March 18, 2011

The results are in! Hopefully your students have shared with you if they placed in the Science Fair. The top six places all got prizes, and the top student from each grade gets to go onto the next level of competition. In sixth grade, we actually had one student from each class, but our class was the lucky class to have two placers. Congratulations to Sami Christensen for placing fourth place in the sixth grade science fair! As I said last week though, the number one student in the sixth grade science fair came from our class as well. a HUGE congratulations to Jayden Bowles for being the top student this year with his project on "How does our lifestyle effect our pH balance and how does our pH balance effect our health?"

This week we also celebrated "National Pi Day," March 14 (3.14)! As part of reading contest, the top readers in each class got to throw a pie at the brave teachers and staff that volunteered. I, of course, was among those that did, which meant that I bravely took a pie in the face from Kristin Lawrence, our top reader in our class!

Just a few updates for this week. Most of the teachers within rotations ended their grades for Term 3 today. They should have at least close to final grades uploaded onto the gradebook. I, however, want to finish our "Genres of Literature" book for third term, so even though the assignment lists for Grammar, Spelling, and Math are complete, I have given the students one extra week to turn things in. I will be assigning the final story in the book, biography/autiobiography, this Wednesday. They will only have until Friday to turn it in before I will no longer accept it.

And with that, the third term will be over. The year is three-fourths done. I can hardly believe it. Most of the students have done really well this term. For those who could have made some improvements, use this fresh start to make them!

"For every ending, there is a new beginning." -Ancient Proverb

March 11, 2011

There's not a whole lot of news to report this week. Everything is rolling on as normal. We did have the Science Fair, and I can tell you so much as first place for sixth grade was in our class. But I can't officially make the announcement until after the assembly on Monday. I might have to have a "Special Bulliten" blog just for it.

We had a deadline put on us to have a DARE box finished by today, so the past week we worked hard to get it finished, just to find out that our DARE Officer cancelled DARE on us this week... and next week... so our finished DARE box is now finished three weeks early. Oh well, like the best of them say, "Those who finish early get the reward... of being done early." Our picture this week is a class shot with our finished DARE box.

The finished product turned out beautiful. The project was entirely student driven, and though not every student had a hand in it, I tried to make sure as many students as possible were represented in one way or another. We are all a family though, so the work of one of us, represents the work of all of us, so the whole class should be proud of this box!

I guess the big thing to keep in mind right now is that the end of the third term is just two weeks away now. March 28 is the last day. I will be having a make-up day on March 22 and the deadline for ANY work for the term will be March 25. Keep an eye on the gradebook, and I'll do my best to push the kiddos to get everything turned in on time. Let's end third term strong!

March 5, 2011

Can you believe that we're only 3 weeks away from the end of third term? Incredible, is it not? Where has the time gone? We keep moving along at the same pace, 60 minutes to an hour, yet somehow time is flying and standing still all at the same time! It's one of life's wonders.

Our picture this week is a glimpse of what's to become of our DARE box, which is a box the students can drop questions into to have Officer Penrod answer. Every year, there is a competition to see which class can design the best DARE box. Our class has come up with quite an awesome idea! Can you tell what it is from the picture? If not, you'll have to wait and see the final product.

Most of the subjects are moving along at their standard pace. For the last few weeks in grammar, we've been learning about verbs, which is also what we'll be learning about for the next couple of weeks to come: Past, present, and future tenses, participles, perfect tenses... etc. Lots of verbs to learn about in the English language. Science is continuing to learn about the planets. In reading this week, they learned about Louis Braille and how he designed the Braille reading system for the blind.

Math is continuing to march forward, but unfortunately for some, we're getting into material that I feel is leaving them behind. This is the time of year that we get into the hardest things we learn. We only have 3 weeks of math instruction left, then we use April to review for the End-of-Level testing. I tested something this month, and because of that, I'm going to ask a HUGE favor when we get closer to the end of the new month. Without the students knowing, when we reviewed for the test on Wednesday, I gave them the test, word for word, number for number, question for question, and answer for answer. Some of them noticed, others did not. Some of them did really well. In fact, I was able to award my first 100% this year for a math test. Unfortunately, they weren't all so well. You can look on gradebook to see your student's score. The fact that the scores were still all so spread out is a key indicator to me that very few of the students actually studied for the test which I gave them 100% of the answers to. This is a little disappointing. If the month goes as planned, the next review will be sent home on Thursday, March 24, for the test on Friday, March 25. Can you please keep your eye out for it and help your students study for this month's test? I won't be giving them the test question for question again, but I will be giving them questions that are worded identical to the test, just different numbers. I'd appreciate your support on this matter.

With that said, I have been very proud of these kids in many aspects: Their science test scores were up; Their Theme 4 Language test scores were up; And they had a fantastic idea for a DARE box; just to name a few. We've just got to find some way to make Math seem a little less scary.

"I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally." ~Calvin Trillin