Mr. Miller's Classroom Blog

Posts under ‘Classroom Activities’

A tough loss for the U.S. team

Sep 11th, 2011
by John Miller.
21 comments

The U.S. National Rugby team suffered a hard fought loss to Ireland yesterday. The defense was able to hold the Irish team back for awhile, but consistent pressure eventually led to a 22-10 defeat for the U.S. team.

We need some help translating the game highlights from the Rugby News Service. Can someone tell us what a “ruck” is in the following quote:

The USA’s resistance was led by Todd Clever. The openside flanker was everywhere – slowing down Irish ruck ball, supporting ball carriers and piling up bodies on the side of the ruck like a man who knew he had to lead by example.

We are not sure what it means, but we have a few ideas. We would also like some perspective from anyone that was able to watch the match. It did not come on the television until almost midnight here so we only have the highlights to go on. The next match for the U.S. team is on September 15th against Russia.

Rugby!

Sep 8th, 2011
by John Miller.
7 comments

Most students at Chalone Peaks Middle School have never heard of the sport called rugby. In the next few weeks the Treasure Seekers will be learning about the game and following the Rugby World Cup going on in New Zealand. Many nations are participating in the competition and several class bogs will be supporting their home team throughout the tournament.

We hope to learn a great deal about rugby by studying it, but also hope our friends around the world can give us some tips about the sport. It is very popular in countries like New Zealand, Australia, England, Scotland, Canada, and France. The United States has a team too, so we will be supporting The Eagles as they try to advance out of the first round.

What is your favorite team? Who do you think will win it all?

Tour of California

May 24th, 2011
by John Miller.
9 comments

Picture 1

Last week was a busy one for Room 162 students and Mr. Miller. The Amgen Tour of California bike race sailed right by our school on Thursday, May 19th. We packed a lunch and walked out to catch the riders on their way from Seaside to Paso Robles. King City was the halfway point of the 135 mile fifth stage.

IMG_0816-1We prepared for their arrival by making posters, learning about the riders and the teams from the Amgen site, and by purchasing flags that represented the home countries of numerous riders.

We discovered that many of the riders were from places we already knew about because of our partner schools this year. For example, Team Saxo Bank and Team Rabobank had several riders from Denmark (Go Vonsild School!) We also cheered for riders from New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, and of course, the United States.

IMG_0824

(All photos courtesy Ms. Agius)

Team Radio Shack had the top two finishers and Team Garmin had the best overall finish. We were very excited to see Oscar Freire from Team Rabobank take the lead on his own right in front of us. He held on for the next 5o miles, but gave it up in the end to the peleton and eventual stage winner Peter Sagan of  Team Liquigas.

The Buswell blog

May 11th, 2011
by Julieta.
10 comments

buswell

Are you looking for a blog that entertains you so much you won’t be able to click away ? In that case you should go visit the Buswell blog. This blog has many excellent blog posts that are worth spending time on. I really like this blog because of it’s side bars, videos, and the interesting blog posts.

I really like the side bar that looks like a bookshelf  because it tells you the books they have read. This side bar shows you a bookcasepicture of each book and if you click on a book it will take you to a page that is filled with information of it. I also like the big side bar on the right of the blog it is filled with important information. This side bars has many sections such as homework help and spelling practice, under them they have links were students can go and get help or practice in what they need. In your free time you should go and check it out.

I also like the videos they post such as their Greek presentation and the crime investigation. The Greek presentations video has images of  a play they did. All the students have Greek costumes on and play rolls as greek citizens like they did back in time. The crime investigation video is about the student trying to figure out who was the bad person and what they did. The images show how the students try to find the clues to figure out the mystery. What is fun about this video is that they don’t tell you anything of what happened so as well as them you have to figure it out.

Another thing I like about their blog is their posts such as Wizards and Other Happenings, because it tells you what the students have been up to. It his you complete information on what they’ve done and also what they are planning to do. Another blog  post I like is Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, this blog post tells you how you can help in a walk-a-thon but under it it has another section called Touch Tank Date which gives you information of a project their teacher did with her students. The first section tells the student’s parent if they would consider to be sponsors for MBS fifth grader who are going to participate in the walk-a-thon. The second section is tells you how  the teacher and her husband would dive Nubble Light and collect animals which would visit Colchester for a week, and it also tells you about student volenteering on Saturday and going to Nubble Light, Maine and trying to find animals.

I enjoy visiting this blog because of it’s side bars, videos, and the interesting blog posts. If you are looking for a good blog The Buswell blog is the blog for you. You don’t see a magnificent blog like this one everyday? Don’t waist you time looking for a blog or finding something good to look at just go to THE BUSWELL BLOG!

Mrs. W.’s awesome blog

May 10th, 2011
by Dusty.
1 comment

Do you like to read blog great post and leave comments? If you do you need to visit Mrs. W’s Blog the Kids in the Mid. It is one of the best blogs I’ve ever seen. I like this blog because of the organization, they have great pictures and videos to go with their post, and that they post daily.

Picture 1One reason I like there blog is because is the organization. They have the posts in categories by month and year. They also organize their writings by what they are about and they have a list of passions so if you have a passion on the list it would take you to the writing on that topic. They have a section where they have their friends from all around the world and the teachers name or class blogs name labeling it as a link to their page.

Another reason I think this blog is so great is that it has great videos and pictures to go along with their posts. For one post they had for the Bream Creek Show they had an Animoto Picture 2video to help explain what they did there and that they had fun. In another post Mrs. W. called Avatars and Global Challenges was showing the world how to make avatars and global challenges. She added along with her explanation four pictures of very unique avatars.

My favorite thing about this blog is that they post weekly. So you never are bored when visiting her blog. For example one post, Global Challenges, was posted March 20th and the next post,Adding Links, Categories and Tags, was posted on March 23rd only three days away.  Another example is on the 30th of March they did two posts Easter break and Taking off your adds.

For all these reasons I think Mrs. W.’s blog is one of the best I’ve ever seen. She has an very well organized blog, pictures or videos to go along with posts to help explain there post better, and they post daily. So next time you look for a good blog you should check out The kids in the Mid’s Blog. If you want to be amazed!

Blogging Challenge #6

Apr 19th, 2011
by John Miller.
No comments yet
Your challenge will be easier this week

Your challenge will be easier this week

This is a fun week to be part of the blogging challenge! You will each get to play a game. Since many schools are on spring holiday (we had our break last week), some students may not be participating in this challenge until after they return. Testing is also coming up. We will pause our challege participation while we complete our testing next week.

So let’s have some fun this week. Here is your challenge via Miss W  . . .

The game is called count out three. Those students who have taken part in a student blogging challenge before will have already played this game. But we have many different students taking part in the challenge this year, so you should be visiting different blogs for the game in 2011.

Here are the instructions:

  • click on a blog on the student list – count one
  • now click on a blog from their blogroll – count two
  • finally click on a blog from that blogroll – count three

Leave a comment on an interesting post at this blog.

Do this activity at least three times and finally, write your own post saying which blogs you visited and what posts you left a comment on. Why did you choose that post? Remember to include a link back to the post you left a comment on so that student gets a pingback or trackback.

When you finish this activity, you can do one or more of the following activities . . .

1. “Learning Time” – Think about something important you have learned outside of school – remember we should all be life long learners not just learners while at school. How did you learn it? Why is it important to you? Who or what taught you about it? How has this learning helped you in your life?

2. “Worlde your Blog” – Have you created a wordle from your blog? Check out the one Abbey created for one of our previous activities. If you have problems embedding your wordle, ask Abbey some questions or try to get rid of some of the extra spaces in the embed code. Remember if you do a printscreen and save as an image, you still need to give attribution to the wordle website.

3. “Internet Safety” – The students at our school recently had a drama performance by Bamboo Theatre company from Sydney who were touring around Tasmanian schools. Both students and staff found much interesting information about being safe on the web. Part of it was facebook and your settings. Have you had lessons on being internet safe? Do you use a certain program at school that teaches these things? Write a post about how you learn about internet safety.

Image: ‘Cyril the squirrel up for a challenge+15:54:50‘ 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32659528@N00/1184487050

Infographic – Cell Phones at School

Apr 16th, 2011
by John Miller.
2 comments

Mark created an infographic to share using data gathered from our quad blog buddies. He analyzed the data from four schools – Mr. Miller’s class in California, the 49ers in Texas, Cloud Nine in New Zealand, and  Mr. Squires in Australia.

Screen shot 2011-04-16 at 4.28.06 PM

SuperScooper Skype

Apr 16th, 2011
by John Miller.
1 comment

Last week we had a chance to Skype with our old friends the Scoopers in Dunedin, New Zealand. We are sending each other travel bugs. It will be great fun tracking them together as they make their way (finger’s crossed!) across the Pacific. They got a chance to show us “our” bug – a very cute bee. They named the bug that we are sending them T.O.B.I. Both bugs are now in caches awaiting a couple of geocachers to find them and get them moving.

Our geocaching project has been fun this year. We have had a few ups and a few downs. One of our bugs made it to the Huzzahnians in Canada, but another headed that way to the Ripplers disappeared from the first cache we placed it in, never to be seen again. :-(

One of our first bugs, Kallista Jake has travelled over 40,000 miles and is currently in Australia, just a few miles from Kallista Primary School. Another bug is headed to our friends in Ms. Ratzels class in Kansas. It is making progress too. We even tried to send the Scoopers a bug back in September, but that is still in the hands of a geocacher in Fresno.

We look forward to Skyping again with the Scoopers after testing in a couple of weeks!

Edublog Challenge #3, Going Dark

Mar 20th, 2011
by John Miller.
2 comments

student_challenge-17fpfd0It’s week three in the Edublog Challenge and there are several activities to choose from. Student bloggers from Mr. Miller’s class will be adding maps and badges to their blogs, writing a bit of their posts in another language (we’ll try out Google Translator too), write about Earth Hour (we will be on spring holiday), and visit at least ten blogs from other countries. Here is how we will break it down:

Student Bloggers

1. Add a map to your blog (view instructions)

2. Add a Challenge Badge to your site. Follow these directions.

3. Add a translation tool widget

4. Write part of your post (below) in another language so that our Spanish, Danish, and Romanian readers can read it.

Screen shot 2011-03-20 at 7.56.23 PM5. Write a post about Earth Hour after visiting the site. Explain to your readers what it is, where it originated and how interested folks can participate. If you will be participating, tell your readers how. When you finish your post, copy it, and paste it into Google Translate and turn it into either Spanish, Danish, or Romanian. Copy the translation and paste it into your blog post as a text document (T). You will then publish your post in English and another language.

Class Activity

1. We will be writing a post about Earth Hour and how we might be able to participate.

2. We will be reaching out and commenting on blogs from ten different countries. Here is a partial list:

  • Vietnam
  • Argentina
  • China
  • New Zealand
  • Canada
  • Philippines
  • Spain
  • Malaysia
  • United Kingdom
  • Thailand
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