Coupla Things v14 (11/24/13)

Hello Again.

The best thing to assure that I miss a deadline (especially one that is self-imposed) is to give me more than enough time to complete the task -- like an upcoming week off! That explains why this email is going out today (Sunday) instead of Friday. Either way I just want to give you an overview of the going-ons in class and alert you to upcoming events.

Overview of the Week:

Science: After assembling the unit 4 packet, which should have come home for your review and comment already, we spent most of this week getting into the first topic of unit 5 (Simple Organisms), which is viruses, infection, and the human immune system. The kids should have also started their mold-growth experiments (pdf) for which they will be making observations daily for the next few weeks and might need your reminders to do so.

English: Ender's Game essays are in and done (or they should be). As a first class-wide read, I think that is was understood, enjoyed, and well-analyzed by most of the kids. The parents who a facilitating the groups are talented and patient. It isn't easy to deal with diverse personalities, reading levels, preferences, and attention spans. As I worked with one of the book club groups I had each kid read their essay out loud (as I had to do so often in Freshman English class) and was reminded just how powerful that simple process can be -- the reader could quickly identify weaknesses in their own writing and elicit suggestions as well as compliments from the group. Their rewrites will surely show significant improvements over their drafts. Parents, if at all possible, for future essay assignments, please have your kid simply read their essays out loud to you twice; once without interruption and then a second time stopping to discuss improvements.

Social Studies: We've recently transitioned from the Mid East to Africa. Since much of social history is influenced by geography, the kids started their studies of the continent by looking at a variety of maps and then making their own Africa map. Those have also been turned in (hopefully) and I'll be scoring them this week. In addition to that, there was a chapter 4 test on Thursday and the kids could use any notes they wrote. We (parents and I) have scored the test on Muslim expansion, and the scores are, for the most part, very low. Here is a document that describes the process we used and when it became evident that the scores would be low, we made a conscious decision to keep our standards high, mostly due to the fact that they had the questions before hand, could use their notes, and only had to answer half of the questions asked. The rest, for better or worse was, and should be, up to them.

Upcoming Events:

11/25-11/29: No school

12/12: Family Giving Tree field trip

12/16: POSSIBLE Student-Planned San Jose Scooter Tour

12/20: Gift exchange (secret Santa organized by Audrey) and early release

12/21-1/12: Winter Break

1/20: MLK Day, No School

1/24: End of Semester 1 (grades closed)

This last item is just a check to see who read all the way down to this point... a reality check for me, I suppose. How 'bout you click reply and say hi.

Have a great time with friends, food, and family.