Beautiful Day

Hello,

We're not quite getting through everything that I hope to each day, but I can't complain about the journey so far.  I'm pleased with the energy level and the enthusiasm.  My favorite trait is curiosity and many in the class have a healthy dose of that.  Overall, I'm very happy with this class and think we should be able to accomplish some great things. 

I was hoping to talk a little about September 11th, but I didn't feel like I had the right opportunity today.   I think it is important for them to see beyond the school bubble, the town bubble, the state bubble and the national bubble, so I will be sure to talk a bit about the history of that day tomorrow. 

Students got their first vocabulary sheets today.  I have a book that concentrates on Greek and Latin roots of words and I love it.  I think it is a great way to introduce groups of words.  This week's root word is ped, meaning foot.  We went over the list of words and discussed how you can break down words into different parts.  All of the words in the list have a form of ped in them, and all the definitions are related to feet.  We have a boy in the class fluent in Spanish, and another fluent in French, and they were able to share the very similar words for foot in those languages.  I look forward to what these students should be able to add to our word discussions all year long. 

Check out the sheet and see what you think.  I've learned a lot from these sheets over the last two years.  Their assignment is just to use the words in sentences.  You may want to help with some pronounciations.  We went over it in class, but I think some may forget on a couple of them.

I was planning on math homework, but we once again didn't get to where I wanted to get.  I won't give math homework unless it is review.  The exception to that will be the math challenges,  and I issue one today.  Based on the number of kids who immediately stopped paying attention when I said it was optional, this will be the last optional challenge that we have in a while.  Next week's will be mandatory, but based on effort, not on whether or not correct answers were found.  I'll explain more on that on next week's challenge. 

We're having company at my house tonight, so I'm going to cut this a bit short.  Keep the questions or comments coming, and feel free to come in after school any day to talk.  We can schedule something if you wish, but I don't want to wait until November conferences to meet all of you.  This will be a well oiled machine by May or June. 

Thanks,

Mr. Shea