Good Morning, Grizzlies!
            We are in the classroom today. We are in the following groups: Race, Sponsor, and Analyzing Data.
                                                                                          Race
            In this group, we are making a check list of our tools that we will need for our race. It’s highly important we have these tools for race day. We know that if we do not have some tools that we will have to not race. If our car breaks down and we don’t have our tools, we will be very unfortunate because we cannot race without our car. Some of the tools that we might need for our car during the race are: Tire pump, wrenches, screwdrivers, and etc. It’s not that we already know what we need, but we have had experience in our car breaking down or acting up. Along the same point for the race, I still think we do not know why our car wasn’t making any sound while running. All of the other cars were making a sound, either small or big sounds. Usually, our car makes noises while running. I also cannot detect if in this situation, if it’s good or bad it wasn’t making any sound. It sure does worry some of the members of the team.
                                                                                         Sponsor
            In this group, we are typing up our envelopes and fixing everything up. It is very important we have at least the address and name correct. We would be very upset if we accidently sent it to the wrong person. Lindsey, our outreach leader, is saving it to a flash drive and making sure it’s saved and correct. Our sponsor letter hopefully looks great! I haven’t got a chance to look at it yet, but knowing Lindsey, she gets the point across to the sponsors. We are hoping to get a lot of sponsors, so we can make a lot of money. We aren’t only focused about making money, per say. It’s just important that we do, so we can make mechanical improvements to our car. Fundraising would have a better effect of getting more money but not a lot of people. Usually when you contact sponsors, you are contacting them directly, but not getting a whole lot of money. Over the past times, sponsoring has been our main money earner. Many people have gave us money, but only through direct contact either via email or phone. We are also sending out a list over break for getting at least 5 sponsors that’s family or friends. This is a well-thought idea because it will be Thanksgiving and during Thanksgiving you are with family.
                                                                                    Analyzing Data
            In this group, we are taking the data from the race and analyzing what was happening during the race. Apparently, we started to decrease in speed when we hit our 27th lap. I think it was due to the crash between Challenger and Whitesburg.  I do not know when they crashed, but it was around that lap. The data shows that are 1st pit time was slow, so that is something we can work to fix. I believe Mr. Cruise jotted down data for the race, so thank you to him. By looking at the graphs, we can tell we can do a whole lot better than this year. I think that we can improve by making adjustments to our car that can help increase our speed. Also, we are getting a new motor, but we do not know anything about it. We do not know if it’s a good motor or how it’s supposed to run. We hope all is well!
                                                                                         Absence
            Due to it being a Holiday next week, we have next week off. That being said, there will be no blog until November 30th, 2015. That also means that you will not be able to hear my terribly cheesy jokes about Thanksgiving. I hope everyone has a safe holiday and if you’re traveling that you get there and back safely. I hope everyone gets to see family and eat tons of food. Happy Thanksgiving!

Q: What phrase grabs a Pilgrim’s attention?
A: April showers bring MAYFLOWERS 
                                                                                                                                                                  With more to come, 
                                                                                                                                                                        Carlee from Green Grizzlies

Good morning, Grizzlies!
            We are in the following groups: Outreach, build, and race prep
                                                                                        Outreach
            In this group, we are working on a lot of things. Some of the things we are working on are sponsor letters, business cards, fundraising, blog, and presentation. These are all important things to our team and must be done. If they are not done, then we will end up with no money. Why do I say we will end up with no money if we do not do these things? Sponsor letters allow us to go and attempt to get money from potential organizations/companies/people/corporations. Business cards are a significant thing to us because it summarizes what we are doing and gives them contact info. It is almost like a brochure, but it’s a card and it’s not that detailed. Fundraising allows us to raise money for our team and things we need for our car. When we are brainstorming for fundraising ideas, we must be reasonable about what we can actually do. We do not have much we can do that will not violate the rules of the school. Many people leave right when school ends, so that takes away a lot of our potential customers or people that will donate money to the fundraiser. We need to come up with a way to have all the students and teachers gathered at once. The only way we would gather them at once is an assembly. We only have those when we have an important game, either basketball or football. Plus, it would be an inconvenience for some students or teachers because it would be taking some of their class time away. Moving on, the blog is important because it gives us a run down about how we spend our day for this class. It also is detailed when we have ideas and we are planning ahead. Without the blog, you would have no idea what it takes to prepare for a race and the struggles we have while planning ahead. It gives you some insight about how the green grizzlies minds work when all of us together. The presentation is super important and needed in this case. The presentation is for the judges of the next race. It helps them judge if we have our minds in the right place or if we are lost and just there to win. It shows how we built our car and aerodynamics. It also shows the judges the credentials of our lovely members of this team!
                                                                                             Build
            In this group, we are focusing on researching mechanical improvements. The improvements we are focusing on is controllers and potentiometer. What is a potentiometer? It’s an instrument for measuring an electromagnetic force by balancing against the potential difference produced by passing a known current through a known variable resistance. In this case, it would be highly important for our batteries. Since we had a problem last year and partially this year with our batteries, we will see if it would change anything and improve our performance in our batteries. The build team worked on wiring and batteries yesterday. I do not know if they finished, but we are in the classroom today. Our supervisor/teacher is not here, so we cannot be permitted in the show without her permission or attendance. If we did not finish, we always have tomorrow that we can work on it.
                                                                                       Race Prep
            In this group, we are creating a checklist of tools and equipment needed for race day. This is important because we need tools for race day. Why do we need them? What if our car break down, we would need them to be able to fix the car. Since we cannot go down to the shop today, we will have to double-check our list tomorrow. That way, we would be positive of what we have and what’s missing. It will be a major issue if something important is missing. We will need the tools, not only for the race, but in the future as well. We will need them when we change back into our race tires. Besides making a checklist, there is nothing really going on in this group. I hope to be able to have all our tools together soon and for the race.
            In conclusion, all of our groups are helping us prepare for the future. Green Power is mainly preparing us for our future. It allows us to use our cooperation skills and our problem solving skills.
JOKE OF THE DAY:
 Q: What type of key is good for opening the door on Thanksgiving?
A: A Tur-KEY
                                                                                                                                                                                   With more to come,
                                                                                                                                                                      Carlee from Green Grizzlies

  Happy Wednesday, Grizzlies!
       
          We are in the shop again! Our groups today are: Fundraising, Sponsorship, Build, and Website.
                                                                                           Fundraising
            This group is making on a survey on survey monkey. I think they may be making one in order for us to choose what to do for raising money for our team. Every group plays a big part in helping us. The fundraising group is helping us earn money, so we will have money left over for things we want to purchase for our car. For example, we could save the money to purchase new batteries for our car. The batteries would be a good idea because it would boost the speed of our car up. New and more efficient batteries will help us have a better chance at winning our next race. Of course, we would have to get really good batteries. Therefore, we need to make a lot of money because they would cost a lot for them. I hope our team can choose on a goof fundraising idea that will raise a lot of money. Good luck!
                                                                                           Sponsorship
            This group is addressing the envelopes and making sure they are correct. It is a lot to do because you have to make sure there are no grammatical errors. If we had grammatical errors, it would be hard to believe we are acting professional about the situation. They would think we are immature and that would reflect our team and school. We do not want that! Therefore, we are going through and taking time to make sure everything is good to go. I think that Lindsey (Outreach leader) wrote our sponsorship letter and is editing it at the moment. She asked our English teacher to look at it to check and see if the formations and grammar was correct. We thought that our English teacher would be a good choice to look over it because she teaches it for a career and she would know more about it than us.
                                                                                                   Build
            This group is checking the wires and clamps on our cars. During the race, I think our terminals lost a pin or something. It took time to figure out what was going on and why the batteries were not working. I have only helped in wiring with Shiquarius, when we first started building our car. It takes a lot of cooperation in the build team. You have to work together to solve problems. I will add that we do not rely on the build team to fix all our car’s issues.  It takes the WHOLE team to make decision and decide on how to solve the problem. If the whole team wasn’t involved, then it would be the build team basically doing all the work. I am actually really proud of the build team. They have accomplished so much and worked together to fix the problems physically, instead of arguing about it. I am so proud to see what has happened in our past to fix our problems. I cannot wait to see what we in store for us in the future to fix our problem.
                                                                                                Website
             Mainly, the website group is just the blogger. The rest our in the other groups helping their groups and cooperating together. It only takes one person to blog and that would be me. I am still thinking about things I could add or change to our blog. If you have any ideas, please send positive feedback to us. We love to hear how you guys think about the blog and our website in general. Thank you to those who have looked and enjoyed our website/blog. We appreciate it!
                                                                                                                                                                      With more to come,
                                                                                                                                                                           Carlee from Green Grizzlies
                                                                                                          
 

Good Morning, Grizzlies!
            Today, we are in the shop. We are in groups trying to get things completed and done. We are determined to gather some ideas for fundraising and sponsorship. Ms. Amos has printed out sheets for us to get some of our family members to sponsor or donate money to us. I think it’s a great idea since Thanksgiving is coming up. Addition to Thanksgiving, who wants some more ironic, but funny jokes? Like I had said previously, I may be going throughout the week testing things out on the blog. At the end of every blog, I will be supplying you with a daily joke about a certain holiday that may be coming up or school related. All jokes are intended for a younger age because some jokes could end up offensive and we do not want to offend anyone. We are not that team that would make jokes that could be offensive to someone. I believe that the jokes I posted for Halloween were very appropriate and were not offensive. Another thing I would like to test out is more color to our blog. Yes, I know I have added some color to our blog to make it less dull, but it has come to my intention that it is not enough. I also need to make different outros for the blog as well. Usually, I say “With more to come”, but I need something else to sign off with. You probably noticed that the last blog had my name on the signature part. I linked my name, so you would know who it was writing the blogs for you every day.  I think it’s more advanced now that I have added the link of my page. If you notice any errors that are grammatical, please send feedback. We need to keep our page tidy and at its best.
            If our page is at its best, then it will reflect on us and our teacher. Therefore, our blog and website should be neat and very professional. We would be very proud of ourselves if we have no grammatical errors. I know the build team is up to something, but since I had a leave of absence, I do not know what they are doing. I am not saying that I am not focused, but I have to be able to blog to you guys in a certain amount of time. Now, what you have been waiting anxiously for, the thanksgiving joke is finally here.
                                                            Q: Who doesn’t eat on Thanksgiving?
                                                     A: The turkey doesn’t eat because it’s already stuffed.
​          With that joke, I think that is all for today. Come back tomorrow for more!
                                                                                                                                                            With more to come,
                                                                                                                                                                      Carlee from Green Grizzlies

Good Morning, Grizzlies. 
           Sorry for the absence of the blog for the last two days. Our blogger was absent due to relapse of prior illness. She is back now, so we will have a blog today. To anyone who reads our blog, you would know that we recently had our race and we had a few minor problems. It was nothing major and mainly curiosities that we had.  One of our concerns were why our car wasn't going as fast as anyone else's ,even though we had a whole lot more aerodynamics to it. We thought that the nose cone was the reason we weren't going so fast for last year, but I believe that is not the problem. Another one of our concerns were that you could hear everyone else's car run, but you could not hear ours. The issue caused commotion and stirred us up a bit as a team because we are wondering what we can do to make our car faster. We think the batteries may be a problem too. Our batteries might not be a great kind of batteries. We are looking into finding batteries that make us run faster but do not cost a lot. If we want batteries that run great and use our car efficiently, we need to do a fundraiser or find a way to make money. Mainly what we are doing today is sponsorship letters, discussion with Mr. Evans, and making a survey for fundraising.  Concluding the whole battery thing, we cannot break the seal on the motor or batteries.  Therefore, it makes it difficult for to go faster without breaking rules.
          Ideas! I need ideas for the blog. I know that in the past I have created some ideas,  but never got around to actually doing them. Starting this week, I will be asking around and researching some cool things to put onto the blog. Recently, I had created the idea of putting color into our blog because it looked so dull and boring without it. Since I added color, I think the blog has a little brightness and it's more astute. That being so,  we need more ideas to keep the blog at bay and more vibrant. If you could, please leave feedback on how we could make our blog better. I love the idea of improvement and change. It's good to improve because it's getting better and better each time you look at it and change  it. Thanks to everyone who has gave feedback to us about our website and/or blog, it helps us improve. Thanks for everyone who has gave us ideas as well for fundraising and sponsorship, you have helped us a lot by allowing us to make profit in efficient ways. 
                                                                                                                                                               With more to come,
                                                                                                                                                                   Carlee from Green Grizzlies 
          
       

          Good Morning, Grizzlies! 
         How are our fellow grizzlies this morning? Hopefully, you guys are great and ready to hear what's going on today. Today, we are in the shop! We have groups again as well. Our fundraising  group is collecting movie titles and their prices to possible allow the elementary kids and/or middle school kids to view. We think it would be a well-rounded idea to raise money for our team. As I have said before, fundraising does not bring in as much money as sponsorship does. Sponsorship is you/your team going to a person/corporation and asking them to provide money in return of doing something for them. I am actually excited for this idea because it sounds great and fun! Of course, the movie(s) would have to be G-rated. Anything that is above that rating might not be suitable or great to watch from the view of their parents. We do hope that we will be able to do this. We cannot wait for more ideas to come to the minds of our brilliant fundraising team. 
         In other news, our build/aerodynamics team is changing our tires into our practice tires. They are changing the tires because we are not about to go to a race. The next race is in April and that is really far away. They race tires and practice tires are different in all terms. The race tires are thinner and more reliable to keep constant motion. The practice tires are thicker and are not reliable for constant motion. I believe that last year we used tires that could relate to our practice tires. Therefore, you can start to see why we did not get very far along with our thick tires and incorrectly connected batteries. Also along the same track, we have an alignment team. They are cooperating and working together with the people who are changing the tires.
          Of course, our last group that is working  with our fellow peer among our team is the Website/Blog. Nathan, our webmaster, is attempting to upload the photos on to the website. I do not know if he has posted them. You could check in the gallery for our newest photos. I believe Jake's parents took some great pictures and I think those are the ones he tried uploading today. So, thank you to anyone who took pictures at the race. If you do have pictures for the race, please send them to us at [email protected]. The email address is our teams and we would love to hear feedback and receive photos from you. Thank you to whoever went to the race. I forgot to thank you guys for that. We loved having people rooting for our team at the race. It really gave us a lot of enthusiasm and spirit for us to complete the race. Hopefully, we will be able to do our fundraising idea. I think we are also thinking about getting new batteries. I believe I have mentioned that before, but it's in the process of thought and will hopefully happen soon. 
                                                                                                                                                                          With more to come,
                                                                                                                                                                                                  Green Grizzlies
          P.S- Thank you so much for applying money for our team. You have helped us accomplished many of our goals that we have made this year. We did so much better than last year,all thanks to you guys!

          Happy Friday, Grizzlies! 
                 Today, we are in groups again! Although, we have different goals today. We are focusing still on getting ideas for raising money and making plans for sponsorship. Thank you, Presentation Editors for making it possible for us to fix our slideshow and have it eligible to present to judges of our next race. Presentation Editors are making a fundraising plan by the end of class today. On a related topic,  A Dairy Queen worker that is related to one of the members said we would have to call and ask about spirit nights, but he said it might be a possibility. Website/Blog are editing the 'Meet the Team' page. It turns out that I didn't save the editing I applied on there and it never changed it. The blog is getting some changes as you can tell. I have added color to the blog to pump up your day. I felt as the blog was getting boring by typing in just plain black text. Hopefully, I have made it possible to brighten up your day.
              Aerodynamics are creating ways to make our car faster. Making it faster will hopefully help us win the Spring Race in 2016. Other than that, there are really no changes being made to our car but the connectors to the batteries. Hopefully, we change them because they messed up in the last two races but last race we nip it in the bud.  Hopefully, we will make our car better because we do want to win but it's not always important to win. The importance of the race is cooperation and team work qualities. So, thank you to the Aerodynamics group for fixing our car and making it able to race again by brainstorming. It's not even Thanksgiving yet, but I have already said thanks more than I ever would. This team is so thankful for all of the help we have received.  Without the help, we would be nowhere and possibly not be eligible to race our car. Thank you to the readers of the blog who actually read the blog and like it. I am sorry if I do not fill your needs with the blogs, if you do not like it. Thank you so much for letting change be possible.Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.- George Bernard Shaw
                                                                                                                                                                            With more to come, 
                                                                                                                                                                                      Green Grizzlies
                    

          Good morning, Grizzlies!
           Today,  we are in groups in the classroom. We have 4 groups: Website/blog, fundraising/sponsorship, aerodynamics, and power point editors. In the website/blog group, Our webmaster,Nathan, is showing Will( assistant webmaster) the basics and editing the website. Of course, I am writing the blog, or else you wouldn't know about the wizardry going on with the website! Fundraising/sponsorship is thinking and brainstorming of ideas/ways to make money. Yeah, we could stick to the spirit nights and raise money slowly, but their our other schools that do spirit nights at Chick-fil-a. Therefore, they are creating new ways for us to earn money. We are thinking about doing a spirit night at Dairy Queen. It brings in a whole lot of people and one of our members has a relative hat works there.  The power point editors are editing our power point and making it more professional for next year. They are involving more people in the presentation to raise our score. Our score we received was really excellent. We scored a 96! They are making it a lot better, so hopefully we can score 100. Aerodynamics is designing and sketching out ways we can change our car to increase our speed. They are making changes to the car that follow regulations as well. If we want to increase our speed, the best way to accomplish that is to take part into the battery part. We are thinking about saving up and getting new batteries.
          Other than our groups creating ideas and editing things,  there is not much going on. We are basically preparing for the race in April. There's not much we can do because the changes we want to make to our car require money and the money requires fundraising. Like I said earlier, we are thinking about approaching Dairy Queen for a spirit night. It brings in a ton of people and it has lots of options for people who love ice cream. Even if you're lactose and tolerant, they have many options besides dairy related items.  Even if we couldn't do that, we would still have to brainstorm about other ideas. I still cannot believe that we placed 3rd. I am still excited ! In the last blog, I had talked about how our behavior played part in the race and preparing for it. We are getting better at our behavior! I am amazed at how much our team has improved from the beginning to now.. Besides our complications that we have overcame from last year, this race was so much better and we are maturing from it. Our day pends on our actions and reactions, there is no good luck or bad luck. Our attitude changes everything and that is how we run on our day. 
                                                                                                                                                                                   With more to come,
                                                                                                                                                                                             Green Grizzlies
                                                                                                                                                                                              
    

          Good morning, fellow grizzlies! Today, we are making improvements! We are thinking of improvements to our power point, car, race, and behavior. The way we acted at the race was unacceptable and bad sportsmanship. We need a huge improvement in how we act inside the classroom and outside at functions/races.
                                                                                           Behavior 
           Our behavior is very important to us and to our peers. It can represent our team and school! If it's bad behavior, we do not want our school and/or team looking like we are stuck up and selfish. Winning is not the important thing about the race. It is the fact that we used team work and cooperation to be eligible to race. Winning is substantial to if you use that cooperation and teamwork wisely. You have to think quick on your feet during the race because you do not have much time to wrap your head around all the things that are going on. Therefore, our behavior plays a big part in race day and functions.
                                                                                               The Car
            Another thing that is important during the race is our function of our car and if it works or not. There would be no race if there is no functioning vehicle. That's basically the point of the whole entire race. The importance of the car is for it to be able to race. That being said, we have to have it the best of the best, meaning no flaws once so ever. Our aerodynamics must be top notch and able to push us at our best speed. Our speed for this year was 18.8 mph. We need improvements because the fastest lap was 19.3, I believe. So, aerodynamics is also a huge part in how we function during the race and/or practicing. 
                                                                                        Fundraising
          Finally, our last thing that we need to function is fundraising. We wouldn't be able to purchase any of the things we need to improve our aerodynamics. It's important to have fundraising because  we would have to have money and extra money left our for things that are not needs. Sponsorship is important too! You can actually get more money with sponsorship than you can get with fundraising. Sponsorship is for either person to team or corporation to our team.  Fundraising, you would have to give a certain percentage to the company or person that helped you raise that money. For example, Chick-fil-a Spirit Nights require us to share the profits because they cooked the food and allowed us to be there. They are both great ways to make and bring in money! They are also very important for functioning at all. We wouldn't be anywhere with out it.
          Again, we think we did well during the race and we did. There is just one catch though, we could of done way better if we made these improvements earlier during the race. We could of changed our ways and won the race. Like I said, winning isn't and wasn't the important thing at the time. I am still very proud of our team and really glad that we at least placed. We used great cooperation skills and stayed together. Either a little distraught or distracted, we are always cooperating together to improve either ourselves or each other. 
                                                                                                                                                                     With more to come, 
                                                                                                                                                                               Green Grizzlies

          Sorry for our slight absence! Weebly had been blocked from our school computers. We had to figure out a way to still be able to blog and update our website. We found a way and converted our website to education.weebly. We also had our race! We did better than last year! We placed 3rd for middle school! We did 46 laps! Our speed was 18.8 mph. We think that the difference is the batteries and if we change the gear ratio,  it could drain the batteries.  We are thinking about saving up money and buying new batteries. We get what we get and that's about it. We had some slight problems during the race. The race was fun, but some things had occurred. I believe our terminals and connectors are acting up again. Like I said before, we did better than last year! Congratulations to Challenger Middle School for placing 1st place! You guys did awesome!
        Some things we can fix for our next race is organization. Our tent was super small and very unorganized. People wouldn't sit down and it made it very hard for us to see and track down our car we were timing. The qualifying race was very hard to time because people were confused and we did not know when the person said to start. We think we did well, but we can do better. Starting off, we are fixing some problems and issues we had with the race. Some things that affected our timing of the other teams' cars was the crash between Whitesburg and Challenger. I think it was a phenomenal that they managed to still beat us after that aftermath. So, congratulations to both teams! You guys did amazing!
          Thank you, Greenpower USA for giving us the opportunity to race against other schools in our division. We had an amazing time and learned a lot. Greenpower is all about problem solving and the race gave us a chance to do a lot of problem solving . Thank you to the other teams who participated with us! We think everyone did great! We are so honored to win 3rd place in the middle school division. Like I said earlier, we could still do better but we still did great!
                                                                                                                                                                                  With more to come,
                                                                                                                                                                                    Green Grizzlies