Hi All:
If you look closely in the first photo above, you'll see the glorious pages of some 1,500 books we heisted as a class from the old trailer, in the dark (because we struggled to find all the lights), and yes we did set off the burglary alarm that none of us knew about. Sorry for missing Week 3. I had a post ready to go, and then lost it because I didn't save it, but felt that Curriculum Night perhaps made up for that post's absence. Thank you to all of you who were able to make it to Curriculum Night. At the very least, I hope it provided some context for the big pieces on which I'll be updating you throughout the year. This week's updates: Important Dates to Remember (or Pencil In)
AmeriTowne If you are available to help us conduct interviews on Monday, October 1, between 12:30 and 3:00, please let me know. And, if you would like to accompany our field trip on October 25, please let me know that, too! I started this week with the Econ 101 section of the AmeriTowne curriculum, and I am giving the class extra time to work through the curriculum leading up to our field trip, mainly because the kids in our class *love* to ask questions. Seriously, we spent a whole hour on the definition of economics, and that was not my fault. This week and next, we're learning about economics, free enterprise systems, and the flows of limited resources. In the following weeks we are going to get into civics, and then the combination of both, and the kids are going to start working on constructing resumes, job applications, and interview-type question responses. (It's a lot of fun.) English Language Arts & Social Studies In ELA & SS, we are continuing on with students' projects on topics of U.S.-American history. After learning how to create Chicago MS citations for sources, use footnotes, and write sentences with footnote citations to fact sources, we are now moving deeper towards the heart of students' projects. This week, students worked on writing abstracts for their projects which will serve as overviews of the work to come, and they are quickly becoming of army of citation machines (which I could have used last year, just saying). I am very impressed with the effort and enthusiasm that they are putting into their projects. From here, they are going to begin constructing theses (plural) for subtopics of their projects, and from there they are going to create research papers that cover multiple facets of their various topics. As far as other reading goes, I have been tracking students' additions to their book lists, and they all seem to be on track with respect to early tracking expectations. Planners & Homework Some kids are doing a great job of using their planners, and others are not. When it comes right down to it, I have never used a planner in my life, and so I understand those who share my aversion. However, as I have mentioned via multiple modalities, these past couple weeks have been about understanding what it is that kids do after school. On the whole, I feel I've strengthened my sense of that. I am going to introduce some baseline expectations next week, and I'll update you on those in next week's post, or you can ask your kid(s) about them Monday afternoon. As always, if you'd like to talk to me about homework or anything else, please let me know! Snacks Snacks are going well so far. Thank you to those of you who've participated and to those of you who're signed up. Also, thank you to Stacy and Erika for reminding us, via email, of some allergies that exist in our classroom. Please check Stacy's room parent emails if you haven't caught them, and remind us all if your kid has an allergy of which we should be aware! Parent Meetings I would really love for all of us to strengthen our relationships and objectives by getting together more frequently to talk about kids and life. I have had the pleasure of holding meetings with the parents of four students so far this year, and my goal is to meet with all parents at least once before we get to parent-teacher conferences. Please volunteer yourself (and your spouse) to meet with me! If you don't . . . I am going to track you down. There're always a hundred other things I could say, but I think that's enough, for now. Thank you all, for all you do. Parker
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