Twenty Years in the Future

It's almost time for my dinner party. Why don't you come on in and see my home. It's a small place, but I like it. I have a nice dining room where my friends always like to gather and eat. I have a great patio with a barbecue and places to sit and eat and chat with friends. I am also really proud of my yard and garden area. I spend a lot of time taking care of my garden and I love to use the produce from it when I cook for my friends and family. I also have a lovely kitchen area with a big countertop for cooking and chopping and making foods. My friends love to hang out in my kitchen as well, eating and drinking the delicious foods I cook up. My bedrooms and bathroom are at the back of the house and are cozy as well. I like to spend time at home reading, hanging out with family and friends, cooking, and working in the yard. I have lots of time in the summers when I'm not teaching to do all the things I love. Oh, here come my friends now. Why don't you come on in and eat dinner with us?

Blog Night Info

Dear Families and Students:

Thank you for coming to Spring Blog Night 2009!

There are lots of other things you could be doing tonight. You are making education a priority in your life by coming here tonight. That is a great statement to make to your family, yourself, and your community!

We invite you to do three things tonight:

1. Eat! Help yourself to pizza and drinks.

2. Check out your student's blog on the laptops around the room. (Make sure they show you what they did at the beginning of their blog and what they are doing now. You'll be impressed!)

3. Ask Beka any questions you have about your student's progress.

Bienvenidos a todas las familias y los padres. Los invitamos a cenar esta noche. Por favor hablen Uds. con las maestras y miren los "Blogs" de sus hijos/as. Esperamos que les disfruten este momento que pasamos hoy aqui. Gracias por su atencion.

I Believe Brainstorming

Today we are brainstorming things we believe in so that we can choose one for our This I Believe essay.

1. I believe that reading is the key to knowledge.
2. I believe being nice is more important than being smart, rich, or successful.
3. I believe love is more of an action than a feeling.
4. I believe people need each other.
5. I believe in singing loudly to myself in the car.
6. I believe in using only what I absolutely need.
7. I believe in making up your own mind about what you believe.
8. I believe in ghosts.
9. I believe that every situation in life is a chance to learn something we need to learn.
10. I believe coming home is a gift.
11. I believe happiness is a choice.

Root Word Poem

We used poetry, rap, or creative stories to study root words this week. Here is my attempt at a poem using as many of our root vocabulary words as possible. Check out the student's work on this on the Blogamundo Homepage. They did very well!


I see pedestrians in cars,
psychologists going psycho,
cardiologists losing heart.

I see corporations running wild,
manufacterers running the world,
CEO's making a spectacle.

I see a suicidal population,
homicidal corporations,
pharmaceuticals deforming the nation.

I see the populace conform
to the patron saint Consume,
rupturing morals and home.

A prescription for disaster.
I predict a nation of conformity,
deformity, cardiac arrest.

Unless...unless
The spectator becomes captain,
the populace becomes the patriarch,
the videographer becomes the actor,
the audience becomes the speaker.

With complete transformation,
Hope.

Progress Report

Things are going along really well on the Blogamundo Project. I have been amazed at the gains I've seen in student writing. I think the main thing I have noticed is that the organization of their writing has increased amazingly. Just getting them to write something is often difficult at first, but as time goes on they start to write quite a bit. Then the work is in making sentences flow and organization of ideas. Amazingly, the organization of the ideas seems to come quite naturally with practice of writing in general. I have focused mainly on editing sentence structure (as well as the age-old capitalization, spelling, and punctuation) and after time, the organization of the rest of the writing seems to come quite easily.