Additionally, remember to send a sack lunch with your child for these days (unless you have indicated you need a sack lunch from the school cafeteria).

I find myself using my own explanations when trying to explain expectations to my students.  When students respond to my prompts, whether they be in Reading, Math, Science, or History, I expect ROBUST answers.  That is to say that I want MEATY responses, not CANDY responses.  I want answers I can sink my teeth into, something SAVORY.

Mr. Culbertson calls it "getting out of the kiddie pool and taking you into deeper water".  While it is warmer in the shallow kiddie pool, we must not get comfortable with it (The water in there is also yellow, you know.).  Eventually, students have to take off the floaties and learn to swim.  Teachers are still here to make sure they don't drown, but we aren't here to do all of the stroking and kicking for them.  Students must take responsibility for their own learning.

Hopefully all of the analogies, metaphors, and descriptive words help students understand that they can't just sit in the shallow water and expect to feel any big achievement.  I want them to each stretch out on their own and swim. That means I want more than a bunch of quick, SUGARY responses to my questions.  Give me more PROTEIN!

Spring Break is over, and spring has finally arrived.  We're back in the classroom on Monday, but there are some important items on our agenda for the next few weeks.  The first big thing on the schedule is our much-anticipated excursion to Jefferson City.  Students will tour the capitol building, including moments inside the Senate and Assembly galleries, as well as a visit to the Governor's Mansion.

The trip will start early in the school day on Thursday, April 2, and we will not return to the school building until around 6:30 in the evening.

A second trip will not be far behind.  This will be our yearly College Bound field trip.  Fourth graders have the opportunity to tour Missouri State University in Springfield. More information about this trip is forthcoming.

We will make preparations, in the next couple of weeks, regarding my expectations on these trips.  Each of these field trips are to locations where business is being conducted.  We must not be a distraction in either location, and we must be aware and yield to the normal traffic flow.  I'll go through all of the ins and outs of the capitol and the college visits thoroughly in upcoming days.

Finally, for each trip, we will request students to bring sack lunches (or lunches provided by the school cafeteria). For the Jefferson City adventure, we also request that each student bring $2 to help teachers pay for snacks and drinks on the bus.

Many students have commented on The Bloggatteer Experience about lamenting the loss of one of our most popular students.  ANDREW moved home to Neosho, recently, and we've all wondered how he is doing.  Wonder no more!

The school there and our school here have communicated with one another, and it seems that our ANDREW is doing quite well.  In fact, he has made quite an impression in just a short time.  The word from his new school is that ANDREW has dazzled the adults there with his crisp, solid handshake, and his direct eye contact.  It does the heart good to know that he was listening and that he followed through on his promise to carry on those life skills.

Our second student to leave, of course, was WENDELL.  WENDELL has been in contact with us on The Bloggatteer Experience, and he reports that he misses us.  He also claims that he has been shaking hands.

In recent teacher meetings and in private discussions in the hallways of our school, my peers and supervisors have acknowledged the difference our handshakes have made.  Not only is the firm handshake with eye contact an important and effective skill in acquiring employment, we are successfully lifting up some shy or socially-awkward students.  It is obvious to people who have known these kids for years.

Keep it up, Hoggatteers!  It may seem simple, but you are getting noticed in a positive way.  As we find ourselves taking field trips in the next few months, I will expect thoughtful behavior to accompany these skills.

We're going to try out Reading Rewards during the fourth quarter.  It occurs to me that we have stressed the fluency part of reading and the comprehension part of reading, but that perhaps we have neglected the one part of reading that encourages people to enjoy reading:  reading a text from start to finish.

I have witnessed that many students choose books based on their covers or their titles, but they fail to read far enough into the books to get interested in the storyline.  Instead, they put the books aside and choose another to start, hardly ever getting through 30 pages of any given text.  If this is the case, is it any wonder that they do not enjoy reading?  If this is the case, students never get the satisfaction of finishing something, of reading a complete story; regarding nonfiction, they only gain partial information, or in many instances, they only look at interesting pictures, making very minimal knowledge acquisition.

I've never been a big advocate for reading logs - those lists of books and pages or minutes read.  It's pretty obvious that there is some dishonesty involved in such, and I've not wanted to provide a resource for that dishonesty.  At the same time, I realize that I need to hold my students more accountable for their recreational reading.  I've always fought for the concept that more reading time, spent with materials selected by the readers themselves, is the best practice for reading improvement, but something more visible might be necessary to encourage completion in reading.

That's why we're going to experiment with Reading Rewards during the fourth quarter.  While we have a record of everyone's reading fluency (reading rate), and while I assess weekly for varying aspects of reading comprehension (inference, main idea, etc.), Reading Rewards will give us some information about sustained reading both in and outside of the classroom.  The program also rewards readers (hence the name) with "badges" and advancements of "levels" based on minutes logged.  Finally, readers can review, recommend, and discuss books to others on the site.  The video below describes the program from the reader's perspective.