In shared reading we have read Wonder, Out of my mind, Liberation of Gabriel King, and we are currently reading The Thief Lord. We don't only listen to the book, we project it on the board and we read along. I think shared reading is REALLY fun.

Blog entries by Mr. Solarz about Shared Reading:

• Shared Reading Using Kindle for Mac and a Projector
• Teaching the Signposts from "Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading"

More photos of Shared Reading

In our classroom REARJMCL is a time where we all sit down and recap our homework evaluate the day say any announcements that we think that are important then we reset the room do our jobs get our mail stack our chairs and then line up for the end of the day. 

Here is what REARJMCL stands for: http://psolarz.weebly.com/rearjmcl.html

Money Island island is a way for kids to understand saving your money.  You could buy stocks a shares and bonds.  We were able to put your money in a bank or donate it to charity.  It taught you about spending too.  It let you simulate paying taxes and getting pay checks.  The final goal of the game is to become a guru.  To become a guru you have to have a higher saving then spending.

We have a representative from First American Bank who sponsors Money Island for our school.  Here is their website: https://firstambank.moneyisland.com/

WEX is writing time. Sometimes we have a prompt and have to use the prompt to write a story that is at least one whole page long. But sometimes we write one big story that is a couple pages long. We have written stories based on the book Liberation of Gabriel King, we wrote a fictional narrative, and a story based on us. We usually have 12 minutes to write a story when we have a prompt.

Here is how we do WEX in our classroom (click on the videos to see it for yourself!): http://psolarz.weebly.com/wex---writers-express.html

Google Hangouts are an amazing way to collaborate and share through Google. It is basically a Skype, but we just talk. No guessing. Just talk. We have hanged-out with several classrooms through out the year. Mainly we talked about passion time and how to do it and why we do it. The kids were all years older or 6th graders that needed advice on how to do Passion Time more fluently and less stressful for them. It is cool to direct them and just talk about what we do, and they LOVE it.

Yes I know I said Skype through out the video, my bad.

Mr. Solarz' Skype name is Paul.Solarz and his Google Hangout name is [email protected].

The science fair is an experiment. Everyone picks a different experiment, and experiments on it. Then, we recorded  our data and put it onto a beautiful backboard. After that, we all went to the Commons and shared our backboard with everyone who walked by.

Here are some photos and videos from past Science Fairs:

• http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-daily-photo-journal/the-science-fair
  
• http://psolarz.weebly.com/science-fair-2013.html
• http://psolarz.weebly.com/science-fair2.html

This is about what I learned from the human body research paper and all of the valuable information that I learned while doing our human body research papers. I learned so much that I had never known before this experience. It was a lot better too because we got to type it out so it was very easy to get it all down on the Google Doc. This taught me how to do expository writing a lot better and now I understand how all the systems work together as a team. This helped me to work more collaboratively and to ask help from others when I needed it. It also helped to improve my writing skill a lot because I know I wasn't the best writer then and I'm still not that good now but it still helped me improve.

Here are the directions for this project: http://psolarz.weebly.com/human-body-unit/3-the-human-body-research-paper

Classroom Meetings are a great way to have discussions with an entire class without distractions and in our class we all go sit down in a corner of the room where there is nothing to distract us and we give Mr. Solarz complete attention for whatever we have to chat about. We usually do a classroom meeting if there is a problem or something Mr. Solarz needs to tell us about something. 21st century Skills: Be curious, Ask Questions

Classroom Meeting Topics:
Niche Theory: http://psolarz.weebly.com/niche-theory.html
Five Love Languages: http://psolarz.weebly.com/the-5-love-languages.html
Marble Theory...

Photos of Classroom Meetings:
http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-daily-photo-journal/classroom-meeting
http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-daily-photo-journal/five-love-languages-classroom-meeting
http://psolarz.weebly.com/so-what-did-you-do-in-school-today/marble-theory-classroom-meeting-92012
http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-daily-photo-journal/class-meeting

It is a good learning experience because when there, you learn about people from the older times, our ancestors lived like that in what we learned about while there. You thought about the the information you learned, and it was really cool to learn what the jobs were back then and what they used for their jobs. There were some jobs we may not have today, and there were many tools used daily then when we don't even know what they are. There, they show people acting like the people that you would see back from the 1700's. They had tools and other things set out for you to see and interact with.

A blog entry from Mr. Solarz: 10 Ways We Made Our "1776 Historical Reenactment" More 21st Century!

ISAT Practice is where we are paired up in groups of two or three, and we practice for our ISAT tests. We also learn important steps that come in handy when we do our ISAT tests.

Some ISAT photos and resources:

• http://psolarz.weebly.com/isat-test-prep.html
• http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-daily-photo-journal/isat-test-prep
• http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-daily-photo-journal/isat-test-prep-fun-fun
• http://psolarz.weebly.com/2013-2014-daily-photo-journal/collaborating-to-improve-isat-extended-responses