an earthquake free day

Hello,

The kids were very excited to give their "I was there" account of the great earthquake of 2012.  I was driving home and didn't feel it.  We talked quite a bit about earthquakes and their causes.  I'll show them a short video clip tomorrow to give them some better visual information.  I hope everyone made it through the excitement okay.

I was excited about the presidential debate last night.  It was quite a showdown.  They stood toe to toe for quite awhile.  I thought the moderator did a much better job of keeping control.  Although that proved an impossible task, I felt that, at the very least, she made them look bad for disobeying her directions.  I told the kids that it can't be easy to tell the President of the United States to sit down. 

I did a poor job of clock management this afternoon.  The class senate and house of representatives were working on passing laws on the consequences for breaking their class laws, and I let the time get away from me.  It is my fault if they didn't get their homework written down.  I didn't even get to hand out the math.  Sorry.  I will do better. 

Our first chapter book theme of the year is animal books.  Students got to choose from five books: Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Stuart Little by E. B. White, Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamilla, Ace, The Very Important Pig by Dick King-Smith, or Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe.  Students were also given little booklets to write chapter summaries.  We'll talk more tomorrow about how long and detailed those need to be.  We will be building off of our one sentence summaries that we made with picture books.  I also gave them post-it notes for bookmarks so that they can jot down questions or difficult words. 

Our fourth grade potluck dinner is tomorrow night.  Come join the camaraderie from 6:00 to 7:00 in the dining hall.  As of tonight's team meeting, at least half of the fourth grade teachers plan on attending. 

Harry Potter book club met today.  We decided to hold a sorting ceremony next week, and then allow members of the other classes to join the following week.  We also decided to keep our numbers around twenty.  We have quite of few classmates who are now scrambling to read the first Harry Potter book now that they got a glimpse of the fun.  Sorting quizzes were taken today, but if members of our class don't like the results they can take their chances with my sorting hat app.  I've got a real looking sorting hat for them to wear this year too.  We thought about putting a walkie-talkee in it for the "first-years" from other classes in a couple weeks.  We'll have to iron that out.  I have many copies of the HP books and most of them on audio as well, if any parents are interested in reading along.  The same can be said for the animal books that we started today.  If you want to read any of the same books as your child, I will be sure to get another copy in your hands.  It makes for some very enriching conversation.

On that note, I just realized that I haven't given you my reading lecture this year.  Here's a bit of it:
Reading is the most important thing that your child can do to help themselves be successful in school.  One of my jobs is to try to get kids to see the importance of reading and to get them to learn to love to read.  I can see that I have some of those kids already this year.  (Thank you.)  A big part of getting them to see that reading is a lifelong endeavor, is for them to have role models.  Parents who read have kids who read.  Some of you may not realize the effect that you have on your child, but just carrying  a book around, and reading it from time to time, has a tremendous effect.  Kids want to be like grown ups.  They like to do grown up things.  Seeing a parent read for pleasure, sends a message loud and clear:  Reading is not something you do because you have to.  Reading is something that I will do when I grow up.  Please, please, please, show your children that reading is important to you.  The added step of reading the books with them, or reading the same books that they are reading at school, shows children that their reading is also important to you.  I'd love to see a request or two for Shiloh or Stuart Little tonight.  You might not have read these books in years.  You may have never read those books.  You couldn't pick a better time to acquaint yourself with one. 

This is the end of this part of the lecture.  To hear the rest of this lecture...

All for now.  Thanks for "reading." 

Mr. Shea