Turn off The Screen, Kind of Ironic...

In our 21st century class, we've been having a unit on being healthy, (remember the flu videos?). To wrap up the year, we made websites. On healthy living for kids. Mine is called, Turn Off  The Screen And Go Out And PLAY! Kind of ironic for a website... Anyways, enjoy my website.

Longer School=Less Homework, Right?

         In my opinion, homework is the absolute worst thing about school. If it weren't for that darn homework, I really wouldn't mind school one bit. Here's my plan. We eliminate homework altogether by making school an hour or so longer. Here's why. That last hour of school could be more of a study hall time (Which any of the kids in band in my school don't get, which we think is bogus.) The teachers could be there to help us when we ran into problems with our homework, so we don't have to stay up until 1 am trying to do our math.

       It could work like this. Teachers could assign homework just like they always do, and then an hour before school was over, all the students and teachers could head down to the cafeteria and have a huge study hall. This way, if you don't understand something, you could get it explained to you, by the teacher who assigned it to you. Then, if you still don't finish your homework, you could take it home and do it there, (and at least you'd have a better understanding of it.)

        Some people are totally against this plan. I can kind of see their points, but I sure do not agree with them. A lot of people against this plan think that homework should be done at home, and that's just the way learning is. Some of them also would rather have more of their after-school time free to do other things (it's not really free if you have buckets of homework...) And lastly, some of them just like doing their homework in the quiet of their own home without lots of other kids there.

       So, who's with me? Who'd rather have more school and less/no homework? It'd help you to make sure you got it done, and understood it, and it frees up the rest of your evening. I think it's a great plan... how about you?

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What do you think? Do you like my plan? Do you have a different (possibly) better idea? Do you already do something like this at your school? Are you already out for summer vacation? Please post your answers in a comment, because I sincerely do care about your opinions.

Into the Wild

What happens when you add:
    34 teens +
     5 annoyed adults +
     A WHOLE lot of chips and salsa +
     and a dorm room cut off from everyone else's =

    An amazing week at an environmental learning center (and some hi-larious Man Vs. Wild remixes....) Last week my eighth grade class went on a week long over night trip to an environmental learning center in northern Minnesota. It was absolutely fantabulousyawesome (If that's even a word). Anyways, there was never time to be bored, because we were:

That's me on the ropes course ☺

• Rock-Climbing
• Ropes-Coursing
• Hiking
• well... learning :)
• Chips and salsa eating
• Truth or Dare playing
• Star tipping
• Endless talking.....
• Picture taking (duh ☺)
• Getting Lost
• Playing Frisbee

        This list goes on and on and on. One of the best things at ELC wasn't a class. It was our liaison, Danny. Danny was very interesting to say the least. He just came to Minnesota in August from England, and he looked like Harry Potter! (Maybe he was secretly Daniel Radcliffe) Danny also taught our birds class, and showed us his bird mating dance. We were about to pee ourselves with laughter.

I'm the short one on the end

        One of my other favorite things at ELC was a class called Voyageur life. We all got a character and had to remain completely in character for the whole three hour class. (Lucky for me I got to play the only American character because everyone else had to attempt to use French accents.) My character was Mr. Daniel Harmon, the American clerk for the Northwest Company. We hiked in sleet to this replica voyageur camp and made biscuits and played voyageur games. It was really fun, but my toes were very numb afterwards.☺
Speaking of coldness, the weather there was really weird. The first day it was almost 70 and we were wearing shorts, the next morning we woke up and it was snowing. Only in Minnesota...

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Have you ever been on a field trip where you've stayed over for a week? Does where you live have as wacky of weather as Minnesota? Have you ever been to an enviromental learning center? Do you like my blog's new make-over? Please comment with your answers! ♥♥♥♥

Photo Websites

This Photo is from Pics4Learning

When I was younger and we'd have to get a picture for something, I'd always just go to Google Images search it, and copy/paste it into my Word Document. I didn't realize that some of those photos could've been copyrighted, and I was plagiarizing. Of course though, they are not going to fine a fourth grader. For our assingment today we had to go to several copyright-free photo websites. My favorite was comp fight, because it reminded me of google images. It feels a lot easier to me, and seems to have more selection than flickr creative commons. The only problem I faced on that site was that it kept freezing up. (That could've just been my computer though) I also liked the site Pics4Learning. It has a lot of photos that are availible for students to use on projects. It nicely narrows the pictures down into categories that make the ones you need easy to find.

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Do you have any copyright free photo sights you like to use? Did you enjoy this post? After reading this, do you feel that you have ever plagerized? Please answer these questions in your comments!