Blue angels were nice at recess

Hello,

It was ridiculously hot during our lunch recess. I was appreciative of the Blue Angels soaring overhead. They were enough to stop kickball games, slide runs, and games of tag for seconds at a time. It is hard not to be impressed, at any age.

We got some free writing time in today. Ask your child about their time writing. We are bringing in more skills than last year at this time and I look forward to seeing some more progress. This will be a focus for us, since the jr. high has been suggesting this be more of a priority for us over the past couple of years. Proper sentences, paragraphs, and showing evidence for our claims or our opinions will be important ongoing lessons.

We got into our math workbook. Place value is the focus of chapter one, just as it has been the past two years. This chapter should be a breeze. We'll be starting Rocket Math on a daily basis starting next week. I have one more day to figure out exactly where each student should begin. Most students will be starting with addition, albeit at different starting points. The past three days have shown me that their multiplication skills, on the whole, are more advanced than their addition skills. The goal is to pass all of the basic four functions this year. We'll fill that addition gap first, then move to subtraction.

Unless students go to a special education teacher for math, the whole class will be staying with me for the math block. Some of the other classes are grouping according to current skills to help with services, but we are not one of those. Students who received RTI in-class support last year, will receive pull-out support this year. This will  not come during our math block, but at another time of the day. I am happy that I get to keep more of "my" kids this year. I should be able to be more helpful in homework club and during our small group times. Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns about this.

Quite a few of you have asked about more details on the motivation test that I gave. I think I'll write up one big summary and just add the specific info about your child. I apologize that it is taking longer than I thought. I've corrected them all, but am still analyzing the results on a few kids. You can expect that to come home on Monday.

The class had their first session of Art today. We are with Ms. Moll this year, after a year with Mrs. Crosby. I think that it is great that the kids get to experience both very talented and capable art teachers in this school. We all know that they didn't such a change in their math, reading, writing, science or ss teacher.

Have a great night. I'm going home to sit on my couch and watch the news on Tom Brady. I'll probably be asleep by eight.

Have a great night.

Mr. Shea