Mr. Mills Blog

I’ll have to admit, this is one of my favorite times of year. The weather finally starts to turn, college basketball is in full swing, and spring training has started. I guess that isn’t really school related, but I just wanted to say that.

First, I’d like you to check out the graphs the 3rd graders made with Excel. They can be found here.

Anyway, speaking of school, we are finishing up some projects in fine arts and starting some new ones. Ms. Ziegler and I will be welcoming a student teacher, Ms. Lager, in about a week and a half. She will most likely be taking over the teaching duties right after spring break, so I want to make sure we finish up projects before she gets here.

The 3rd graders are still working on their landscape pictures on Windows Paint. It is such a new process for them, but they pick up on a lot of the functions of the program very quickly. I think one of the toughest things to do is save what they have done correctly. I tell them that many adults don’t even know how to save their work correctly, but it is an important skill if you are going to be spending a lot of time on the computer.

The 4th graders turned in their story in pictures this week. I will be looking at them soon and grading them. Although this was the major part of the project, we will be doing more with this project over the next couple months…and it will require YOUR help. This week, we began creating large sculptures based on the artwork of Judith Scott. The students were very interested in her story, so be sure to ask them about it. They were very excited to make these sculptures and I have loved the results so far.

The 5th graders finished their grid pictures this week. Here is the final result:

Since this was the first time I did this with a class, I was not sure how the result would look. As you can see, it all came together in the end. It looks very different when you see it person, so I recommend walking towards the fine arts room one of these days.

The 6th graders finished their math games this week. They have one small thing to do next week, but for the most part, they are done. Here is a couple pictures of the students hard at work:

I think creating a game is a great experience. They will be playing these games for their world language teachers soon so they can see how the language was used.

Get some good rest this weekend…