February 22 - 26

This has been one, busy, busy, crazy, crazy week. Let me give you the run down through a barrage of photos:

On Tuesday we had Jazz player Kosta Koufos visit our school for being one of the top 10 schools in the reading contest.
On Wednesday, Clark Planetarium brought their Astro Van to our school to give the sixth graders some extra insight into the solar system.
Also on Wednesday, we had POEC President Cameron Almond introduce the Fine Arts Contest to us.
And on Thursday, we had a visit from Author Mike Knudson ....
.... and professional story teller Donald Davis.

As I said, it was one busy week. There never seems to be a dull moment, which is good, but also keeps us a bit on edge. Hopefully, this weeks things slow down a little and bring us a bit of normality.

I will be sending home Progress Reports on Monday. Attached to these will be a few things. First off, I am going to be changing my late work policy. It will be outlined in an attached note, but basically, every either Monday or Tuesday I will give the kids a list of their missing assignments. Assignments will only reach this list once before I will enter them as a zero into the gradebook. Credit will still be possible, but it's will be the student's responsibility to get the work in, rather than my houdning them week after week for the assignments. I am doing this mostly because I feel as if I'm doing them a bit of a disservice by not better preparing them for how things will be in school years to come. The last few months will be a little closer to the stricter standards they will be held to in future years. Also attached to the progress reports will be this weeks missing assignment list, if your student has any, as well as copies of the worksheets for them to make it up.

Other than that, I'm hoping this week will be a little more normal. I've been hoping that for weeks now, so maybe I should redefine normal in my dictionary. Anyway, we will be reading a story this week called Out of the Darkness. It is the story of Louis Braille, the inventor of the Braille alphabet for the blind.

Math this week we will be reviewing adding and subtracting integers, fractions and mixed numbers. We've only got one month of teaching left for math before we begin reviewing the entire year and prepping them for end of levels.

Science this week we will be creating a human solar system, learning about comets, asteroids and meteors, and also touching on technologies used on the ground and in space to study the solar system.

Also, please remember the basket our class is building for the Art Gala. I've only gotten a few donations in, so please, if you can add to our cause. You have until March 10 to send any Twilight themed items in with your student.

Considering I talked a bit about normality, I figured I'd end with a quote on the same:

"For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity." - Jean Dubuffet

February 8 - 19

D.A.R.E - Drug Abuse Resistance Education!



Our kiddos started it this week. They've gotten their dose of Officer Penrod, and I'm not sure they can get enough. They found him hilarious. He captured their attention this week and got them excited for the 13 weeks or so with him. Our picture this week is of him teaching the group. While we're on the subject of DARE, your student should have brought home a permission slip for them to be in the class. Those need to be back by Friday for them to be able to participate. If by chance they lost the actual form, you can just write them a note saying they are allowed to participate in the program.

Believe it or not we're getting pretty close to being halfway through term 3 already. The term ends the end of March. Time seems to just be flying by! Things are going really well though. This week is going to be a busy week for us. The Jazz/Usborne reading contest is over and we were one of the top 10 schools in the competition. This mean Tuesday we will be having an assembly starring one of the Jazz players. On Wednesday, we have Clark Planetarium bringing a field trip to us. We will have an assembly with them and then they will dedicate about 50 minutes to each 6th grade class. It should be a pretty good presentation. Then coming on Thursday we have a visiting Author and a visiting storyteller. It's going to be a fun week!

On top of all the fun though, we will still be following our standard procedures. Our story this week will be My Name is San Ho. In Math we will be working a bit with graphs, and then reviewing for our February Benchmark test. Science will be reinforced by the Planetarium's visit, but we will still also be diving into our exploration of the planets.

A note has gone this week telling you parents about the Art Gala. It's a fundraiser the school does each year where each class participates by donating an item. This year, the items they have asked the classes to donate are gift baskets. The theme for our gift basket is going to be Twilight. We are asking that each family help by donating something to our basket. We already have the baskets, so we are looking for just different Twilight collectibles and memorabelia. If you would like to purchase the books or movies, please talk with me first to be sure that someone has not already purchased it, so we won't have duplicates.

Thanks for your support in building our class basket. In fact, thanks for your support in everything!

"The beautiful thing about being human... things change." Edward Cullen, Twilight

January 25 - February 4

I feels like it's been longer than it has since I last posted, but it's been a long couple of weeks with the end of the term and conferences and all. In fact, I put in the picture this week because, as candid as it may be, it describes about how I feel.

The end of the term is past, and we are breaking fresh into the new term. I can see the year is starting to wear on the kids as it seems to be a rough start around on missing assignments. Please have a talk with your students just to make sure they realize the importance of keeping up on assignments and staying strong throughout the entire year. Just a reminder, you can keep watch at home from https://www.classactiongradebook.com/members/login.aspx. Feel free to e-mail or call me if you need your username and password for the online gradebook again.

Science Fair is in full swing. By this point in time, the kids should have their question posed and be just about to begin the researching, experimenting, and observing. The science fair will be worth about half our science grade this term, so please make sure that your student is keeping up on the work. With the questions I have seen, it looks like there are a lot of creative ideas out there this year. It's going to be fun to see the results.

We have a fairly normal week this week. Our story is called "Catching the Fire". It's a story about a blacksmith and his adventures. We'll be finishing up our pop-up book by either writing a story or a series of poems for them. We continue on into our unit on the solar system. And in math, we continue learning how to manipulate integers, and then move onto equations and the patterns they make.

I'll try to keep up on here a little better now that things are back a little closer to normal. I believe that's all we've got for this week though.

"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.” - Tom Bodett