Post date: Sep 17, 2011 4:42:52 AM
Good Evening HR 25 and 26 (Heumannoids and StuCrew).
First off, I'd like to thank the 40ish parents who replied to my "email verification" request of last weekend. It is nice to know that my email distribution list is (mostly) accurate but it is not complete. Unfortunately, I only have half of the parents in Mrs. Stuart's class in the list, so I'll get more at Back to School Night. If you haven't sent me a reply to any message yet, please reply to this one so I know that I have your address correct in my contacts list.
This past week was certainly a down-to-business experience. The kids were positive, productive, and pushing their knowledge into new areas every day (I hope). Along with the regular academic endeavors, the students in both of my classes logged into their GoogleApps accounts behind the mydiscoveryk8 domain. There, they built the website that will become their digital academic portfolio and collaborative workspace.
English: For the first 2 days of the week the students and I worked hard on refining their "Reader Profile" essays. I modelled the upgrading (a.k.a. "editing") process and gave a pep talk about the increase in overall quality that can result come from working hard with someone to improve a piece of writing. It is hard, but most valuable to move beyond editing for just mechanics, and reach into the realm of organization, voice, and creating the "sweet spots" that make a paper powerful and effective.
We hit vocabulary three times this week, including a worksheet on (spelling) double-double letter configurations, the regular Wordy Wednesday activity, and then today, the use of Calvin and Hobbes comics as a source of some fantastic words!
As you may have noticed, I'm establishing a weekly essay-writing routine with the students. The first was the My Name essay, then the Reader Profile essay, and the next one is a Compare and Contrast writing piece. To introduce the process I used an article in this month's issue of SCOPE magazine, in which they compare Beatle Mania to Bieber Fever. The students will be writing a compare-contrast essay this coming week and should have already chosen their topic (kids, if you are reading this, please fill out this form).
Science: We were all about metric measurement and dimensional analysis this week. I'm not very neutral when it comes to the metric-standard debate and I hope the students aren't either. I assume that they have gained an even deeper operational understanding and appreciation of the metric system. Next week, as we do our measurement lab, I will hopefully see evidence of this.
Yesterday and today I introduced them to dimensional analysis and tried to sell them on its usefulness, simplicity, and diversity of application. It was a "mathy" week but we all survived. Today I also used a student-response pad system to review the textbook's question items. Each student had their own remote and "clicked in" their answer to projected questions. The software provides us a quick histogram of the responses which lets me know whether or not to do a short review or explanation for the topic of that question. It is a bit engaging and, in my opinion, a quick way to get formative feedback about their comprehension of topics from the book. The chapter 1 test, by the way, is Tuesday.
Thank you again for reading these newsletters and I'm looking forward to meeting many of you in person on Wednesday's Back to School Night.
Sincerely,
Chris Heumann