Good start

Hello,

Quite a few teachers were talking about how squirrely their classes were today, but I am pleased to report that I didn't see much of that.  The class had a strong start to the week. 

The mystery unit continues.  The kids are having a good time solving the mysteries of the Black Hand Gang.  I have an old book from my childhood that requires a careful eye for detail in the writing and the pictures to solve mini-mysteries.  I projected a few on Friday and today for the class to solve together.  They are doing quite well. 

The math challenge for my math class this week is very challenging, but fun as well.  It involves making congruent shapes on a grid.  I'll be interested to see who can rise to the challenge.  I offer up my weekly challenges to any student or parent, regardless of math teacher.  If you think you have what it takes to give four gorillas four separate cages, with the exact same shape while staying on the lines of a grid, then just ask for the challenge sheet.

Our World Wildlife Fund adoptee, the Amur leopard, arrived this weekend.  We opened it up this morning.  Very fuzzy.  Tomorrow we will decide its gender and name.  Come to think of it, is gender all that important?  Maybe we'll just give it a name.  (Although, with only thirty or so left, I bet the gender of any newborn in the real world is really important.)

We did more work on our geography picture dictionaries.  New terms today: fjords, glaciers, atolls and archipelagos.  We watched some glaciers calving into the sea on our big screen and then saw a video clip of an iceberg turning over.  Ridiculously more effective then me just describing it for all those years. 

Spelling homework tonight is to do something with their words.  They can write them ten times each, make sentences out of them, put them in a story, make a crossword, make a wordsearch, whatever they can come up with to show me that they spent a little bit of time making a connection with their words. 

Have a great night.

Mr. Shea