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