John O'Hara

The next assignment for Ms. Barber's fifth grade reading class. Here I would like you to read and analyze John O'Hara's short story, Straight Pool, on page 16 of the Points of View book. When analyzing it, I would like you to write down the main themes in the story, the time and place that it occurs, all of the main characters, and the plot. When you have the information, submitt it to my blog as a response. You can listen to the assignment by clicking the link below. - Ms. Barber

PodCast

Olympic History

2010 Olympic Assignment
for 5th Graders

The Olympics are well underway for winter 2010. They are being held in Vancouver, Canada this year but they are moved not only to another city but another country every four years. The purpose of this assignment is to learn more about the world coming together despite the troubles that plague it. Through the games, countries from all over the world compete in a friendly manner in many different types of winter games like the luge, speed skating, and ice-skating. Learning about the Olympics and the places they have been held will expand your thinking from our country to the whole world by taking the games that are happening currently this year and the games that have been held before for decades. The world is not all bad as you might see on the news, there are amazing people and events like the Olympics.

Students, your task for this assignment is to research where the modern Olympics have been held since 1896 when they started in Athens, Greece. There should be 26 Summer Olympic cities and 20 Winter Olympics that you find. From there, you will create and design your own world map with continents, countries, and the cities where the Olympics have been held. There will be a handout of a plain world map in class, from there, you will need to research the cities both Summer and Winter games have been held. Put the Winter in dark blue and the Summer in a red color to tell them apart. Label the cities clearly and bring the finished piece into class. This world comradely will help you see just how much the world comes together to participate in the athletics.

Websites are everywhere covering the winter Olympics of 2010. However, websites like Here and Here have quality information. Containing the history and previous towns and cities, the websites can show you all of the places in the world that friendly Olympics have been held.

Found here, this article provides some general benefits about the use of blogging for educators; In Search for Support, Teachers Turn to Blogging.

In the teaching community, blogging has become more and more widely used. Through blogging, teachers can collaborate on problems like classroom management and new teaching techniques. In the article, In Search for Support, Teachers Turn to Blogging, Jeff Silva-Brown had a reply to one of his blogs saying a young teacher had taken his thoughts he had written online and it had helped him through his first year as a teacher. However, teachers have to be careful on what they put online. In California, a teacher was called to the principal’s office for a parent complaint of profane language in his online blog. In 2006, a Chicago teacher went to court for describing the African Americans in his high school were “criminals” and “stole from teachers, smoked pot in the hallways, and had sex in the stairwells”. Through the blog, the administration took into account the needs of students and actually improved the school’s curriculum after the incident. A fine line is between freedom of speech and crossing into dangerous territory in education. This article covers the positives and negatives of blogging about education online.

Ramirex, Eddy. 2008. U.S News and World Report. 145 no786, 88

Attention parents! Please feel free to provide feedback for this Olympic assignment and any other assignments that you would feel would pertain to out unit on Canada. I welcome your feedback and thoughts warmly about your children’s education. Thank you very much for your time!

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PodCast for Assignment Two