Sad news

Hello,

I learned some tough news last night.  A local parent of a couple of my former students passed away earlier in the week.  He was a great man.  My heart goes out to his wife.  They have hearts of gold.  A few students in our class were well aware of the incident.  After the subject was brought up, we had a little discussion.  We talked a bit about death, and life, and heart attacks.  Our study of the human body later on this year will probably help some of the kids understand the answers that I gave to some of their questions.  It is a big loss for our community. 

I don't have a good idea on how to change the topic. 

Next topic:

I'm pleased with the progress that I'm seeing in our kids' ability to write paragraphs that contain substantial supporting sentences.  It has been quite a dramatic change in some cases.  I'm happy to be working with Mrs. Palopoli because I believe her ideas on teaching literacy through science deserves much of the credit. 

I was reminded today that teachers should make phone calls to let parents know good news as much as we make calls for when students are in trouble.  Thank you to Mrs. Vallella for reminding me.  I did this much more often at J.A. and realized as soon as I heard it that I've been stuck in the traditional rut of only calling when "Johnny" does something wrong.  I'll remedy that tonight. 

We are currently reading historical fiction novels.  Tonight's homework is to write about the time period that your child's novel takes place?  Would they want to live then?  Why or why not?  It isn't to put themselves at the exact location of the novel, but in the time period.  For example, someone reading about the Titanic should write about whether they would like to live in 1912, not whether they would want to be on that ship at the time.

We are getting close to chapter 1 math test time in my math class.  Maybe Friday.  We'll see how tomorrow goes. 

Have a great night.

Mr. Shea