750,000 Word Readers

Hi Rams Readers,

There are approximately 100 Rams in our school who have read 750,000 words already this year! Congratulations! For all your hard work, we will be celebrating your accomplishment on April 22 at 2:00 in the cafeteria. We'll be watching a movie (not sure which one yet) with refreshments for you to enjoy. We're waiting until after CRCT so that you won't be missing class so close to testing time.

Be looking for your invitation from your homeroom teacher after Spring Break.

I'm so proud!

Mrs. Bridges

School Supply Machine

Did you hear? Arnold now has a machine in the Media Center that sells school supplies. Yea!

Pencils - $0.25

Mechanical Pencils $0.50

Pens $0.50

Notebook Paper $0.75

Bring your own quarters!

New Websites for Student Use

Hello everyone out there,
I am making an attempt to make this blog more useful to you. I am going "out there" and finding some good sites for you to use when you are doing research or homework. Some of them will require a password that you can get from me in the Media Center if you are using them away from school. Others will be wide open. Wish me luck because there are so many great websites out there - I may get lost and never make it back!

But if I do find something, I will put it in the list at the top right-hand side of this page. You should be able to click and go right to the site!

Please send me suggestions of great educational sites if you have them.

Thanks,
Mrs. Bridges

Something fun to use!

Do you know what a booktalk is? A booktalk is when someone tells you a little bit about the book to entice you to want to read it.

Well, I am at a training today and saw that there are booktalks in iTunes! How cool is that! I'm going to figure out how to get these to where we can see them from here. Hmmmm.....any ideas out there for how to do that???

Where has the time gone?

Has it really been that long since I posted something? Please let me apologize for that. I hope to be posting much more often and putting up links to sites that will be useful to you in research as well as other areas of your life.

News:

Our Reading Bowl teams scored 220 points in the competition that took place on January 29th at Blackmon Road Middle School. It wasn't enough to win it all, but I think we did pretty well. Everyone on the team scored some points for Arnold. Way to go guys! Our party will be coming soon - may this Thursday.

We earned a lot of money with the bookfairs (2)we had so far this year. I've been able to keep the shelves stocked with new titles that everyone has been enjoying, and I purchased some new book sets for each of the grades. We do have one more bookfair coming up in late April after testing. Save your money so you can get some great books for summer reading!

I got the new Reading Bowl list today for the 2011-2012 school year so my readers can start reading now! Just kidding - if you start now, you will forget all you read by next year for sure. Here are the titles:
1. Connor, L. (2008). Waiting for normal.
2. Draper, S. (2010). Out of my mind.
3. Williams-Garcia, R. (2010). One crazy summer.
4. Sonnenblick, J. (2010). After ever after.
5. Erskine, C. (2010). Mockingbird. New York, NY: Philomel.
6. Lin, G. (2009). Where the mountain meets the moon.
7. Alvarez, J. (2009). Return to sender.
8. Haissen, C. (2009). Scat.
9. Philbrick, R. (2009). The mostly true adventures of Homer P. Figg.
10. Baskin, N. R. (2009). Anything but typical.
11. Wiles, D. (2010). Countdown.
12. Pearsall, S. (2008). All shook up.
13. Korman, G. 2008). Swindle.
14. Angleberger, T. (2010). Strange case of Origami Yoda.
15. Klise, K. (2009). 43 Old Cemetery Road: Dying to meet you.
16. Clements, A. (2009). Extra credit. New York, NY: Atheneum
17. O’Conner, B. (2010). The fantastic secret of Owen Jester.
18. Collins, S. (2008). The Hunger Games.
19. Berg, A. (2009). All the broken pieces.
20. Anderson, L. H. (2008) Chains.

These look like some really delicious titles and I can't wait to dig into them!

What a busy start to school!

Hey Rams,
Let me first apologize for not updating the blog more often. It has been a crazy start to the school year in good and not-so-good ways. Arnold has more kids here than I have ever seen in this school in the past five years. I think it's great because it means we're doing a good job at teaching you guys and more students want to come here! We also received a grant from the Department of Defense (the government) for podcasting. It came with Smart Boards, a laptop, a class set of iPods - the touch screen kind, a video camera, a remote control response system, and many assessories! The teachers involved are going to be making podcasts on some of our Georgia Performance Standards. You'll find them at www.mcsdpodcast.net. There will be podcasts and vodcasts from all over our district so please check back often to see what they've got.

Scholastic Bookfair is Here!

Hey everyone!
Today and through next week the Scholastic Bookfair is here in the back of the Media Center. There are some great books to choose from this time. Here are some titles that might interest you:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw and Dog Days
Big Nate: In A Class By Himself
Killer Pizza
The Lightning Thief and others in this series
The first three books in the Twilight Series
I So Don't Do Mysteries
The Princess Plot
39 Clues #s 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7
and many more!

There are also posters, bargain books, and more pens and pencils than you could shake a big foam finger at!

Remember we'll be here for the whole next week. We take cash, checks (you have to spend the whole amount it's made out for and you can make them out to AMA), and credit cards (from your parents).

I can't wait to see what kinds of great things we'll get with the money raised at this bookfair!

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Bridges