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August 04, 2004
What a Great Beginning!
What a great way to start the year. Many of you have sent in paper towels, Kleenexes, hand sanitizer, and all kinds of other supplies so that the kids don’t go without during this school year. Ms. Cox and I appreciate your generosity, support, and willingness to provide assistance. Most families have sent in the ten dollars for the agenda book and the team fees. We use this money to buy classroom supplies for special projects we do in class. It is nice to be able to take care of all of this bookkeeping earlier in the year to avoid having it drag out. THANKS!
Most of the last two days have been dedicated to going over the rules and procedures. There has been a lot of discussion about how to be successful and this is a theme that we will continue throughout the year. If we all work hard, the Honor Roll List will be large and include everyone. Who would believe that over 80% of the students would return the 4 forms for the county that had to get signed last night the very first day!?!
The students have begun their Reading Logs and should be asking you to sign them every week. It is my desire that they read at least 20 minutes every day. This really does improve vocabulary skills and comprehension and will show not only on the EOG but also in life. Please spend some time asking what your child is reading. I have an extensive classroom library with almost 1,000 books available for the students to check out. The school library is also available as well as the community libraries. We will have DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) daily and this will help the students achieve their AR point goals.
We have worked on some analogies and some higher order thinking skills. This is a theme that I use throughout the year to help the students become better thinkers. We have talked about our classroom computer network and some of the assignments we will compete this year such as the Autobiographical Poem and the Big Newspaper! Keep an eye out for more information.
We did our first journal today and since it was Wednesday it was an Art Appreciation Journal. Friday is Personal Journal Day. The students took the picture, The Studio (pictured above) and wrote some descriptive and creative papers about it. Wednesday is always Art Appreciation because it makes the kids use a different form of writing in the Journal. We will write a journal every day and they are due every other Friday.
If this sounds like a whole lot of information to you, imagine your child working on this all day long and having two different academic classes and two different electives.
In closing, let me apologize. It is my goal to have the site updated every day before 3:30. I am a little behind tonight, but I will work a little smarter in the future. Thanks for your notes and for some truly great children!
Posted by hlperson at August 4, 2004 06:29 PM
Comments
Jacob Lawrence is truly an interesting character. There's much to be found about his life and paintings on the web. He spent much of his life teaching art (painting) and moved to Seattle in 1970. I noticed the Studio was done in 1977. Without being able to read Jacob's mind, I imagine the Studio illustrates his inner strength and determination with each expression he put to canvas. The artist seems clear in his purpose: the Studio itself an important place in his creative life. I'm sure I won't post a thought to every "Art appreciation" topic.... but I enjoy his color and energy. Many thanks to you Mr Person for introducing the students to these timeless expressions!
Posted by: Jon Hunter at August 4, 2004 07:07 PM