I'm late

Hello,

It's not good when it is past 6:00 and I haven't started this.  Real quick: It was great meeting all of you on open house night last week.  Parents of 17 out of 20 students in the class showed up.  That's a very good sign. 

The class struggled with the morning work this morning.  (Awkward sentence - I know.)  It was a worksheet on making words that contain the "S" sound.  Letter combinations included s, ss, sc, ce, ci, and cy.  I had to give my lecture on the value of the struggle.  They may want quick answers, I want them to think and persevere. 

As we start another week in place value, I marvel at how different this math program is from our last one.  This one goes much deeper into the topics to allow for greater understanding.  This is great now, but because this program will assume prior knowledge in concepts studied in third grade, (regrouping, multiplication, etc.) it is going to get real tough, real fast.  I ask you to be patient, but please ask any questions that you may have, any time they come up.  I can give you the why and hows of what we are doing.  I think your kids are going to benefit a lot from this program and I expect jr. high math should be a lot easier with the strong base that we are going to develop.

The first checks went out.  We have some kids already wondering how much they can get away with and still get paid.  We want productive members of society, so they are going to find out real fast what it is like to go unpaid.  It won't be very fun come payday, or when rent is due.  Getting loans from the bank will only cause them to dig a deeper hole.  We talked today about how banks make money through savings and loans.  If you have either or both, it might be something that you could discuss with your child to make it more real to them. 

We didn't have a special today because it is an off library week.  In fourth grade we only get one library class every two weeks.  We do get to schedule a time to switch out books on the alternate weeks.

Have a great night.

Mr. Shea