daw.com - October 11

Dear Parents,

Each week there are students in charge of a current event. I have sent home a reminder with these students but I will also list them here.

Monday - day 2, no current events
Tuesday - Sabrina
Wednesday - Christos
Thursday - student conferences, no school
Friday - student conferences, no school

Here are some student friendly sites for Current Events.

Good News - Served Daily
Science News for Kids
Time for Kids

I would like to thank all the parents who attended our colony day last Thursday and also for all the food for our Colony Luncheon. I hope the students showed you what they are capable of and what we have been doing in our Cultural Encounters unit. By the end of this week we should complete our last pieces of this unit.

The big event this week is Conferences. By now I hope that all of you have signed up for a slot over these two important days. Students are welcome to attend but not required to do so. If there is something specific you want me to address during these conference days please let me know in advance so I can be prepared. Otherwise, I will go over the first quarter's learning by each student.

Because this is conference week, it is only three days. Students have homework on Monday and Tuesday only. After this, because of camp and then a holiday, there will be no homework until we return on November 2, 2009. I will be sending home a reading log for the time after camp and for the holiday as I do expect that students will find some time daily for reading. This will prepare them for their reading journal entries which we have now covered in class. Each student has one due every second cycle of the 6 day calendar starting last Friday with Day 1.

This weeks Monday folders will have the last math assessment and also a writing assessment in them. While it does have a space for parent signature, I do not need them back since I have an digital copy of all the assessments. All of grade 5 uses the same form so it takes into consideration all teachers of grade 5. Please have the folders returned by Wednesday so I can have the ready when we return on Nov. 2.

Students will get their cabin groups on Monday and meet as a cabin on Tuesday to prepare a poster for the cabin. All students are in a cabin with others from the class. This was all we could promise as there are just too many considerations to get everyone where they would like to be. Hopefully students will be still be pleased.

Watch students Google Sites this week as we will put our goals for the next half year as new pages on our sites. There is an entire process I will take students through to end up with these goals. Then we can revisit them throughout the year to see how much progress has been made.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Harold Daw