After talking this morning about the upcoming tests and projects, we decided to move the Anything Project due date to Monday.  Some students will turn their projects in early.  The Spelling Test, History Test, and Vocab Quiz will stay put.
 
Wed. - Spelling Test
Thursday - Anything Project Due
Friday - History Test
Friday - Vocab Quiz

There are a couple pretty time consuming items in there.  I'll keep an open conversation with the students this week to see if it is reasonable that we need to move anything.
 
 
You should probably watch this...
 
Doodle 4 Google is a contest for K-12 students.  If you win, you get $30,000, BCS gets $50,000, you get your doodle on Google's homepage, and you also get your doodle on Crayola's box of 64 crayons.  Check out the video below if you're interested.  Also, you can get all the official details on Doodle 4 Google Info Page.
 
Check out this behind the scenes video to see what goes into creating the President's biggest speech of the year, the State of the Union Address.  Notice how revision is such a large part of the speech.
If you are feeling really ambitious, you can check out the President's actual speech here.  This is the enhanced version, which comes with helpful visuals.  Do the President's presentation slides follow the rules that we learned about for your design presentations?
 
This year, the theme of the Anything Project is "Excellence and Experiments".  The idea is that for the next week and a half you can work to create anything you want... a story, a research project, a stop motion video, etc. The catch is that is has to be done excellently.  Pick something that God has gifted you in and do it as well as you can, free of specific expectations and restrictions by your teacher.  Have fun, work hard and be creative!

Or... you might rather try an experiment.  Maybe instead of doing something that you're really good at, you decide to try something new that you aren't so sure about.  You're experimenting and seeing what you might be capable of creating.  Maybe it won't be excellent because this is the first time you've tried it.  That's okay!  Let yourself be okay with taking a risk!


Some ideas we came up with in class are:
  • political speeches
  • video games
  • book on balloon animals
  • movie
  • something with physics
  • music
  • song
  • short story
  • cookbook
  • game book
  • football play book
  • PowerPoint presentations
  • research
  • magazine
  • website
  • poetry
  • blog
  • book of pranks
The only expectations are that you are working hard every day and that you are finished by the end of class next Wednesday.
 
I thought I'd pass on the words that Mr. Robbins, one of our "investors", recently wrote to Mr. Sampson about your design projects.

It was pleasure judging the 6th grade entrepreneur class at your school last week. I was very impressed with the work that Ken Bell and the teacher had the students involved in. I help grade the senior business students business plans at WWU twice a year, and your students did a lot of the same work college students do. The projects your students worked on will pay dividends for them for many years to come. As a business person in the community it did my heart good to know that students were taught about the business world at such a young age. There is hope! Keep up the good work. 
 
Winter Retreat permission slips were due today, which is pretty tough to remember after a long break.  If you didn't get yours in today, make sure to get it in tomorrow so we can plan for how many students/parents intend to come.  If you need another permission slip, just go to our classroom website and check out the the previous retreat permission slip post.  You'll find a link to download a copy of the permission slip there.