Post date: Apr 02, 2011 6:49:44 AM
Happy Friday and I'm sorry that I did't see you (kids) today. After having a rough night last night (Thursday) I stayed home today and slept until 2:00 pm -- all better now! Today I missed the greatest event of the week -- the science fair! My hat off to Denise Stuart for working so hard to make the month-long experience valuable to the kids and for organizing such a great community-building science-promoting event.
As we head towards conferences and then the last quarter of the year, I am again reminded of just how fortunate we all are to have had this year together. Good times, great friends, big gains, and many memorable times. Earlier this week we had a few extra minutes and went outside to enjoy the first (very) warm day of Spring. I strung out 50 feet of my climbing rope and within seconds we had the class jumping rope together, laughing, supporting each other, and creating friendly competitions. That, along with our amazing trip to iFly provided just another DCSish moment of bliss for this ol' teacher.
English:
On Tuesday my homeroom students met as book clubs and worked on their Autobiography book assignments and benefit from small group guidance of the great parents leading the groups. Those assignments are due on either the day before vacation or the day after -- same credit. The vocabulary activities for this week involved watching a few videos at VocabVideos as well as entering 10 words onto the "Best 10 of 2011" spreadsheet. At the end of the week the students worked on using context clues to decipher the meanings of some advanced vocabulary words. By Monday I hope to have the students' Autobiography Excerpt" writing pieces (and video files) ready to return.
Science:
The relevance of nuclear energy is at a peak these days made this a fairly engaging week in science. I showed the students a few short videos on how reactors work and then the kids read a section in the book to support and supplement that knowledge. On Wednesday I gave them a "media literacy challenge" in which they were to find two self-proclaimed authoritative websites on nuclear that gave strong but opposing positions on the topic. I think that it is valuable for kids to become discerning consumers of online information and this topic provided a gerat vehicle for that experience. Starting on Thursday, the students began writing letters about nuclear energy to those in positions of influence or impact. Those letters could be persuasive, compassionate, or inquisitive, but they should all show proper letter format (business or informal) and show evidence of their new knowledge about various aspects of nuclear energy. A draft of that letter should be ready by Monday and if you have a chance, please ask them about it.
Waterfall:
The fill-dirt arrived this afternoon and so we are going to get some work started on Sunday from 10 to 2. If you are interested in helping out, please check out the projects page of my website and send me an email so I know how many people might be coming.
Conferences:
The calendar is mostly full, but there are some spots available if you want to spend some time together discussing this year's accomplishments and some possible resources for high school preparation.
Take care and keep in touch.