February 2005                                                                    Second Issue


Enjoy this second edition of the Durkin Digest!
Room 25 has been doing many wonderful things! We have been keeping busy learning and having fun. Here's an update on some of our recent classroom happenings...
 

The Whipped Whipping Boy
By Joshua
      My class read the book, The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleishman. This story takes place mostly outside in the streets. Jemmy (the boy from the streets) was a whipping boy. If any of you haven't heard, a whipping boy/girl is a person who lives in a castle and when the prince does something wrong, they whip the whipping boy/girl. (In this story, the prince can't be whipped.) The story really gets interesting when the prince and Jemmy try to escape the castle.
      I interviewed a couple of people who read the book. Emily of Boston, MA said, "My favorite part was when Jemmy and Prince Brat got kidnapped." Alex of Boston, MA said, "My favorite part was when they got covered in rats when they were in the sewers." Wonder what will happen next? Read the book!!
 

Proofreaders On the Way
By Drew
      Why do we proofread? We proofread because if you spelled some word wrong, it can change the meaning of the sentence. Before the editor checks it, you should check it first. What is an editor? An editor is someone who checks people's writing for mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.
      The editor uses special symbols called "editor's marks" to identify mistakes that the writer needs to fix in his or her writing. This means we should proofread our own work before we let others read it. Then an editor will find any errors that you don't see or hear.
 

Weighty Words
By Sara
      Do you know the meaning of the words abasement, expedient, heresy, bifurcate, and dogmatic? Well, the students in Mrs. Durkin's class do! We have been reading the book called The Weighty Word Book by Paul M. Levitt, Douglas A. Burger, and Elissa S. Guralnick, with illustrations by Janet Stevens.
In the morning during our read aloud time, Mrs. Durkin reads a story from this book to us. The book has twenty-six chapters because each chapter is a letter from the alphabet. The word for chapter one is abasement. The story that we read about the word abasement is funny because at the end of the story we learn the meaning of the word. This first story is about a character who keeps making mistakes at work. Because of those mistakes his boss moved his office from the fortieth floor, then to the twentieth floor, then to the tenth floor, and then to the basement. We learned that the meaning of the word abasement means that a person has been lowered in a position, or rank or office like the character was moved to a basement in the story.
      This book is one of my favorite read aloud books because I can show off my new vocabulary words to my parents and my sister.
 

Getting Fired Up
By Jaime
      In art, our third grade class made paper dragons. First, we did the head. Second, we did the body. And last, we did the tail. Then we glued it together to make the dragon. Everyone made the head red. But for the tail and the body, they could choose their own color. We did it all in the art classroom. This is important because in the Chinese New Year, people use the dragons they made to scare away evil spirits. This happened on several Fridays in January. My whole class did the dragon project. That's how our third grade class made paper dragons.

Puffin Power
By Shelby
     Last month in January our class wrote paragraphs all about puffins. First we read a story on puffins, and it was true. Then we wrote facts about puffins and we wrote a lot. Next we wrote the paragraphs. Last we typed our paragraphs up on the computer. The next paragraph is the one that I wrote.
      Did you know puffin in Icelandic is "Lundi"? They are also called "clowns of the sea" and tap their beaks together to communicate. The puffins go to the same burrow every year to lay their eggs in the cliffs of Iceland. Did you know pufflings are born in the spring? Older puffins catch lots of fish out at sea for the pufflings because they can be fed ten times a day. This is what puffins are like.

Lowell Mills Comes to Lexington
By Hannah
      Last month Mr. Cooper came to talk to us about the Lowell Mills. Mr. Cooper gave each class member a piece of wool. He showed us how to make it into cloth and he let us use the tools that they would have used in colonial times. First we played around with the wool. Next we carded it with wooden cards. Then we had to peel the wool off the cards, and twist the wool around. This whole process was a lot of fun.
      Mr. Cooper let us use miniature looms to try weaving. Each class member tried weaving a few rows of yarn that was made out of wool. The wool had been dyed different colors, and was very bright. After each of us had woven a few rows, we saw just how long it took to turn wool into cloth! In the spring the Estabrook third grade classes will visit the Lowell Mills, and hopefully take a step back in history.