Best day yet...

Hello,

The day went well.  I read Unfortunately by Remy Charlip to them this morning.  This version was written for me.  It is one of those books that you could send away for that personalizes the story.  I got the book on my eighth birthday (back in '78).  It is about a boy named Steven Shea, who fortunately gets a letter inviting him to a birthday party.  Unfortunately the party is in Mexico, and poor Steven lives in Wiscasset, Maine.  Fortunately Steven has a friend that loans him an airplane.  Unfortunately the engine blows up.  Fortunately Steven has a parachute...  You get the picture. 

The students' assignment was to write a Fortunately/Unfortunately story.  Most of them got right at it.  I gave them some additional time this afternoon to write or read and some of them even finished.  It doesn't have to be very long.  I was looking for at least ten fortunately/unfortunately sentences. 

We watched a couple of short videos from discoveryeducation.com on landforms and erosion.  Then we gathered around a tray of dirt and made predictions on what would happen when I poured a constant stream of water on the high end of the tray.  So far we have seen a lot of the smaller dirt particles get carried downstream.  A big hole has formed where the water is being poured.  A delta is beginning to form at the bottom of the tray where there was no dirt before.  We will continue our experiment tomorrow and see what transpires.  I'm also asking for alternative experiments that they would like to see involving trays of dirt and water.  All they have to do is write up what they would like to see and we'll do it. 

I was impressed with some of the questions today.  I love curious kids.  Curiosity begets curiosity.  We'll get everyone on board soon. 

Teachers discussed movement amongst the math classes.  We are waiting on one more class to finish their math testing before we move one or two from each class.  We are only moving students that we feel would benefit by being in a class where their abilities are a closer match.  I don't like to lose anyone, so it definitely isn't personal, but some moves make too much sense.

Thank you to all the parents for showing up last night.  I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to speak to all of you.  I did my best to make the rounds.

Have a great night.

Mr. Shea