third rotation of our quadblogging project, so we'll be visiting the following bloggers from Moscow:

Teasdale
DJ
Kevin
Ivan
Jessie
Sophia
Mikaela
Natalia
Helen

Here's a cool cartoon some of the Moscow students created about Internet safety!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Our "Mummies"

Here in Wisconsin, most children refer to their mothers as "Mom" or "Mommy." When our blogging partners in New Zealand referred to their mothers as "Mum" or "Mummy," we chuckled a little, because when we think of mummy, we think of our Ancient Egypt study of mummification!

In 6th grade, students learn about ancient civilizations. Recently, Egpyt was the focus, and students learned about mummification. Our science teacher, Mrs. Kohls, discovered a terrific activity for simulating the mummification process. For the past several weeks, we have been "mummifying" chicken legs!

First, students washed, measured, and weighed their chicken legs. 
Oops! Can you see which rule of lab safety we forgot to follow in the next two photos?


\

If you guessed "Not wearing goggles," you guessed correctly! 
Even though washing and measuring chicken legs isn't an activity that would likely damage the eyes,
 it's best to always be in the habit of wearing goggles when conducting experiments in the lab.

Next, students placed their chicken legs inside plastic bags 
containing a mixture of salt, baking soda, and  cinnamon.


Each week thereafter, students take their "chicken mummies" out, measure and weigh them, 


record the changes, and put them in a bag with a new batch of the drying ingredients. 

In our studies, we learned that this stage of the mummification process took 40 days.
We are currently in our fifth week of this activity.
It will be interesting to see the final results of our mummification process
and to discuss how our process is like/unlike the process the Egyptians used
so many years ago in the desert.

Friday, February 28, 2014

Sharing Our Stories

This week, House B students wrote blog posts and enjoyed visiting the blogs of our quadblogging partners from Vardon School, in New Zealand. Earlier this year, they had written "Scarology" stories, which are personal narratives that tell how they got certain scars. Some of the scars students wrote about are physical--broken bones and stitches. Others scars are emotional. All of the stories are heartfelt. Because the stories mean a lot to our students, they decided to share them on their blogs, in addition to other their other posts. We hope you appreciate them and feel compelled to share some of your own stories.

Monday, February 24, 2014

First Day on the Blogs!

Today, we visited and commented on blog posts at the Vardon School in New Zealand! It was fun to "meet" so many students who are excited about learning. 

Students also got their own blogs started. Some plan to write about Wisconsin and our school. Some would like to write about personal topics related to their interests and families. Many students would also like to share their Scarology stories. Clearly, we have all kinds of ideas to blog about! We look forward to meeting more bloggers and sharing our stories.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Hello!

Hello and welcome! We are a 6th grade class that works on English reading and language arts skills.

The village of Pulaski is small and has one middle school. Here's a visual of what our school "looks" like (click on the image to make it bigger).


We are excited about connecting with partner classrooms from around the globe. Click here to find us on a Google Map!