CONFERENCE WEEK REVIEW

We hit the mid-point of the trimester and that meant conferences. It was my honor to meet the wonderful parents of my awesome students. I appreciated the dialogue and the discourse we had on various topics. To me, these are always insightful and helpful meetings as there was a healthy exchange of information passed to each other. We had a lot to review. However, for my parents I would like to review what I emphasized a the meetings: 

1. Growth and Progression are the big markers of student achievement. 

2. Grades are important, but they are not the whole story of what is going on in the classroom. 

3. A partnership needs to exist between the teacher and the parents at home so there is a clear line of communication and the key source to know what is going on with our classroom is Mr. Dougherty. 

Please contact me if you have additional questions. I appreciate all the sacrifices you have made to our school. 

We thank Ms. Manis for donating her mini-van for helping out with the success of Trunk or Treat last Wednesday night. It was a success and we thank all of those who attended and contributed. 

 A CLASSROOM IN ACTION AND MOTION

We have reached the fifth week of school and, honestly, at this point, it's more of a question of what we are not doing as opposed to what we are DOING! :}  And we are doing a lot. 

And I couldn't be prouder of my gang! 

First, in Math this week we finished place value and did ordering and rounding of numbers.  I had the students order themselves in greatest to least, or least to greatest numbers with their cards. They had a number written on it and had to place themselves in the order using non-verbal cues. It was awesome to watch them communicate and get into the proper order. This was almost half a Math class. Impressive! 

In Reading, we completed the story "A Walk In The Desert" by Rebecca Johnson. The students learned about the Desert biome and what animals can survive in a desert environment. They had to summarize the main ideas of the story into the chart form. They did an excellent job. And we know more about deserts! Next week we will be doing a project that will be their assessment for the story/unit. 

In STEM we built catapults. However, the point of it was to test solutions to problems and relate it to information in our Science unit. Engineering is so interesting. And the students had to analyze their designs and gauge whether their catapult design met the criteria which were for it to launch something through the air. And again, all were very successful in completing that task. 

And not related to a class specifically, I am currently helping manage our Future Cities program which engages MS students in building a city model and learning about the engineering and design business. This is something the 4th and 5th graders can look forward to as we move along in our years here at All Saints where we are always engaging minds and strengthening faith. 

Have a great week! 

A Student Line-Up Showing off their greatest to least cards.

Future Cities

Future Cities