May 15, 2010

Only 12 school days left... not that anyone's counting. Things are wrapping up pretty quick. Faster than I can really keep up with. Our pictures for this week will be two different things. The first is of some of students and their puppets that we've worked so diligently at for the last weeks. They've written puppet plays and created the puppets for those.

The other is what is hopefully going to become the book cover for a book that each of our students will write a part of and each of them will get to take a copy of home. "525,600, 2009-10". The question asked of them, there are 525,600 minutes in a year, what was your favorite of those this school year? There is so much coming up, I'm just going to make a list in hopes that I get it all on here:

May 18-19 - Puppet Shows (Performed throughout the day, just how up to see them)

May 21 - Term 4 Reading Miunutes End

May 21 - DARE Lagoon Day (Student's are encouraged to be at school, it will be counted as an absense if they choose to go to Lagoon instead)

May 25 - Theseus and the Minotaur (In case any of Mrs. Dezember or Mrs. Johnson's parents check this)

May 27 - Field Day (The school is still in need of volunteers if you need hours)

May 27 - Sixth Grade Graduation, 7pm

May 28 - Sixth Grade Boondocks Field Trip

June 2 - Talent Show

June 2 - Last Day of School

As I said, there's a lot coming up. I probably missed something, but that's a good chunk of it. I have pretty much finished collecting things that are actually going to be on grades. Student have until Friday to get missing assignments turned in. I will be giving them a list as well as progress reports on Monday, so keep an eye out for those Monday evening.

All in all, I think that sums it up. Time is moving so fast, and I really am going to miss each and every one of these students!!!

"Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you."

May 10, 2010

I realize it's been some time since I've written here and I must apologize. It's been an insanely busy month. Here's a couple of our highlights though: Earlier in the year, we wrote a letter to our President of the Unites States. Two weeks ago, we got a reply letter from him that included the letter, a picture of him, and a picture of his dog, Bo. It was pretty exciting.

We also had several from our class participate in the school play, 101 Dalmations!

We've made our way through almost all of our End-of-Level Testing. We'll be taking our last CRT this afternoon. We have a couple of graded tests to take this week as well. The L.A. Theme 6 test as well as the L.A. 4th Quarter Test. Also, a 4th Quarter Math test. After this week however, all of our testing for grades will be finished!

We finished our last story from our reading books last week and turned in the books, so this week will begin something a little different for reading. I have gotten my hands on a class set of the book Tuck Everlasting. We will be reading through it in little Book Clubs (groups of 5). There will be a packet to fill out as they go. Once we've read the book and quizzed on it, we might take a bit of class time and watch the movie as well.

After we test in Math, I think I'm going to just give them some different Math lessons that they might see next year. There will be assignments, but they won't be so heavily graded on how well they do on the concept as if they attempted it or not.

We have also been working heavily on the puppets we are going to be showing in our Informance. That will be coming up the 20th at 2:30 here in the auditorium. All parents are invited to come. It shuld be a fun time.

There is also a ton of things coming up, which information has gone home for already. The 6th Grade Graduation is on Thursday May 27th at 7 pm. Our sixth grade end of year field trip will be on Friday, May 28th. Permission slips should be home and returned ASAP. There were two different forms to fill out for it. I know DARE Lagoon day is coming up soon but they have yet to give us final information on it.

All in all, the end of the year is coming up SUPER quick! Only 17 school days left! (Not that anyone is counting.) I should hopefully be able to find the time to write on a semi-weekly basis again after this one. I'm sorry it has taken this long. At any rate, I'm just happy to still be trucking along with everything that has been going on! You're students are great and I really am going to be sad to see each and every one of them go. I'm not a crying man, but the end of the year could bring a few tears...

THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!!!

"In the end, it's not nexessarily the time you've put in, but what you've put into the time."

March 29 - April 2

WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK!

That's about all I've got to say! We'll see you all when we resume on April 12!

"A vacation is having nothing to do and having all day to do it in." - Robert Orben

March 15-26

It's been two weeks time since my last post and things have seemed a little rushed and busy, as always. It has a lot to with the end of the term on the crest. This coming Monday, March 29, is the end of the third term. I sent home missing assignment sheets with the students. Unless they turn in more work, their final grades are posted online at https://www.classactiongradebook.com/members/login.aspx If you need your login information, feel free to e-mail me. I'm taking our picture for the blog this week from our trip to Hale Center Theatre. I think the tour of the theatre was a real neat experience for the kids, especially those who are really interested in the acting field. It gave them a lot of insights into theater that they might not have had otherwise.

As I've already mentioned, the end of the term is here. Monday is the last day to turn in any work. We continue forward in our newest language arts theme with the story "Dive! My Adventures in the Deep Frontier."

Math is going to be a little bit different from here on out. Throughout the year, so far, we've been following a curriculum map which has lead us through the entire sixth grade curriculum. The entire month of April is going to be strictly review. We are going to start the month off with a practice end-of-level. I'm going to make them take it exactly as it would be during the end of level testing where they cannot ask me any questions whatsoever. With the results of that test, I am going to review the topics that they seem to need the most. After we've reviewed what that test said we needed, we'll take another, and so on until testing time is here. We are also going to be practicing taking the tests with the computer to get them used to that. All of their end-of-level testing is done on computer, so it's another skill they're going to need to establish.

Science is going to be similar to Math after this week. This week however, we're going to wrap up our solar system unit. We're going to be discussing how to navigate with the North Star. Then we review and test!

Spring Break is just one week away, and I think it's definitely time for a bit of a break for all of us, the students and myself included! Third term can get a bit long because there's no real break in it besides the weekends, so the week of Spring break will certainly be good for us all!

"Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!'" ~Robin Williams

March 8 - 12

Science Fair is done and gone! I'd like to congratulate the students. Their projects looked fantastic! They all did well enough that anyone that had their project in on time, got full credit on the board. I was so pleased by the turn out. Thanks for the support you gave at home on this project!

Also, thanks to Eric Allen for supplying us with the project that will be our picture of the week.

The kids had fun creating these rockets and then going out to the field to set them off. It was a good time that would never have happened without his stepping in, so thanks again!

That project also gave me my picture that is my entry into the school's fine arts contest, but I can't show it to you. It's a seeeeecret! :) This year's theme is The Power of One. Entries can still be turned in, it's not too late! They're looking for entries from either students or families in the categories of photography and musical composition. The winners will be announced at the Night of the Dragon Art Gala. More information on it can be found on the school's website.

We have a few things up and coming this week. Term 3 book reports are due starting Monday. The kids have had their assigned dates for over a month now, so even with the treachary of the science fair, I hope we can work our way into some great book reports! Also, Wednesday this week, we will going to Hale Center Theater in Salt Lake for a tour of their building and insights into how a theater actually runs! I think it's going to be a great experience for the kids. We could still use some volunteers, so if you're willing and able, let me know. It's going to be Wednesday, March 17. We'll leave about 9:00 in the morning, and be back by about 1 in the afternoon.

I would say that other than that the week will be pretty normal, but I suppose all of these things keep it from being that. So, let's have yet another fantastically irregular week and we continue to give our all, all the way to the end! And in this instance, I refer to the end of the third term, March 29.

"I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end." -Larry Bird

March 1 - 5

We had a little bit of the insane sanity again this week, but not near as busy as last week. The only day that truly felt like a circus was Thursday because we spent the day working on our D.A.R.E. box, so sending people out on that amidst trying to do our everyday learning made it a bit three-ringed. The box turned out fantastic though! We started planning on Tuesday. The kids all designed an idea, and then we voted through them as a class to come up with a gigantic donut. Mmm...mmm.... It looks great! And what better than to bribe our DARE officer with than a huuuge "power ring" as he would call it. I decided to take advantage of the nice weather we've had this week. For one of our science lessons, we went outside to the field and created a human solar system. The planets were approximately in scale with each other, and their distances apart were the same. As hard as millions of miles are to conceive, I think this lesson might have put it a little more to scale. Coming up this week, we have one our parents coming in to build rockets with the kids. Weather permitting, we will build the rockets on Monday, paint them on Tuesday or Wednesday, and then take them to field on Thursday to launch them.

Our story this week is Anne of Green Gables. It's the story of a family who wanted to adopt a young boy, and mistakenly were sent a girl instead, and the struggles that came with them trying to grow as a family.

The students are going to be just heartbroken to find out that out math lessons are cut short this week to make some extra tim for the rocket building. We will still however be continuing into our lessons on fractions, including solving equations with fractions. We will then end the week with multiplying and dividing both positive and negative integers.

The BIG excitement for this week, however, is the Science Fair. 5th Grade judging is Tuesday, 6th grade judging is Wednesday, and 7th and 8th grade judging is Thursday. This means that our completed projects have to be here on Tuesday. They've been working on them a better part of the term so far, so I'm excited to see how well they're going to turn out. Being my first science fair, I'm sure these kids are just going to blow my expectations out of the water. They're a great bunch!

"People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them." from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

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