Coupla Things v9 (10/19/2013)

Post date: Oct 18, 2013 11:27:25 PM

Good Day Rm 25 Parents

Thing 1 Fall Festival: Room 25 has two things going at the great festival today. First, Daryll Brothers will be running the electric chair as he did last year, and second, the kids will be helping at the Dry Ice Bubble Art booth (here is a chart showing the work shifts). Much appreciation to the Michael-Karen team for getting the stuff and bringing it to class so I could demo the process for the kids. Once they saw how it worked, they filled in the work shift chart.

Thing 2 Fall Conferences: Next week you, your kid, and I will spend a half hour one afternoon reviewing/revising a goal that they have set as well as discussing things that they put on their agenda g-doc. Here is a chart with links to their agenda and a list of possible topics.

Thing 3 English Curriculum: In addition to a few other things including the daily edits, wordy Wednesday, and book club meetings on Ender's Game, the kids began writing collaborative stories (here is a list). On a single g-doc each kid adds a different component to a story that they devise together, one for plot, one for descriptives details, one for dialog, and one for illustrations and mechanics.

Thing 4 Science Curriculum: This was the third and final week in our unit on The Possible Origins and Evolution of Life. In addition to a lecture on Natural Selection, the kids prepared for a "test" for which they had the questions ahead of time. The fun part of science this week was the "Invent-An-Environment then Create-a-Creature project (this page has details). In regards to the Fall science experiment, please ask your kid to explain their progress (should have performed experiment and collected data by now) using their control sheet.

Thing 5 Social Studies Curriculum: Most of the class time this week was spent on their Dig Deeper projects and learning to use an iPad app called Doceri to make Khan-Academy Style lessons and animations. We also delved into our unit on Islam by discussion what we knew about the topics and watching a great West Wing episode called "Isaac and Ishmael" that was created right after 9/11. The kids should be reading chapter 7 this weekend to prep for a test on Monday.

Thats all this time!

Off to a weekend at the beach.

Chris