The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter. ~ Blaise Pascal

http://barbaragiamanco.com/2011/05/05/blah-blah-blah%E2%80%A6blog/

In looking over my blogs from the last few days, I have come to the conclusion that I need to uncomplicate things a bit. I write too much. Also, I think I could make my assignments and links easier to spot. Let's see how I do today:

• Tomorrow we'll all be attending a play at the high school; please get those permission slips in, LB,CD,BK, SK,SR, and JD. We'll leave here about 8:40 and be back on or before 10:30.
• Eric Bird will be here in the afternoon for Digital Wish. Grades 5 and 6 come together in this classroom to learn a wide variety of new ways to use technology. (I understand some parents have been creating stop-motion animation with their kids. I think that's awesome!)
• In Social Studies, Grade 6 completed Section Two, Across the Atlantic. In 1607, 105 men and boys made the four-month voyage from Blackwell, England to Virginia to establish a new colony in America. "The Virginia Company" provided three ships (none of which was ever meant to carry passengers) for their expedition. They were the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. In the last lesson, we learned what it must have been like to prepare for and complete a four month voyage across the Atlantic and we used an interactive link to help us identify all the parts of a ship. Today we clicked on the link, Charting a Course, and, with the help of an interactive map, we filled out a pretty complex Navigators Log. Ask your child to show you the site.
• In Language Arts, Grade 6 completed their Persuasive Writing portfolio piece. I decided to give them a reprieve from completing the Response to Literature (because so many kids hadn't finished reading their books. . .) We will hit the floor running on Monday, the 19th. I want these done (final draft) by the middle of next week.
• No Reading assignment other than to read for 20 minutes at least!
• I only had Grade 5 for Writing today. We began thinking about our own persuasive pieces by co-constructing one in class. Using this website, we'll start work on our Persuasive Writing portfolio pieces on Monday. I hope they think a bit about a topic between now and then.

For tomorrow, March 15th (the Ides of March!), both classes will begin their third Write Source Assessments, which are given at the beginning of each new marking period. (The fourth and final one will come in June; you'll have all the data from the 2011-2012 school year in the June report card.)

Good grief, I'm STILL writing a lot. I do hope that it's easier to navigate to the appropriate sites and assignments, though.

Take care, everyone--
Teri