September 8 - 11

On top of the normal activities for the week, we added several fun activities. With just a shortened four day week, it was tough to cram it all in. Wednesday was 9-9-09, so we celebrated the number 9! We wrote a nine poem, drew a nine picture, learned a nine song, and shared them all with a class of 9 year olds (4th grade). Also, rather than the school standard "Give Me 5", for the day it was "Give Me 9". It ended up being a day full of fun.


On a more serious side, this week was 9-11. Though I'm sure you parents remember every vivid detail about it as well as I do, the six graders this year were only 3 years old when it happened. I wanted to find a delicate way to share with them the seriousness of the whole day, without overdoing it. I decided to use the day to give them a lesson on the difference between a hero and a celebrity. I invited one of our student's father, who is a Syracuse Firemen, as well as the Syracuse Fire Chief, to come in and talk to our class Friday afternoon. As a presentation for them, we drew some pictures of heroes in action, and wrote letter thanking the firemen for what they do for us. I bound this into a nice little book, wrote a letter from the class and had everyone sign it. We presented this to them on Friday as a token of our gratitude; as a way to honor our hometown heroes.

When push came to shove, the fire chief holding back tears as he talked about his 343 fellow brothers that lost their lives that day taught a better lesson than I could have ever done myself.

A few reminders for our parents. Remember I gave them homework folders this week. They should be bringing those home daily with their homework and any other letters that are for you. Monday is our picture day, so please send the picture packets back with your students. I sent home a missing assignment report on Friday that your student should have you sign and then bring back with them on Monday. Also remember in the front cover of the homework folder is the username and password for your access to your students grades online. On that same note, I will be sending home a progress report with the students Tuesday. This will have nothing that you can't see online. In fact, I'm going to be stapling with it a note. In an effort to help SAA with our conservation goals, I would rather keep this with a paperless system. So please read that letter, and sign and return it if you DO NOT have regular access to the internet and WILL NOT be able to keep a regular eye online. If I don't get that letter back, I will assume that you have regular access to the gradebook website (https://www.classactiongradebook.com/members/login.aspx) and do not need a paper copy of the progress report.

Just a short list of this weeks upcoming schedule: We will be finishing our class read aloud of Bridge to Terabithia. I have promised the students that IF every single student has NO missing assignments, we will watch the movie on Friday. If we do end up seeing the movie, which with a little pushing from me I think we will, I will use it to segue into a Character Lesson on death. I've learned through the loss of my father during student teaching that a preemptive lesson on this can be very helpful in the unfortunate event that anyone in the class experiences any form of death throughout the year.

We will be continuing on in our Basal reader and keeping the same Words Their Way spelling list we practiced with last week. We continue on studying microorganisms in science moving this week into monerans and other single celled organisms. Finally in Math, we will be discussing properties of equations, prime and composite numbers, coordinates, and customary forms of measurement.

Blue skies coming at us. Blue skies coming our way!

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain." ~ Maya Angelou