What a Week!

This week was full of many ups and a few downs.

It is good to finally be on our regular day to day schedule. Things are going smoothly as we learn to transition from place to place throughout the day. I can truly say as I left school on Friday that things are looking up.

Parents I would like to ask you to please talk to your child about what it means to be an effective student. There were quite a few times earlier this week when I was disheartened and frustrated because some of our class members caused distractions and inattention during class. I admit I focused more on those who were causing problems which in turn took away from my ability to teach to those who were ready to learn. On Wednesday, I publicy apologized to the kids who I had been neglecting. I knew I did not need to name names as they knew who they were. I am grateful for their good examples.

This week our DI (direct instruction) classes for language arts and math were put into place. Most of the students were placed in the correct ability level according to the assessments they took before school started. We are still shuffling a couple of students who may be moved to a different level.

In the coming weeks you will be able to view what your son or daughter is doing with regard to their project based service learning. This Thursday, I introduced the kids to Project Foundry in the computer lab. We took a look at how to input, revise, document and log in time spent on our projects. To begin the year, most of our projects are teacher guided. By the end of the year students will be designing and completing their projects on their own.

On Friday we started our community partnerships. This is definitely something kids outside of our school don't get to experience on a regular basis! Each course is ten weeks long. The rotations in which every student will get to participate in the next year are: Lego PlayTEK, Creative Movement, Drama Kids, Emerging Arts, Archeology and Drum Circle. Some of the sixth graders in our class went to DramaKids and Emerging Arts. The rest of the sixth, seventh and eighth graders were introduced to Archeology and Drum Circle. Very fun.

Happy Saturday