Room 229

Hi all , this is Jacob giving you guys a list of my favorite moments in elementary school. To me elementary school was very fun and I am going to miss it. So here it is:

• In fourth grade my class had a Van Gogh cafe party and it was really fun, there was food and everything .
• Also in fourth grade there was the Celebration Of Learning, it was where all of us sang songs and prepared for fifth grade.
• In fifth grade we had a trip to the Ancient City, it was really fun to go around and learn cool things.

I hope you agree with some of these things, if you don’t or have more then why don’t you comment on other favorite things you did in elementary school.See you later!

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Hi all, Jacob here talking about our brine shrimp experiment. Well when we started we were learning about the mono lake story. It was about the water level being lowered and the salt level rising. This process was killing the brine shrimp eggs. The experiment we were working on was to see what amount of salt can a brine shrimp egg hatch in. Our first tests weren’t working but when we tried one more time it seems to be going well. I hope our shrimp survive this time.

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“Hello all, Jacob here. Today I went on an interview with Gavin, what I was trying to find was some good baseball tips for you but I’m not an expert. Fortunately Gavin is. So if there is anybody out there who wants to know good tips for baseball, this is the post for you. Here was our exact conversation:

So that was a great list of baseball tips. Now everybody give a round of applause to Gavin! If any of your questions still were not answered leave a comment with your question and Ill see if he can answer them in a new post.

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Hi all it’s me Jacob. This is my finished realistic fiction story, I hope you like it.

A Zoo Gone Wrong
I’m sitting there in eighth grade writing about a time I helped a living thing. I had a great idea. It all started in sixth grade around mid semester, it was at the end of a normal school day. “Ring Ring Ring” the bell went as school ended. Kids rushed past me as I fluttered down the stairs to get my bag. Josh was screaming in a different language that was unfamiliar to me. I took a look at the billboard to see what was going on. I gazed at the bored: music lessons, school play, Latin American studies and a book sale. “Nothing I like” I said quietly to myself. I was only interested in animals. When I was across the street of my favorite petting zoo I waited for the red light to turn off so I could walk across. The final construction truck passed and I noticed that it was parking into the zoos back entrance. I crossed the street and saw a sign on the front gate. The sign read: “Warning zoo out of business”. Oh no!
I adore animals; I can’t let that happen to them. I pulled my bike in to the garage; before I went inside I accidently chipped some yellow paint off the front door. I left to get a snack to help me think as I did my homework. Later I started watching TV, animal planet of course. The butterflies in my stomach fluttered as I saw the big cute elephants that you could find in a petting zoo.  I took Gary my hamster out of his cage. I hate caged animals. My mom and dad insisted that he stays inside the cage until I come home from school. I walked to my room to get some food to feed Gary. Soon after I picked up the phone to call my best friends, we were going to make a plan to save the animals.

The next day I was sitting at the lunch table thinking how I can save the animals. Spud came over putting his tray down with a large clinging sound on the metal table. Spud’s real name is Eric but we call him spud because he tripped into his tray of mash potatoes on the first day of school. Sandra came over last, she’s made fun of because her glasses and her braces look weird. These were my friends. “Why do we always sit at the loser table?” spud said with a sigh. “Don’t say that, you know it’s not true,” I said trying to cheer him up. “So anyone come up with ideas for the animals?” Sandra interrupted. “I’m stumped,” I said frowning. “What about you Spud?” Sandra asked hopefully. “Nope” Spud replied. Before I could finish lunch the principle busted through the doors. I closed my ears as the doors flickered with a really annoying sound. “Can this day get any worse?” He glared at all of the students, “Molly report to my office” he called out. Uh oh! That was my name.
When I made it to the principal’s office a sigh of relief appeared on my face as I saw that he was smiling.  “Molly you have to finish your project for the school fair”. After he explained the rest an idea formed in my head.  What if I do an animal project to help save the petting zoo? Later that day I went home to get started on my project. The only problem was where was I going to start? I went upstairs to go work in my bedroom. I had no idea what I was going to do, maybe if I wrote when I first met an animal and how I grew up playing at that zoo because that’s were my dad use to work. “No, it’s a dumb idea” I said aloud like I was talking to a ghost. I started to draw out plans in hope of finding something that would make everything ok. It was about two hours until I finally gave up and went downstairs to find something to do. Suddenly the doorbell rang and I stood up to get it. It was some third grade Girl Scout selling cookies for a fundraiser. I checked how much money was in my pocket, five dollars and twenty-five cents so I guessed I could buy some. After I bought some cookies I started thinking that a fundraiser would be perfect to help the zoo. I had to get to work. A poster, a box and maybe some flyers should do the job.

When I finally finished my project, I was proud of how much effort I had put into it. After the fair we waited to see who won.” And the third place award goes to Molly for best fundraiser!” I jumped with joy and went upstage to get my medal. “Guess what Molly,” Sandra called from the back “we have enough money for the zoo!”  My prize was my very own animal club for school to show our appreciation to animals by still making fundraisers across our town. So here I am in eighth grade writing about one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

By Jacob

Hello this is Jacob’s first historical fiction strategy’s post. My first strategy is to put yourself in your main characters shoes and ask “how would I feel?”. The book I will refer to is called Bud, not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis where a boys mother dies and goes on a search for his real father. Some parts you really have to pretend to be the character because he doesn’t act like most kids, he is always prepared for everything. If you didn’t ask how would I feel then you would be very confused. The next strategy I will show is to understand what character is in what group. The book that was really helpful for this strategy was called Crispin by Avi. This book was set in the middle ages so you should know that there were many different groups in that time. The book is about a poor boy that becomes an orphan and finds out that he is related to the king. Crispin is chased by knights and finds a friend that takes care of him. The main group he is in is a small group which is he and his friend Bear, they do meet other nice people but that is the main characters group. Sometimes you have to infer what groups that supporting characters are in too, to do this it is simple for one example one character is John Aycliffe. John Aycliffe is the leader of the knights that want to kill Crispin; the group that John is in is the knights. That’s all for now, thank you.:)

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Hi all, did you check out our new podcast series?  All you have to do is click on the i tunes picture on the right to listen.

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Please listen to our Podcast, thanks. bye.

This is my latest piece. Hope you enjoy!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the Age of Exploration never happened? I am going to share two thoughts I have about it. They are if the Age of Exploration didn’t happen then the Europeans wouldn’t have used specific items, also I will talk about how the native people wouldn’t be the same as what they are now.

If the Age of Exploration didn’t happen the Europeans wouldn’t be able to use specific item. For example, tomatoes weren’t grown in Europe and the Europeans brought it back from other explored areas. Without tomatoes then many European foods wouldn’t have been made because lots of their foods are made out of tomatoes today.

Another reason Europeans wouldn’t have used specific items is because they couldn’t have gotten spices and silk. Marco Polo was the man to explore and influence his people to explore. He told stories of jewels and spices from his journey to China and he also brought back a small amount of these items as prove. If Marco Polo didn’t go exploring then the Europeans wouldn’t know about all the valuables.

If the Age of Exploration didn’t happen, native people wouldn’t be the same as what they are today. For example Herman Cortez discovered the Aztec culture but all he wanted was to steal their gold. At the end his plan had succeeded. Most of the Aztecs were killed by the lack of food and water that Herman stole. A disease called smallpox killed some of the Aztec though. If the Age of Exploration didn’t happen then the Aztecs would still be alive today.

If the Age of Exploration didn’t happen, tourists wouldn’t be learning about Aztec pyramids. Aztecs would still be sacrificing millions of people then throwing them down the stairs. Imagine how many people would be killed if the Aztecs still existed. If the Age of Exploration didn’t happen and you traveled to Mexico, all you would see are people wearing human skulls on their faces like masks trying to eat you.

Therefore I think if the Age of Exploration didn’t happen the world wouldn’t be the same. My reasons are that the native people wouldn’t be the same as what they are today and the Europeans wouldn’t be able to use specific items like spices and silk.

by  Jacob

Hi , Yesterday on December 17 my class went on a field trip to the ancient city for exploration. We found many interesting things but we had to mainly focus on exploration. I would say that the reason I was mainly an explorer was because we were on a treasure hunt and we had a goal to accomplish that was to find treasure. The image on the bottom right is of me filling a booklet that the guide gave me.

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Non-fiction strategies
One good non-fiction strategy is to use a picture to help you understand the text better.  A good way to use this strategy is when your reading a book that is to hard for you is to use the picture to see what the text is trying to say.

Another good idea is to try to find the main idea in the main paragraph before you read the other features. The reason this is good is because you might not understand what they’re saying in the other captions and fact boxes or other features without the main idea.

By Gavin, Shunsuke and Jacob.

Hi, It’s me Jacob and this is my newest writing piece, soon you will be able to hear it so to do that click on jacob2.

Rollercoaster Rush

My family and I were at Hershey Park and we were looking for a ride, I turned my head and I spotted my first rollercoaster. The big piece of junk towered over me; I knew that this was my first rollercoaster. At the time I was afraid of rollercoaster’s but I took each step with caution towards the rollercoaster called the Comet!
“Ahhhhh” I could hear the people scream rushing over us as we waited in line. Every step made me jump because the wood holding the coaster started to make cracking sounds like they were going to snap. A cart went down the largest drop; the wind was so fast I imagined the cart a being cheetah riding the track instead of a metal block shaped like a comet. I was starting to get scared but there was no turning back now. The line was a huge one right under the rollercoaster so this made me less comfortable. I looked up and I saw the sun glaring down on me, I felt like a fried egg. I looked back down and I saw the steps to our train cart, I felt ready.
I got on the cart “now entering station one” the man at the control panel said. He lowered our bars so tight it felt like he would squish me to death and then smacked the start button. “Cling” was the loudest sound I heard when the bottom of the cart scraped the chain while it pulled us up to the largest drop. “Click” I hate that sound because I knew what it means and I also knew that the next sound I am going to hear is click. I looked over the cart and I saw that the brakes turned on, the next click I knew was going to be big trouble. ”Click” the brakes turned off and I zoomed down and up and down and up and so on. It actually was really fun. A few tight turns and “click” that meant the ride was over so now I really enjoy rollercoasters.

By Jacob William