When our class did Marble Coasters, it was very fun. Marble Coasters is where we get partnered up into groups of three, getting a Styrofoam coaster for each person. Using every coaster, we had to use one marble and try and get the marble to go down the track. Once we got the marble down, we had a new goal that we had to try and accomplish with the track. The second one was trying to make a loop.

Lit Circles is our way of doing reading.  Mr. Solarz gives us over ten book options.  We then write our 5 favorite out of those books.  He has chosen my top two books every time.  We are required to have a discussion every day about an important part in the book, a sign post or really good writing in the book.  In our groups I always have a lot of friends.  Also some parents came in to read with us.

Literature Circle resources from our website:

• Our Literature Circle groups with bookmarks, links to our Google Docs, and our video discussions
• Our daily video discussions
• Some video discussions sorted by category
• 21st Century Literature Circles
• Global Literature Circles
• Global Literature Circles resources
• Students teaching some of the mini-lessons
• Choosing our books for Literature Circles
• World Book Talk Project
• Our Book Talks
• Some pictures of us during Lit Circles & More Here!
  

I really enjoy working on my e-portfolio. We work on our e-portfolio instead of worksheets. I really like working on my e-portfolio because we get to do this for different activities and different things we are learning. I think that doing this instead of of worksheets because we get to do a lot more to the project than just writing. We can do things like insert a picture and youtube videos. I am so glad we do e-portfolios. We get to use blogs for a range of different subjects. For example, we used e-portfolio to share our writing piece, we used a recording.

Here are all of our ePortfolios from our class: http://psolarz.weebly.com/e-portfolios.html

Blog Posts that Mr. Solarz has Written/Videos that he's Been a Part of:

• Reflective ePortfolios as a Means of Improving Student Learning
  
• Improving My Students' Written Reflections Through Online Directions & Exemplars
  
• Teaching and Assessing 21st Century Skills: Reflection & Synthesis
  
• Using ePortfolios to Synthesize and Reflect on New Learning
  
• Students Reflecting on the First Few Weeks of School
• Using a Reflective ePortfolio Entry to Get to Know Your Students' Academic Abilities
• Introducing Blended Learning to Students in a Traditional 5th Grade Classroom
• Project Roundtable: Using Online Portfolios as More than Digital Scrapbooks
• Digital Portfolios with @PaulSolarz via EduSlam
  

Other People's Blog Posts:

• Examples of Digital Portfolios
  
• Digital Portfolio Student Examples
  
• iPad Summit Boston: Digital Portfolios

"If the World Were a Village" was a book we read about what the world would be like if it was one village with many different cultures and religions. This book was about if the world were a village and it had a population of 100 people. This book left me feeling good, because this book informed me about the problems and hard times around the world and it told us how we could help to solve these problems. I learned that the world is unfair, not every one gets clean water, good food, and sanitation but this book was a nice way to learn about it. 

Overhead mystery is when Mr. Solarz will put a riddle up on the board, and we have to ask yes or no questions to figure it out. It is really fun to answer these riddles, and we also have to think a lot about them.

• I liked this learning experience because I love to figure out riddles, and that's all overhead mysteries are. But we also learn while we do it because we have to think out of the box.
  
• This learning experience taught me how to think out of the box on answers, and how to really think about the question to figure out the answer.
  
• Three 21st Century skills it improved are think interdependently, think creatively, and think and learn flexibly, because we have to be creative to find the answer to the riddles, we have to depend on other people's questions to figure some things out ourselves, and we have to be flexible because if we are sure we know the answer, but we figure out that we are wrong, we have to be flexible.
  
• Other teachers should do this because it is a fun way to learn, and it is really interesting and enjoyable. It will get kids to think differently, and it will get kids to speak up.
  

Order a copy of Red Herrings from Amazon here (this is the book that I use for the overhead mysteries): http://www.amazon.com/Red-Herring-Mysteries-Critical-Questioning/dp/1601441622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403383507&sr=8-1&keywords=red+herrings

On a Silent Day Mr Solarz doesn't talk. I liked this learning experience because it shows that we are responsible enough to run the classroom together. Also I am a leader and I tried to be a follower.  This learning experience taught me that are class is good with running the class and listing to each other we really improved working together and not getting in arguments. Three 21st Century skills it improved are Work Creatively with Others, Solve Problems, Think and Learn Flexibly because those are things that we do without Mr. Solarz there is some things that we had to solve and working together is a really big part of a silent day. Other teachers should do this because it is a great opportunity for teaches to see there kids work together and help each other through the day without them.

Pictures from past Silent Days: http://psolarz.weebly.com/so-what-did-you-do-in-school-today/our-silent-day

Mystery Skype is when we Skype a classroom and we don't know where they are. We have to ask yes or no questions to figure out where they are. We have a Google Doc where we put down our questions that we want to ask the class. Once we figure out their country, then we go to their state then city, and if we have enough time we try to figure out their school. Everyone has a job to do to make the Mystery Skype go well. For example the Questioners they ask the other class the questions. And at the very end we can talk to the other class and ask questions.

Passion Time is a super fun activity we have in our class. Passion Time is where we are free to research what ever we are interested in and what we want to learn about. We start with our essential question. We get it approved by Mr. Solarz. He tries to make our question PHAT,  Pretty Hard And Tough rather than skinny. This helps us to create a better project and a project that never really has an answer. We try to find a project that is always open to find more information. We also create a video and a blog to share our information and also organize it.

• I liked this learning experience because I enjoy being able to research anything you like.
  
• This learning experience taught me how to set up a blog post, and use different searches to find out some information for our project.
  
• Three 21st Century skills it improved are being curious, be self directed learners, and be a risk-taker because you have to do all of these things when doing a passion project.
  
• Other teachers should do this because it is a lot of fun for the kids to do and it is a hard yet fun thing to do
  

Here are all Mr. Solarz' Passion Time resources: http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-passion-projects.html

Niche Theory was a very good learning experience. We did a classroom meeting on this topic and watched a video about it. We learned all about how older siblings can grow up and become the person that they were designed to be. This can also be called a "niche that they were meant to be, such as an artist." But what we learned was that is you were an older sibling you would be more likely to grow up and be what you were designed to be because nobody would be there to say that they are better than you and you are bad at that one thing, such as art. But, if you were a youngest sibling and you loved to do art, but your older brother or sister was better than you at it, you would have competition to see who was better at art and you would lose, because you were younger and had less practice. Then since you lost you would give up on art and not try hard enough again. Then you would try to find something else that you would be able to beat them with, and you wouldn't be the person that you were meant to be. I learned that if you are an older or middle sibling you should try and give advice and support the youngest sibling and they will then likely keep trying and do well on that topic. That is why niche theory is so important.

Here are the instructions for the lesson: http://psolarz.weebly.com/niche-theory.html

Blogs are an awesome way to recap and reflect on the topic without hand cramps and hand sores, last year we had worksheets and packets and grammar and on and on and on. It wasn't terrible, but now because I had a year of this middle school will be dreadful. Just dreadful.

Here are all of our ePortfolios from our class: http://psolarz.weebly.com/e-portfolios.html

Blog Posts that Mr. Solarz has Written/Videos that he's Been a Part of:

• Reflective ePortfolios as a Means of Improving Student Learning
  
• Improving My Students' Written Reflections Through Online Directions & Exemplars
  
• Teaching and Assessing 21st Century Skills: Reflection & Synthesis
  
• Using ePortfolios to Synthesize and Reflect on New Learning
  
• Students Reflecting on the First Few Weeks of School
• Using a Reflective ePortfolio Entry to Get to Know Your Students' Academic Abilities
• Introducing Blended Learning to Students in a Traditional 5th Grade Classroom
• Project Roundtable: Using Online Portfolios as More than Digital Scrapbooks
• Digital Portfolios with @PaulSolarz via EduSlam
  

Other People's Blog Posts:

• Examples of Digital Portfolios
  
• Digital Portfolio Student Examples
  
• iPad Summit Boston: Digital Portfolios