Another field trip slip

Hello,

The Augusta State House visit is scheduled for Tuesday at 9:00am.  A slip went home tonight.  We are trying to get the CREA field trip rescheduled for later in the week.

We took a little math test this morning to help give us a final point to look at as we gather data to group students according to their math skills.  These groups will be flexible and will be based on current skills, processing speed, and teacher recommendations.  My "grouping team" includes Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Viola.  We have been meeting and discussing possible groupings and hope to finalize our decisions next week before conferences.  Oh crap, I didn't give out the conference slips again.  Auuugghh!  My apologies.  Again.

The spelling test today was the big thirty word Sitton test which they will see two more times this year.  These are the words that the program deems the most important to learn and know during the fourth grade year.  The words, like special, until, several, thought and important, are very common  and your child will be see them over and over again this year. 

Ask your child if he/she brought home their Crayola "igneous rock."  We started learning about erosion and sediment today as we make our way toward creating Crayola "sedimentary rocks."  I showed them some of my travel slides of some of our country's most spectacular examples of erosion like the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Arches National Park, Yosemite, Death Valley, etc.  I hope I didn't put them to sleep.

Channeling last night's author talk with Paul Tough, I talked a bit with them about overcoming adversity.  Mr. Tough has found that wealthy kids often don't face enough adversity and that our poorer population faces too much.  I think the class as a whole has a good attitude about this.  It may be my way in to get them to dare to be wrong a little more.

Reminder: No school on Monday, Veteran's Day. 

It is going too fast.  Slow down this crazy ride!

Have a good night.

Mr. Shea