Sorry for the second post in two days on the Kindle, but one of our parents reminded me this morning that Amazon's Kindle books can be read on a TON of devices other than the Kindle. 

There are Kindle Apps for the iTouch, the iPad, the iPhone, the Blackberry and Android phones, too. 

What that means for your child is that THEY can sign out Kindle eBooks from the public library if they have ANY of those devices as long as you have downloaded the correct app to the device that your child is using. 

And that's cool.  Anytime kids can sign books out of the library without having to wait for you to get home and take them to the library, everybody wins. 

So think about the devices that your child has access to.  Poke around for a bit in their respective app stores looking for a Kindle app, and then get 'em signing out books from the library on their devices. 

Hope this helps,
Bill Ferriter

As we wind down the first quarter, I wanted to give you a quick heads up on what we're covering this week:

Layers of the Earth:  While they don't play a major role in our curriculum, students are expected to know some simple details about the layers of the earth.  We completed a hands on activity in class today where students were comparing the layers of the earth to the layers of a hard-boiled egg.  We'll be completing the writing for this task in class tomorrow. 

Plate Boundary Notes Due Thursday:  Last week, students finished a study of the different types of plate boundaries that exist on our earth's crust.  One task during that series of lessons was to complete a set of notes covering each of the boundary types.  Those notes are due on Thursday.  Students will have time in class tomorrow to work on them. 

Minerals and Mining Coming Next:  We'll be moving next into a short study of minerals and mining.  Specifically, we'll be discussing how the distribution of minerals on the surface of the earth has an impact on the economies of countries.  It's kind of a neat connection between the social studies and science curriculum.

Soil after Track Out:  We'll finish our lithosphere unit with a look at soil---a part of the lithosphere that is generally unloved!  I think your kids will enjoy it, however, because they'll get their hands in the dirt a bit.  We'll look at soil samples and talk about what makes for a quality bit of soil. 

As a final note, I'll be sending home either a digital or a print version of our textbook in the next day or so.  Your kids can keep it at home as a resource to use during the year.  I always recommend that they take the digital version because if it gets lost, it costs $3 to replace----compared to $45 for the print version. 

Hope this all helps,
Bill Ferriter

With track out approaching, I wanted to point you to a new website that Mr. Hutchinson, Mrs. Barrow and I put together for your kids:

http://www.netvibes.com/wferriter

It contains direct links to a collection of blogs and websites that your kids are bound to find interesting.  Not only are there links to our team's book review blog (http://wferriter.wordpress.com) and the Guys Read blog (http://smsguysread.wordpress.com/), there are links to a TON of other book review blogs, author blogs, and interesting current event blogs. 

What makes the page so valuable is that it constantly updates itself----so instead of having to revisit sites every few days to see if something new has been posted, your kids will be able to find interesting content whenever they are poking around online. 

Don't tell your kids, but our goal is to steal some of their online minutes.  If we can draw them to semi-educational sites instead of mindless lunacy when they're on the Web, then we win! 

To encourage this at home, consider reading an article or two a day yourselves and then pointing them out to your kids.  If your talking about the content together, learning becomes social and middle schoolers love social. 

To learn a bit more about how we're hoping to use this collection of websites in the second quarter, check out this post from my professional blog:

http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2011/09/exploring-blog...

Hope this helps,
Bill Ferriter

Just passing along a bit of news that will be really worthwhile to some of your children:  The Wake County Public Library is now lending out books for Kindles!

http://www.wakegov.com/libraries/about/digital/kindle.htm

I know that there are more than a few Kindle kids on our team this year---and I'm a Kindle guy---so I spent some time poking around in the collection tonight to see what they had for tweens and teens.  Overall, I was pretty impressed.  While they don't have every title that a kid is likely to want, they do have a broad range of interesting reads.

And given that they're completely free to download and read, that's makes 'em all right by me. 

Hope this helps,
Bill Ferriter

Just a quick heads up to let you know that we've got all the hard-boiled egg volunteers that we needed for next week's activity. 

I've responded to everyone who volunteered directly to let you know if we'll need your eggs.

Thanks a ton for being willing to help us out, though.  Every time I ask for supplies, y'all make it happen.  For that, I'm thankful.  Without your donations, we couldn't pull off the hands-on activities we're doing in class. 

Bill Ferriter