Welcome back

Hello,

I hope everyone is refreshed and ready for the rest of the way.  All math classes are jumping into fractions.  We will have a heavy poetry reading week.  Friday is "Poem in Your Pocket" Day based on the following poem:

Keep A Poem In Your Pocket

By Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

Keep a poem in your pocket

And a picture in your head
And you’ll never feel lonely
At night when you’re in bed.

 

The little poem will sing to you

The little picture bring to you
A dozen dreams to dance to you
At night when you’re in bed.

 

So - -

Keep a picture in your pocket
And a poem in your head
And you’ll never feel lonely
At night when you’re in bed.

We'll be reading and sharing a lot of poetry this week, so that the poem that your child has in their pocket actually means something to them.

The homework assignment tonight is for your child to keep a running record of how they spend their time.  As it looks more and more like I will be getting the opportunity to loop, I'm thinking more and more about how I can get your child to become better readers and better students.  Hearing from the class about the amount of time spent over the vacation in front of TVs, computers, and video screens makes me cringe.  I'm taking the tact that I need to get some students to first admit that they have a problem.  Just like a big spender needs to be aware of where their money is going, I need students to be aware of how much time they are wasting.  I'm anxious to see what tonight's log shows.  I also want to see a similar log of how they spend their weekends.  We'll use the information to make bar graphs, but I'm also hoping that the info may awaken kids to the amount of time that they are spending to their detriment.  I'll keep you posted.  I read a lot about kids and screen time over the vacation, so it's fresh on my mind.  We'll see where this little experiment takes us. 

I hope you all get a chance to see the ferris wheel that we built in the class.  It is quite impressive.  Wedges and gears are our next simple machines.  We did a bit today and we'll delve in more tomorrow.

Have a great night.

Mr. Shea