Sickness going around

Hello,

We had our highest number of absences today.  Four students were out.  Please make sure your kids are washing their hands before they eat and getting a good night's sleep.  It is tough to quantify what is missed during a school day, and since I am not a worksheet driven teacher, it is very hard for me to replicate something that can be done at home. 

We had a very busy day.  We got into the computer lab to finish our CREA letters.  I'll send them off later this week when I can get the last few to get done.  I was happy that the class was able to follow directions a lot better in the lab.  It is not a place to freelance.

I've started a new read aloud.  Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins is about a young boy who falls into a world of giant cockroaches, rats and bats.  Suzanne Collins is best known for her Hunger Games Trilogy, but her Overlander series is much more age appropriate. 

It looked like phys. ed. was quite exhausting today.  Many red faces came back to the classroom after their gym class.  They are playing a sort of hockey using giant Q-tip looking things.  It looked like fun.

Harry Potter club voted to meet after school on Friday, December 16 for our last meeting of the year.  We will have a Dursley gift exchange (of worthless gifts) and we will do some wand making.  One year I got a dirty sock.  Another year I got pencil shavings.  Fun stuff.

Keep asking your children about their multiplication facts.  My class is covering area as well.  Get it?  Covering area.  Okay, it must be late.  Ask them about adjectives, verbs and nouns too.  We'll be complicating things real soon on that front. 

I'm off to the school board workshop on homogeneous or heterogeneous grouping for math.  Should we group according to skill level?  I am all for it, having given both a try.  I strongly believe that you can learn the most when you are amongst others with a similar skill set.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Have a good night.

Mr. Shea

This just isn't going to happen by 5:00 this year.

Hello,

The main purpose of this blog has always been to keep you, the parent, more informed about what goes on in school so that you can have meaningful conversations with your child.  Most children will say "Nothing." when asked what they did in school.  I write to help dispel that notion.  Unfortunately, by the time I write this, it is often past dinner time.  I don't want to get into the reasons why that is happening, but just to make you aware that I realize it, and that it cannot be helped.  I know some parents now read this every morning and that works too.  I wish I could get it down sooner, but I half believe that this place has become a place to have meetings and that the kids and school day is the built-in break in the middle of it all.

Here's the rundown of the school day.  We are going to write stories that include sound effects.  I'd like them to include a Bowdoin volunteer as a character.  Two of our Bowdoin volunteers will be leaving us in the next week.  I thought that hearing their names during our writing share time might be something that they would enjoy.  I'm providing some packing bubbles to help with some of the sound effects.  I had to ban any gas-related sound effects.  We don't need any stories centered around that topic.

In math we are studying measurement in conjuction with area.  It was eye opening to see what some of their estimations were for an inch or a foot.  We did a lot of measuring today.  I'm trying to drum into their heads that lines are measured in distances, areas are measured in squares.  We'll get there. 

A student and parent brought in a fantastic volcanic rock from Iceland.  It was a great example of an igneous rock.  The class has seen some great rock and mineral samples lately.  I brought in a box from my attic that had a label in it that read "Anna Springer's box of minerals - 1850 approx."  She was a great, great, great relative of my wife.  She collected some really nice crystals.

We talked a bit about solid, liquids and gases this afternoon.  I boiled up some water and then we saw it recondense above the pan.  I was happy with some questions, even though they led us in another direction.  We ended up tossing in one of our giant crayola rock crayons and watching it melt in the bubbling water.  Their curiosity is growing, especially at science time.  It bodes well for our physics unit (motion, energy and simple machines).

Thanks for the feedback on yesterday's blog.  I feel like I've got to get my opinion out there a little more with some of these big issues that are going to be decided.  More to come.

Have a good night.

Mr. Shea

I'm back!

Hello,

I still need to make up four conferences due to the snow day, but so far, so good.  It is very motivating to meet with parents and be reminded about the importance of my job and what your children mean to all of you.  I take away a feeling of determination that I will do everything I can to make this year as successful as possible for your child.  Your continued feedback can only help with this.

I have decided to add an optional Monday after school help session.  You can look at it as homework help, if you like, but I'm hoping that it can be more than that.  Students can stay up to school for an hour or two (whenever pick-up is convenient) for some extra help.  I only ask that you send a permission slip and an extra snack for them.  Everyone is welcome.  My plan is to give some more one on one time than I am able to during the regular school day.

I also wanted to say a few things about the report cards.  By now most of you have seen that they weren’t a very good reflection of work done for the quarter.  I don’t think going to a standards based report card is a bad thing.  It would be nice for parents to know exactly what skills that their kids are supposed to learn and where they are for each skill.  Common assessments would make it so students from each grade level would be responsible for the same knowledge and would be graded on the same skills. These concepts have merit.

My biggest issue comes from the idea that everyone should be teaching the same concepts at the same time.  In math, we have nine different classes, teaching students with very different skill sets.  Teaching the same thing at the same time would have been very difficult under these circumstances.  It is near impossible when we have had nearly a third of the school year go by before being told that this is the goal.  The train has left the station.  Should the higher skilled classes now back pedal for the rest to gain?  Should the lower level blow through some things to catch up?  I feel that it is too late to ask us to do that now.  Personally, I don’t agree with it under any circumstances. 
I feel that it flies in the face of what assessments are for in the first place.  If I assess my class on a skill, and they don’t get it, it is a reflection of my ability to reach them.  I need to spend more time on it and I need to try something new.  I wouldn’t want my next day’s lesson to hinge on what some other class was or wasn’t able to do.  I also fear prearranged time-tables for how long something will take to teach, especially in math, where so many concepts build on each other. 

These are my opinions.  You will get a chance to give your opinions on an upcoming questionnaire.   

It’s late.  Thank you for reading.

Mr. Shea

Multiplication Days

Hello,

We had a decent day.  The book fair is set up in the lobby, which had a lot of kids in a bit of a frenzy.  We got to look around for a few minutes.  I gave them clipboards and had them write up the titles of their favorites as well as price and location.  Many in the class may not be overly excited about reading, but they sure like new books.

It's really late.  Here are some of the topics we covered today:

adjectives
compound words
prime numbers
square numbers
the danger of misplaced punctuation

We ended the day making sedimentary rocks.  It might be under your tree as a paperweight in a few weeks, so I'll skip the details.

Have a good night.

Mr. Shea

A few quick notes

Hello,

We had a rough day as a class.  We have a lot of students that are very concerned with other students not doing what they are supposed to be doing.  Between the perpertrators and the eyes of justice, were not getting as much accomplished as we should.  I got mad a few times.  I think I said the words, "I would like you to worry about what you're supposed to be doing." about ten times today.

We tried identifying more rocks this morning.  I am going to be occasionally moving science/ss to the morning to try to keep a different crowd from missing some of our content area due to afternoon pull outs.  We did get a chance to "cook" some igneous rocks this afternoon.  Crayons were the minerals, and they cooked nicely into rocks. 

Other main topics of the day were: common and proper nouns, quotation marks, and multiplication.

I've got to get back to report cards.  The system crashed last night, giving me more to do tonight. 

Thanks for reading.

Mr. Shea

Tough week for blogging

Hello,

My apologies about last night.  I got out of Harry Potter Book Club and then went to the parent group meeting.  I wanted to hear how the report card was presented to the parent group.  I'm hoping that our conferences will be able to keep the focus on the children and not the new report card.  Conference slips went home tonight, but I can see next to me that four didn't make it home. 

I've made a poster of a giant football field to measure our multiplication successes.  Each student has an individual football with their name on it.  As students master a set of numbers (their fours, for example) they will move down the field toward a touchdown.  Students can opt for oral or written tests.  Each test includes questions from previous tests.  This means that just because a person is testing their five times tables doesn't mean that they won't see some fours, threes, twos or ones.  Help them practice at home please.

Students picked out areas of the country where they would like a penpal.  I will be taking their final draft letters and mailing them to schools across the country in those areas.  We had requests for fifteen different states and Washington D.C. 

We sang the Rock Cycle song for the second time today.  A couple more times and it will be memorized like the continent song.  Ask for either song tonight, although I'd be surprised if anyone has this one down yet.

Rock Cycle Song
(Sing to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat")

SEDIMENTARY rock
Has been formed in layers
Often found near water sources
With fossils from decayers

Then there's IGNEOUS rock
Here since Earth was born
Molten Lava, cooled and hardened
That's how it is formed

These two types of rocks
Can also be transformed
With pressure, heat and chemicals
METAMORPHIC they'll become.

I've got math grades to do, so I'm gonna call it a night.

Thanks for reading.

Mr. Shea

Quotation marks

Hello,

We did a little quotation mark lesson today.  Some children ended up with quotation marks on their face.  That way everything they said would be surrounded by quotation marks.  I owe a few more quotation marks to the one table that I didn't get to.  It was Halloween face paint and it was optional.  Everyone was opting for them, but they had to show me a dialogue that they had written first.  They did pretty well in getting the spoken words in quotes, but need a lot more work on the other punctuation that goes with it, as well as the new speaker - new paragraph rule. 

The teachers had a meeting to address concerns with the superintendent after school.  We got to write ideas, worries, questions and positives on post-it notes and place them on poster board.  It wasn't the open forum that some were expecting.  We're hoping that he gets back to us relatively soon.

I have a letter for you that explains the new report card.  I'm glad that we will have a conference time to talk about it.  I'm hoping we can spend more time talking about your child than the report card. 

Students should be starting new chapter books.  Everyone has come to me and shown me the next book that they will be tackling.  Everyone will get individual assignments to complete each night.  They should be starting the book tonight, so they can begin to answer some questions tomorrow night. 

Spelling test tomorrow.  I only gave everyone five words due to the short week, and due to the fact that it takes two hours to correct a spelling test.  Wow, we need to study our words a little more.  Five words should be a piece of cake.

Have a great night.  Remember no school on Friday. 

Mr. Shea 

Please vote

Hello,

We went on a little impromptu jaunt down the street to the Jr. High to check out the voting process.  I think the class was a little upset that they missed recess, but they got their exercise.  We were treated to a mini-tour of how it works.  Voters stand in line alphabetically according to their last name.  They get their ballot(s).  You get two this year, a local ballot and a state referendum ballot.  We got to see the some finished ballots placed into the counting machine.  This was a good follow up to our morning discussion.  I handed out a copy of the state referendum ballot and we discussed the four issues on the ballot.  We held a class vote and tallied the results.  The class voted yes on number one to repeal the law that would make voters register at least two days before any election.  We were split on the casinos.  Number two, centered around Scarborough and Washington County casinos, won by one vote.  Number three, a casino in Lewiston, lost by one vote.  The class voted to not change the state constitution in number four. 

I tried to give both sides of the issues, without letting them know where I stand.  Please continue this dialogue.  Even better, I hope you have the chance to take them voting with you.  We will be studying government in a few weeks and I hope to draw on some of today's experience.

My math class made it into the computer lab this morning.  We went to two sites to help with our study of multiplication facts.  Math Magician is a good site that isolates certain problems and times you for one minute.  The goal is to finish 20 facts correctly that time.  The Baby stroller races is another multiplication review site.  In this one, you are in a race.  The more questions that you answer, the faster your stroller goes. 

I hope we can get those links up soon.  I heard our links page is coming soon.  In the meantime, we just did a search for math magician and for multiplication games.  The class had some other ideas for what they wanted to play, but some were more play than review.

The teachers get to meet with the superintendent tomorrow.  We're hoping that some of our concerns get addressed.  Tomorrow's blog may be late. 

Thank you for the responses that I got on homework on the weekends.  At least three of you are out there. 

Have a good night.

Mr. Shea

   

Where did the sunlight go?

Hello,

I'm writing at 5:15 and it is dark out.  I'll pretend that my room looks out over the ocean. 

The field trip to CREA (Cathance River Education Alliance) in Topsham was fantastic, as usual.  They do a great job there.  If you haven't been, it is a perfect place for a fall hike.  It is the site of many trails, including one along the meandering river, and several feldspar quarries.  Some amazing amounts of biotite (black mica), muscovite (clear mica), feldspar, and quartz can still be found around many of the old quarry sites.  Our students were able to sluice a cup full of rocks and minerals to look for gemstones.  Every child found and got to take home some mica, quartz, tourmaline, black tourmaline, feldspar and garnet.  Some of the crystals were beautiful.  One boy found a pretty spectacular green tourmaline speciman.  He graciously donated it back to the Ecology Center.  I told him that I would bring him some nice crystals from my mineral collection in a show of thanks for his generosity.  Make sure to ask your child for a little show and tell session from the day.  They all took home some great stuff.  CREA makes this possible by buying buckets of material from another local mine.  Your child should be able to tell you the main ingredients in granite, as well as some common uses for quartz, mica, and feldspar.  If they can't do it yet, they will soon.

According to the substitute, Friday went extremely well.  That report, along with the one from the staff from CREA, calling us the most polite class yet, makes me very happy.  We show who we are through our actions.  It makes me proud of them to see such behavior, and hear positive feedback. 

We started writing a thank you note to CREA after we returned to school.  The rough draft should be finished tonight.  We talked about thanking them for: the samples, allowing us to come, and teaching us about so many things.

The other homework tonight comes from a program called The Great Mail Race.  We got a letter from a girl in Idaho asking us questions about our school, town and state.  Her class has written to all of the other 49 states and is hoping to hear from all of them.  I gave everyone a copy of the questionnaire.  We will fill one in together tomorrow.  Maybe the kids will be motivated to try this themselves.  We'll see.

On that note, we definitely need some pen pals.  I'll look into getting us some, maybe international ones.

Have a good night.  It feels like 6:30. 

Mr. Shea

By the way, I have heard zero responses on the weekend homework question.  Yea?  Nay?  Hello?  Don't make me email you.

Substitute tomorrow. Field trip Monday

Hello,

I'm trying to get this out while my meeting is at meet and greet status.  I will be at a professional development conference tomorrow.  Please fill in the permission slips tonight.  Bag lunches are available from the cafeteria for Monday's field trip, but I will need a count tomorrow. 

We worked with minerals today.  Ask your child about some of the properties of minerals: feel, color, streak, hardness, light, luster and shape.  Calcite, Galena, and Hematite proved some of the tougher minerals to identify based on these properties.  We will learn more tricks of the trade as we go.  I think everyone liked testing the streak (on ceramic tiles) and hardness (with fingernails, pennies and nails) best. 

Please remind your child that you expect the best from them tomorrow.  I did the same as they were leaving.  I'll leave some interesting stuff for them to do in my absence, but I won't be pleased with anything other than a good report from the sub.

Gotta run,

Mr. Shea

I am an idiot

Hello,

I forgot to hand out the permission slips for the field trip and the conference sign up slips.  Both are sitting right next to me.  My apologies.  Tomorrow maybe?

The scheduling meeting wasn't very exciting.  It didn't come to blows.  We'll hammer this out by January.

Today was the first day that Bowdoin students were here on the same day.  It is nice having an extra helper in the class.  We had two for the morning block and one for math.  Thank you to Coral, Madison and Pete.

Homework tonight is to write up sentences using their spelling words.  I don't want more than two spelling words per sentence.  I know that was many kids first thought.  "Can I put all the words in one sentence?" was immediately asked. 

"No," came the immediate reply.

"Two?"

I believe I let out a long sigh before answering.

Ms. D'Agostino said that today's physical education class was very rough.  She said that she didn't see much in the way of teamwork.  I guess some tempers flared and people weren't very nice to each other.  You might ask your child for their version and then talk about it.  It wasn't the type of report that I like to hear, but I can see it happening.  I'm not seeing as much teamwork and camaraderie as I would expect by now either.  Oftentimes it is easier to show that in a classroom, than in an athletic competition.  I have participated in a couple of our phys. ed. classes and I saw firsthand a lot of "win at all costs" attitudes.  Once one person got offended, things escalated quickly.  As with everything, we'll keep working on it.

On a brighter note, our custodian has been very impressed with our neater, cleaner classroom.  Students are taking more responsibility in getting their junk off the floor and their chair on their desk.  Thank you class!

Gotta run,

Mr. Shea

Meetings, meetings, meetings.

Hello,

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween.  Some of the students were pretty jacked up this morning.  Overall, we had a good day despite some afternoon weariness. 

It is a week full of meetings for me.  I just got out of a report card meeting.  This one was about how to enter grades into our new computerized system and then print them out.  I have a scheduling meeting tomorrow.  We are trying to fix our current school schedule.  Over 650 kids trying to get through the lobby at the same time is a bad idea.  Giving the second graders an afternoon of 3+ hours with no breaks for specials also was a bad idea.  We are working on fixing these major issues and more.  Thursday night is our interactive whiteboard meeting.  This is the first year that I have had an IWB and I definitely could use some more instruction on how to use it.  I just found out that document cameras are in for the rest of our grade.  I'm excited about that.  I think I'll use that more than the IWB. 

Conference sign up slips will go home tomorrow.  Wait until you see these report cards.  They are something else.  I'll reserve judgement on them until I have some more time to get acquaited with them. 

I have a question for all of you.  I was asked why many elementary school teachers don't give homework on weekends when that is the best time for many kids to do it.  It is a valid question.  I'd like some input from you.  Would you like weekend homework?  I have always felt like school is very similar to a kid's job and that most people don't take their job home on the weekends.  Believe me, I know plenty of us work on the weekends.  I guess I haven't thought about it too much, but I always thought the "no homework" weekends were the times when kids could go back to just being kids.  I'm open to thoughts and suggestions.

We have a substitute on Friday.  I am going to CREA for a teaching seminar on Earth studies: history and geology.  Luckily, CREA is paying for me to be there because there isn't money in the budget for us to go to professional development seminars.  I'm happy that it was approved and hope that I can get some good ideas.  We will be hearing from professional geologists and a gemologist.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Our class field trip to the Cathance River, which will also focus on geology, will be on Monday, November 7th.  We are asking that everyone bring a bag lunch.  Permission slips will go home tomorrow.  We will be going rain or shine.  Please make sure your child is prepared for the elements.

Have a great night.  Expect short posts the next two nights.  These meetings will be long.

Mr. Shea