It's Fall!

Hello!

Welcome back from a warm and wonderful weekend. I hope you were able to find some time to spend outside. I was lucky enough to fit in a run on Saturday, and even have a bonfire with some friends. Today is the first day of Fall. I already miss summer:-)

Thank you to everyone who spent time working on their memoir rough drafts this weekend. We spent time today going through the editing process. Some students made it all the way through (the student, peer and teacher edit) and have brought home their writer's notebooks to work on their final copies. The rest of the students will get theirs tomorrow--I have a big bag full of writer's notebooks to go through. Final copies of the memoir are due on Thursday. They can be handwritten or typed. These will be fun to share and display. I am thinking about making a writing bulletin board to display all of our hard work.

We also started our new math format today. We went through the weekly contracts in detail with the kids. Each student has their own contract to work through with lessons that we marked for him/her to complete. We chose the lessons based on pretest results. The kids worked really well planning out their "plan of attack" and what work they need to do each day to finish by Friday. This also includes math vocabulary work. The kids enjoyed working independently, and in small groups (some were even on the computers using the book CD's) while Mrs. Chang and I circulated around the room. At this point our math format is purely experimental, and the kids are helping us with any "kinks" in the system. At the end of the week, we will see what adjustments need to be made and if we want to continue along this route. See what your student has to say. Everyone worked extremely hard today in math. I am so proud of you.

Student Council speeches are happening this Wednesday morning at 9:15. Anyone is welcome to attend. Tomorrow, the students will be able to practice their speeches in front of their peers. The students who practiced today had many tremendous ideas! Our Student Council is going to be absolutely amazing this year.

Students who need help on the Basil project may stay after school any day. I helped a few students today and we figured out some good hints and strategies that we will share with you tomorrow. So don't panic if you are not getting the full picture yet...I promise we will get there together.

Homework tonight: Read for 20 minutes, focus on your mystery book due October 3rd. You are not responsible for doing a book project on your mystery book because I wanted to model a fun new book project idea with Basil Frankweiler. What you are doing for Basil will count as your September book project. Come October, you will be in charge of coming up with a book project proposal with an idea for the October genre.

Some students may have math tonight. Since they are working at their own pace, they may or may not have homework each night.

Have a great night. See you Tuesday:-)