Mighty Writers

Congratulations to the 2005-06 third graders in Room 12! You all did such an absolutely AMAZING job with your writing on your blogs! You made a difference not only for yourselves, but you also inspired many, many people all over the world!

Student writing on this blog has now come to an end (I just changed everyone's passwords).

Roomtwelve.com now goes to a new location, the third graders in Room 12 for the 2006-07 school year.

So goodbye, you great bunch of kids in room 12. You were an incredible group to have in the classroom. I feel very lucky to have been your teacher. Keep on blogging!

Your third grade teacher,
Mr. Ahlness

Summer is almost over. And this blog, from the 2005-2006 school year is also coming to an end. One more week to go, folks! So room 12 kids, you have a few days to get in a last article or two - go for it! The blogs will all stay, but it won't be possible to write any more articles on them - unless your next year's teacher wants to start up a blog and transfer them over... not totally sure if this is a possibility yet.

Anyway, roomtwelve.com has one more week to go at this location. Stay tuned here for news about its new home. - Mr. A.

Summer is a wonderful time out here in Seattle. Sunny days, very little rain (none in the past month!), low humidity, and hardly any bugs – really! So it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave. But summer is also a time for family vacations, and people do go, as reported here by Jackson and Jacqueline. For those who stay around, it just doesn’t get much better than this, as reported by Isobel, Ming, and Danielle. Hikes, parties, camps, and just kicking back make having fun in the summer in Seattle a real no-brainer!

And what about the teacher? Well, for now he’s in kick back mode, but home improvement projects are looming on the horizon… duh...duh...duh.. eeek! – Mr. A.

ps – we are obviously still “open” for student writing – and comments are welcome and appreciated!

The following PowerPoint presentations were produced by students in Room 12 during the past school year. We can't even come close to listing them all here because most contain pictures of other students or students in Room 12 who did not have permission for their pictures to appear on the Internet. But here are a few that will show you a little bit more about the 2005-06 school year of the third graders in Room 12. Enjoy!

Field Trip to the Zoo

• Abbey and Alice
  
• August and Hannah
  
• Danielle and Jacqueline
  
• Dylan and Jose
  
• Jackson and Logan
  

Field Trip to Chinatown

• Camden and Joey
  
• Dylan and Michael
  
• Jose
  

Field Trip to the Pike Place Market

• Anthony and Joe
  
• Camden and Logan
  
• Danielle and Hannah
  
• Gus and Hayden
  

The Mile Run

• August and Danielle
  

PS - also, take a look at our "How to Make a Six Sided Snowflake" presentations from early in the year.

The school year is over, but the writing will continue here, for any students from room 12 who want to - and for anyone who would like to leave comments - at least through August 31, 2006.

Congratulations to Jackson, who is the first student to post an article after school got out! Way to go, Jackson! Sorry, no, there is no prize :) - Mr. A.

Sometimes it's just too hard to keep it together, especially when summer is just around the corner... one of our room 12 cheer "outtakes"... an 831k wmv file

(a "better" one is in the message below)

A short video of our own Room 12 Cheer - reserved for special occasions, accomplishments, etc. This is an 866k wmv video file:

Wow! The students at roomtwelve.com are outdoing themselves these days, publishing blog posts at an amazing rate. On all sorts of topics, like summer vacation plans (assigned by me), to sports items, video game stuff, fantasy writing, and on and on.... I am so very proud to be their teacher!

A couple of new things we've taken on this past week:
- most students now have a picture on their blog (upper right corner) of something important or meaningful to them.
- some students are including links to other web sites in their blog articles. They picked up how to do this pretty quickly last week.

Our last day of school is June 21st, and we will be blogging right up until the end. Many students will continue to blog here over our summer months (more on that later). - Mr. A.

This is a special thank you to the teachers who have left comments for the kids here. Your words have REALLY helped these third graders become stronger readers and writers! Here is a list of teachers who have left comments. Most of the names are linked to their blogs, if they have one:

Nancy McKeand, Ms. J.-S, Cheryl Oakes, Lani, Jeanne Simpson, Ms Bailey, Ms. Sato, Janice Friesen, Mr. Warkentin, Miss Vail, Ms. Fullerton, Mrs. DeGiorgio, Mrs. Turner, Jody Hayes, Pam Jeter, Mr. Brune, Jennifer Bazley, Dean Shareski, Brett Moller, Julie Jaffe, Michael Cridland, Mrs. Cessna, and last but not least, the man who gave us a confidence boost, got us excited, and who asked other teachers to send comments to student bloggers - as homework - Wesley Fryer!

Thanks to all of you! -
Mr. A.

ps - if I`ve missed somebody, please don`t be shy about letting me know. I want to include everybody!

All smiles, with a week and a half to go in the school year, the kids from roomtwelve.com pose in front of our display of all the reports sent in for the Earth Day Groceries Project.

Yesterday (6/2) the students in room 12 wrote about their blogs. As you will see if you read through some, there is a lot of concern, worry, and sadness over these blogs coming to an end. But these Mighty Writers know their teacher is working on it!

I encourage visitors to take a look through the wonderful writing of these students. I think they have done a super job! (of course, I'm their teacher)

School's not out until June 21st, so we're not done writing yet! And some will keep on posting articles through the summer. So keep checking in on us. - Mr. A.

Visitors to our blogs right now should know that comments you leave for students may not show up right away. But we DO appreciate your comments!

Also, we finally have a few pictures to share of us at work (and play) at our school. Check out our school's Young Authors' Conference. The kids from Room Twelve are featured! We'll have more to share here soon.... Mr. A.

Well, we won't actually be writing to our blogs, but we WILL be reading from our blogs this Tuesday at our local Tully's. This is the fifth "Tully's night out" of the school year, so I thought it would be fun to have kids share some of their blog writing with the public - from a laptop. My only concern was whether there was a good wireless connection. Well, I'm blogging this from Tully's, so all is a GO for Tuesday! Room 12 students, start looking over something you've written on your blog this year that you think would be fun to read at Tully's. - Mr. A.

Our week started with the welcoming of a new student, Hayden, to room 12! Our week ended with saying good-bye to Tyler, who is moving. He wrote about it on his blog today.

A week full of excitement and sadness, change and loss. - Mr. A.

Room Twelve students have had a little time this week to write about what's on their minds. Writings are pretty varied - from Mother's Day to fantasy stories. Enjoy - oh, and Happy Mother's Day!! - Mr. A

A couple of days ago somebody wondered in a class discussion why "girls get more comments than the boys". As you can imagine, this set off a pretty lively discussion!

I really wish we had more class time lately for students to work on their blogs. To those who have sent in comments - thanks so much! We have not had class time to even read blogs - much less add articles or respond to comments.

So today in class, I opened up a lunchtime recess period for podcasters. I was real impressed with the dedication of Michael, Ming, Jose, and Jackson (check their blogs for their podcasts). Much more to come - stay tuned!

Yesterday we had Wesley Fryer visit our class - well, not in person, but his name and picture did pop up on one of our computers during class. Of course the kids in Room 12 remember Mr. Fryer as the one who spoke to a bunch of teachers at a conference in Texas, and talked all about us and our blog. Anyway, yesterday, he was making an Internet connection with me - so that I could participate in a discussion with some other educators (from around the world) during lunchtime. A link to that podcast is here.

This week students from room 12 are getting their ideas blogged about how the writing process has been going. They have been working on an expository piece, an "all about" book, off and on, for a couple of months now. Many are pretty close to finished. Not sure if their writing will appear on their blogs. There may be a sample chapter here or there. About half the class did their writing on computers, and half wrote on paper (some did combinations - yikes). - Mr. A.

Some students in Room 12 are starting to post "personal narrative" stories on their blogs. These are pieces we have been working on for some time, and they are quite a bit longer than most earlier blog posts. As of Jan 4, the following students have published: Jose, Jackson, Alice, Joey, and Logan. Check their blogs on the right. There will more to come soon. Nice writing, Room 12! - Mr. A.

Back in Seattle after a few days on the Washington Coast. With so much attention to snow and snowflakes, it seems fitting that I come back with a picture of a snowy owl. We saw this one on Damon Point in Ocean Shores, WA.