October 12 - 23

It's been a pretty crazy busy couple of weeks here at the SAA and I don't think it's going to settle down until after the term ends this coming week. Hopefully, the craziness ends than at least. Just because it's crazy, doesn't mean it hasn't been good or fun, though. Our picture for the week (or two weeks, I guess), is of Stanley, or Staci, or Shirley, etc. We finished Flat Stanley in a matter of two read alouds. With that, we created our own Stanley's. I took them over the weekend, last weekend, down to the south side of the Great Salt Lake by the Great Saltaire. Below is the picture I took with them there.

Accompanied by a note written from each of the students to my friend, the Stanleys are currently in route to Australia, where she will snap some photos of our Stanleys, write us a note, and send it all back so the Stanleys can continue on their journey.

There is a lot of up and coming news. Firstly, with the end of the term coming Wednesday, first term reading minutes ended over the weekend. The tracking calendars are due Monday.

We have a pretty good sized project coming up this Thursday that we could use some volunteers for. I will be sending a note home with more details Monday, so keep an eye out for it, but in short, as a sixth grade, we are going to be making plaster masks. As I said, more details will come home Monday night, but we could use some volunteers if you're looking for hours.

Our class play is coming along great. I get more excited for it as we go! The actual performance will be during school on Thursday, November 5th at 2:30. Parents are invited, so feel free to come and support your children. They've worked hard and I think it will be great performance. Please be ready to help your child come up with the correct color of clothing for their costumes. We will be discussing exactly what we will be doing this week. They should be able to tell you by Tuesday what they might need, if it's not creatable here in class.

On a final note, we have been having problems in the Junior High half of the school (5-8 grades) with kids adhering to the uniform policy. I know I have been pretty relaxed on it, but as a whole, the school is wanting us to crack down, so please make sure your child is in proper uniform when they leave home. If you need to review it, the dress code policy is addressed on the school's website. (http://www.syracuseartsacademy.org/Dress_Code.html) Students out of dress code will have a friendly reminder sent home with them at the end of the day that you the parent must sign so we know that we are all on the same page.

As a whole, besides being busy, busy, busy - the class and I are learning and growing side by side. With each day, we all get a little older and a little wiser, as it should be for the rest of our lives!

"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday." - Abraham Lincoln

October 5 - 8

Term 1 Parent Teacher Conferences are behind us and I feel pretty good having now met the parents of all of my students. These conferences were really good for all of us, helping us get parents, teacher and students all onto the same page. The conferences went really well and I feel that we are now readier than ever to finish out the last month of the first term.

This last week at a glance might seem pretty dry after how exciting it started out. One of the parents of one of our classmates is a Yoga Instructor and has agreed to come in once a month during our P.E. time to teach the class. Below is a picture of the class in action.

I was really unsure exactly how the class would take to doing Yoga, but I was pleasantly surprised with the overwhelmingly positive response from them. Having come so accepted, we are going to continue our once a month schedule.

With the conferences done, and some extra time in the classroom without the kids on Friday, I feel like I'm all caught up. I have grades all up to date except for a few papers I have out with parents to be corrected. (Which by the way, thank you for all the support.) This coming week we will be spending a bit of time making sure that all of the students have their work in. My goal is to hopefully have a class without any missing asaignments by Friday. This will, however, depend on how well the students work with me, so let's hope for the best!

This previous week, we dipped into a different culture reading a passage out of our Basal Reader from Number the Stars. This week we will be reading an exerpt from Summer of the Swans. They are both great pieces of literature. In math this week, we will be focusing on geometric relations as we look into area and perimeter and how the two relate with each other.

After two short weeks on the same list, we tested our spelling words Thursday. We will be starting a new list on Monday and considering it's a full week, we will testing them on Friday.

With that, we just need to keep in the forefront of our minds that the end of the term is only two and a half weeks away. That's plenty of time to get caught up what we need, but it's also plenty of time to let things slip. I'll do my best in class to make sure things are kept on top of. So long as the students do their part, we can finish the term strong!

"Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best." - Bob Talbert

September 28 - 30

This having been such a short week, there's not a whole lot to update on. We took our September Benchmark tests for Language Arts and Math on Tuesday and Wednesday. With the results of those in, I will be sending home progress reports on Monday, which I will expect the students have you parents sign and then return on Tuesday. This will alleviate any surprises for Parent Teacher Conferences, which are this week as well. I've sent home a notice on that already. Your time will also be printed on the bottom of the progress report. If you have any problems with his time, please contact me and I'll see what else we can arrange. With that, I think I'll bid adieu for this week. With another short week ahead of us, another post is not too far away!

"Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them."