A Matter of Trust by Lis Wiehl

Two dead prosecutors, a rebellious teenager, a homicide cop, a runaway teen, a screaming 4-year-old, two jobs, and a boss who seems more focused on election results than actual prosecutions are just some of the challenges facing single-mum Mia Quinn. With her husband killed in a road accident several months before the story opens, Mia Quinn is struggling to keep her head above water. She desperately wants to be a good mum to her kids, but also needs to find out who killed her best friend and colleague Colleen. Take a journey with Colleen and Charlie to find who killed two prosecutors. When her son is involved in a "flash mob" at the same time Mia has to decide whether to turn him in or keep quiet. What will happen? The twists in this plot will keep you turning the pages, as Mia and Charlie endeavour to leave no stone unturned in solving the mysteries before them.

If you are looking for a book with a well-developed primary plot and several sub-plots that will keep you turning the pages, then this book is for you. The characters are realistic, and the situations they face are also those facing many today. While Mia is not a Christian, her Dad has recently found Jesus and is doing his best to help Mia and show her that he has changed. The Christian content in this book is small, but the book is still well worth reading. In fact, it may be one you can easily share with non-Christian friends, knowing that the story is good, the gospel is stated clearly, but not in such a way that it will turn non-Christian readers away. An excellent read. In fact, it's so good I read it twice and enjoyed it both times.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Highlight from a Reading Log

One of the homework tasks I require of my 4th grade students is 15 minutes of independent or shared reading, followed by a comment in their Reading Log. They have a choice of the 11 response starters below and each week they must choose 4 different starters.

A.  The main idea of what I read was ... B.  My favourite part was ___________________. I like this part because ... C.  My favourite sentence was _______________. I like this sentence because ... D.  This reminds me of ... E.  I did not like the part when ______________. I did not like this part because ... F.  A question I have is ____________________? I think the answer to my question is ... G.  I wonder why _________________(character’s name) said or did ... H.  I love the way the author ________________. I like this because ... I.   What I think will happen next is ... J.  I agree (or disagree) with _________________ _______________, because ... K.  I didn’t understand the part when ...

Yesterday I was busy reviewing the Reading Logs when I came across this gem:

"I love the way the author make new words for me. I like this because if I know alot of new words and how to spell them I would get my spelling test right every Thursday or I could be smarter than Miss Karen."

You can't help loving this student's thinking! This student is stretching himself with fairly advanced Chapter Books, and comments like this help me know he's thinking about what he's reading. Awesome. I love it when my kids use the strategies I teach them to take their own learning to the next level.

Road Safety

Those who have known me for some time, and who receive my prayer letters will know that one prayer request that appears almost every time is for safety on the roads.

The Phnom Penh Post recently reported on a WHO report on Road Safety. The situation is not good, although Cambodia does appear to fare a little better than some other Asian countries.

For now, let's just compare Cambodia and Australia

Cambodia has 39,618km of roads, of which just 2,492km are paved.
Australia has 823,217km of roads, of which 356,343km are paved.

Cambodia has a population of about 15,000,000.
Australia has a population of about 22,000,000.

Cambodia has 1 372 525 registered 2 & 3 wheeled motorised vehicles.
Australia has 660 107 vehicles in the same category.

Cambodia has just 244 267 cars and 4-wheeled light vehicles.
Australia has 14 729 973 vehicles in the same category.

In Cambodia, motorbike helmets are mandatory for drivers but not passengers. The facts are that about 65% of drivers wear helmets and only 9% of passengers!
In Australia, helmets are compulsory for both driver and passenger and 99% of drivers wear them!

Sadly, the 2010 road tolls for both countries are not good. In Australia there were 1363 reported road fatalities, which is about 6/100,000 people, which is down from 9/100,000 people ten years ago. In Cambodia, there were 1816 report road fatalities, which is about 12/100,000 people, up from 4/100,000 people that it was ten years ago.

There are more and more motos and cars on the streets of Phnom Penh every day, and I frequently see more powerful bikes (250cc up) where previously most were 100cc!

In Australia >75% of seriously injured persons are transported by ambulance.
In Cambodia that figure is somewhere between 11% and 49%.

So where does that leave me? Well, it leaves me with a healthy respect for life when I get on my motorbike. I wear a helmet everytime I get on the bike, or even on someone else's bike. I never use my phone while riding. I am conscious that as I ride, I need to be constantly aware of the other road users. And most of all, I cover prayer for my safety as I travel on the roads.

I'm glad that I now live a short walk from school, so don't use the moto on the daily basis that I used to, but I do still use it regularly. For those who read this post, please continue to pray for safety on Cambodia's roads, both for me and my friends and colleagues. Pray that we will be safe and alert riders, and that God will continue to guard our safety as we seek to serve Him in this land.

So what did we learn last week?

I promised back on Monday last week, that I'd share what the students learned about Chimpanzees during the course of our week-long mini unit. So here is the evidence that my students did learn something, as well as having a lot of fun during the week.

The finished poster

And here are some close-ups of some of the students' comments about their learning.

Definitely some great learning here.



More great learning

This student learned so much he/she needed a second shape!

Some great learning here.

Two students' thoughts

Another two students' thoughts

 If you want to know more about this great unit, check it out at the Disney Nature Chimpanzee website. You can download the great educators' guide for free. My students thoroughly enjoyed it, and I can definitely recommend it as a high quality professional resource.

Tenths and Hundredths and Pony Beads

So what do pony beads have to do with tenths and hundredths. Read on and you will find out.

In Grade 4K we've been learning about fractions. Over the years I've discovered that either they get it or they don't. Unfortunately, we use fractions every day, so kids do really need to get it. Over the last couple of weeks we've done a fair bit of work with ordinary fractions, and putting them on a number line, and comparing them. After Friday's test I know we need to do a bit more work on equivalent fractions, but this week, we are working on linking common fractions and decimals.

This week we've been working on tenths and on Thursday we started on hundredths. The first two days went OK, using number lines and linking common fractions with decimal fractions (i.e. 1/10 = 0.1 and 3/10 = 0.3 etc.). Then we started working on hundredths. They seemed to do OK with the lesson on Thursday, and everyone was able to complete the workbook activity, which had them colouring tenths and hundredths on a grid and then writing the fraction in hundredths.

So Friday morning before I went onto the new content, I asked them to tell what we'd be learning about. Responses were vague. Eventually I got that we'd been learning about tenths and hundredths, but to get the relationship between the two was almost impossible. So it was time to get out my new teaching aid.

Kids love hands on things, and these strings of pony beads are great for helping kids understand tenths and hundredths.

There are ten beads of one colour in a set, and ten sets of beads on a string, making 100 beads. They can be really useful for students in lower grades who are beginning to learn what 100 is, and they are great for 4th graders struggling to understand how tenths and hundredths fit together. I'd already modelled the concept using a square divided into 100 smaller squares, and the kids had done some work with that, but getting these out (and everyone got to "play" with their own), really helped them see. Each single bead was one hundredth of the whole string, and ten hundredth beads went together to make one tenth!

We'll see how much they remember on Monday!

P.S. A big thank you to Mary Kluck and Lesley Kimber for getting me the supplies to create these great teaching aids, and to Janet Singer for giving me a sample and showing me some ways to use them.

Giving kids choices

The first installment

There is something to be said in favour of giving kids choices.

That statement is very broad, but then the whole idea of giving kids choices and helping them make wise choices has wide application.

In this case, I'm talking about reading. I was thrilled to hear a parent tell me today that it is no longer a battle to get her daughter to read. Yes!!! :) At the start of the year, and the first parent-teacher conference, this parent had confided in me that her daughter really hated reading. I made a few suggestions, and made two resources available. One of the resources was an on-line reading program where kids read books that are just the right level for them.  The other resource was my classroom library.

When I started at EWIS back in August 2010, I had no classroom library. Over the past 2 years, largely thanks to some generous donations and an excellent 2nd hand bookshop, I have built a collection of over 500 books, ranging from beginning levels through to advanced grade 5+ reading levels. The books include a variety of genres at a variety of reading levels.

While reading for 15 minutes each day is a compulsory part of homework, I don't tell the children what they have to read. I do however ensure they have access to books to read. Every morning the children have a chance to change their classroom library book (unless they are late for school). It has worked.


Ready for the start of this year.



In September this year, the student concerned was choosing mostly short stories in picture books. As the year progressed I've watched her discover chapter books, and she's now happily reading medium level chapter books.

So this post is in honour of all those who have contributed to the Grade 4K classroom library. It is the envy of other classes, and the students love it. Thank you all so much.

Secretly Smitten: Love Changes Everything

Including:   Love Between the Lines (by Colleen Coble)
                    Make Me a Match (by Kristin Billerbeck)
                    Knit One, Love Two (by Diann Hunt)
                    and
                    Love Blooms (by Denise Hunter)

I just love it when I get four books for the price of one! What most amazed me about this set of 4 novellas is how four different authors can write four unique stories, while taking a single overarching plot through to a satisfying conclusion.

When a young girl discovers a set of military dog tags belonging to an older ladies sweetheart who had supposedly died in a conflict in Korea, three sisters set out to find out what happened. Along the way, each of the girls, and their mother discover true love in unexpected places. With a neat blend of mystery and romance, this set of four stories had me turning the pages when I should have been asleep. Set in a small country town called "Smitten", which is fighting for survival and desperate to gain selection as a tourist destination on the state rail network, with all the joys and challenges of small town living, this was a fun book to read. As for the conclusion, well I'll just say it was an unexpected, but happy ending. You'll just have to read it to find out.

Secretly Smitten is well written, with realistic characters, and five satisfying plots. Each of the characters also learns important life lessons, and there is an underlying reminder that God is in control, and He wants good things for His children.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.