Hi. Happy Weekend. It was so great seeing so many of you at the carnival last Friday. What a blast. Thank you so much for all the donated baked goods and for playing round after round of the cake walk. I sure hope all of you went home with something yummy!
It is possible that your child came home on Friday and said it was a rough day at school. It started before the kids even came into the classroom. I was grading their work and over half of the class turned in far less than 4th grade quality work. There were no capital letters at the beginning of sentences, no punctuation, and oh my goodness messy handwriting. Rather than get a headache, I just gave them the F that they earned. We talked about from this point on, if they give me F effort then they will earn the F they deserve. I will not even attempt to figure out what they are trying to say. We also had a big talk about how Mrs. Hankins and I really try to make learning fun by doing projects, art, and hands on experiments. But, we both have noticed that many, and I mean almost all, do not bother to listen to the directions we are giving. They just do whatever they want when they want. It is total disrespect and it really hurts our feelings. We work very hard, above and beyond, to give each child a well rounded education. It is frustrating when we go to all that hard work, and then they just goof it off. I respect them, and I would hope that they would respect me in return. To help them focus in and listen, we now have assigned seats on the carpet that all face me. We also have new seating arrangements in the classroom. At the end of the day, they were asked to move their desk to a group that had people that would NOT tempt them to talk in it. They all found a workable spot. A month ago, the class determined that they, as a whole, needed to work on not talking when transitioning from one lesson to another. Last week, we came up with the steps needed to achieve that goal. I modeled ways that they could remind themselves, like crossing their fingers when moving, putting a post it note on their desk that would remind them, painting one finger nail a different color to remind them, putting their finger on their lips, and so on. I saw NO change last week. Some kids will even talk two seconds after I remind them, and others will talk and look directly at me while doing it. I wonder what would happen if they did that at home? Would you tolerate such disrespect? Please have a discussion about this at home before Monday. In their planner at the bottom they should have written 4th graders only on Monday. We talked about how next week will be a better week. They are future 5th graders right now, and this is a problem we need to get under control before moving on. If students talk while transitioning this week, they will be asked to leave the room to think about their choices. They know that I am serious and that I am done asking them to be respectful and polite. If you talk about this, please write the word RESPECT in the planner. Thanks.
This week we will be moving on in math. We will work on decimals, fractions, and percents all as one. We will also work on probability. As always, we will continue to review all the skills we have learned. In reading, we will dive into our new book Balto. Mrs. Yasenak came into talk to us about her experience at the Iditarod race two years ago. She had some amazing pictures in her slide show of the race and Alaska in general. We ran out of time with her, so she has agreed to skype in with us this week and answer any questions the kids wanted to ask. We will also skype with her daughter who lives in Alaska. She will talk to us about life in Alaska in general, especially the wildlife, weather, and clothing. That should be very interesting. I will post the exact time and day tomorrow. If you would like to join us, please feel free. Skyping is pretty cool! We will start our new spelling unit tomorrow. All students will take test 1. They will get them back in the afternoon to bring home to study. We will be finishing up our Ice Worm novel this week. Those that need it, will have one more chance to master the letter writing to Allison. We will take the computerized AR test when we finish. In science, we will be doing some experiments with rocks. We will take an in depth look into the three types of rocks. Kids were introduced to the three types by our Junior Field, Mrs. Dejares last week. If they can remember the names of them, write them in the planner for $20 bonus. In language, we will be looking at their, there, and they're. As you can see, we will have a busy week.
The following week, we only have school on Monday and a half day on Tuesday. I will be gone both days. I fly out to North Carolina on Saturday. Kids are off for spring break Tuesday afternoon thru the following Monday. Kids return to school on Tuesday. I will be gone until Thursday. Enjoy!
Brayden was a great star of the week! He has so many Pokemon cards. I can tell that he has been collecting them for a long time. Very interesting!
Have a wonderful weekend!
