Good Evening

Hello,

And so it begins.  The sun is going down earlier and my drives home will be in the dark for the next few months.  I shouldn't complain on such a gorgeous day.  This is definitely my favorite time of year.  Cool nights, brisk days, lots of color.

The author of the book that I'm reading and mentioned the other night is coming to Portland to speak.  Tickets are free, but you do need to reserve them.  Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed will speak at USM on November 7th.  Go to portlandschools.org for more info. 

We talked about the electoral college voting system today.  Kind of a strange system for them to wrap their heads around.  I gave a little math homework that involved state's electoral votes.  Tomorrow we'll talk more about how few states a presidential candidate actually has to win, to win an election.  I don't think it sat well with too many kids that a candidate could get more votes in the country and yet still lose.  Feel free to tell your child your point of view on this. 

We worked on some descriptive writing today.  We went out and gathered leaves.  Each child picked up three similar looking leaves and taped them to their paper.  We went inside and everyone had to choose just one of their leaves to describe in detail.  I saw some great descriptive word choices.  We later projected the leaves onto the IWB board and the kids read their descriptions.  The class tried to choose which leaf was being described.  We have some natural writers.  I surely need to do more of this type of thing, rather than so much narrative writing. 

Children interested in Harry Potter club will meet tomorrow at lunch.  We will discuss how we want to go about inviting children from other classes.  Demand for the club is low in our class, but high in others.  Unfortunately, we can't take them all. 

I have been asked how far do we go in the series.  Most years, the club only gets through the first three books.  We did start the fourth book one year, but I am highly sensitive to the more mature material in the books as Harry gets older.  The fourth through seventh movies are also PG-13, mainly due to violence.  I don't intend to go further than the third this year, but when trying to decide who gets in from other classes, how many books read goes a long way to getting selected.  I am also going to show bias toward kids excited to join, those who are reading solely to join, and those whose older siblings were in the club so they will be more disappointed if they don't get in.  Again, I can't take everyone from the other classes, but anyone in our class is welcome to join.

I hope that helps clear things up.

Have a good night.

Mr. Shea