Day Two

Hello,

First of all, I feel the need to thank your children for the best night's sleep that I have had in a long time. Total exhaustion after day one, that I never fully appreciate until I make it home and realize that my brain is mush.

Thank you to everyone who got their medical info turned in. The kids enjoy it when you have homework instead of them.

We started playing Thinkfun! games this morning. These were generously purchased through a BCEF grant, so I appreciate everyone who supports that group. We are "playing" these games, to learn not to give up, to realize that we get better as we work at something, and to learn from our mistakes. We have six games: Tipover, Rush Hour, Hoppers, Pirate Treasure, River Crossing and Chocolate Fix. They are one player games that get more and more difficult as you advance in the games. Each game has 40 levels. We spent two half hour sessions on these today.

During the first session, I heard lots of: "This is impossible!" "I can't do this!" "Level 12 can't be done." etc. There was less of this during session two, even though they were hitting even harder challenges. I would expect to hear even less in the upcoming days. This will be a focus of ours over the next four days.

I'm hoping this will help change their mindsets when they are confronted with difficult challenges. We sometimes need to look at things in a different way. Sometimes we need more focus. Sometimes we need to walk away and come back later. We don't need to give up so quickly. It is like the saying, "It doesn't matter whether you think you can or you can't, either way you are right."

It was nice to see a few kids do the "impossible" today. Ask your child how they felt they did.

The class voted to finish our read aloud from the end of last year. We only have a couple chapters left in The Power of Un by Nancy Etchemendy. I was hoping more would finish it on their own, but we'll be done soon. I do love some of the discussions that this books churns up.

Our Reading RTI team came in and did some testing today.  The Aimsweb is taking the place of the NWEA computer testing. The class all took a quick test together and then individually were called away to read with a specialist. Ask your child how it went. I'll find out very soon.

Tuesday is PE day.  That reminds me that I need to send home our weekly schedule. It is a lot better than last year. We start the day with time for a morning meeting, then get an hour of literacy and an hour of math in before our usual specials time. The afternoons are much shorter than before, which is good for elementary school kids.

I'm feeling good about this loop. Teaching takes a lot of time and energy and it makes it easier when you start right out feeling so good about your kids. This is a really friendly group and I have high hopes.

Please email me with any questions or concerns. I have a lot more to say, but I'll dole it out in smaller chunks this year.

Thanks for reading.

Mr. Shea