Dear Educational Partner,

We have devoted our year to helping your fourth grader improve and succeed.  Your child is important to us.  We understand that your child is the future of our city, our nation, and our world.  We strive daily to give our best to your child.

Some days are good ones, full of energy and passion, but whether a day is a good one or not, we will try to make this year memorable and meaningful for every child.  Please be patient with us as we make mistakes.

Thank you,

Mr. Culbertson, Mr. Hoggatt, and Mrs. Mouton

THINGS WITH WHICH WE COULD USE YOUR HELP·      Your child needs multiplication flash cards and must work with them nightly.  We desperately need to move to deeper concepts in the fourth grade, and basic facts must be mastered soon.  Your effort will pay off tremendously.

·      Your child must read for 30 uninterrupted minutes every night.  Please designate a time for this, and remember to include weekends.  Remember that this may include you reading to or with your child, your child reading to you, and/or your child reading on his or her own.

·      Create a routine, and establish a time for getting things done.  Establish a location for homework to be completed without distraction.  Have some basic supplies available and in place for this purpose.

·      Consider limiting the amount of time your child spends in front of the television or video games and personal electronic devices.  While entertainment and rest breaks are important, we also suggest physical activity and exercise, as well as a regular supper time and nutritious breakfast.

·      Check your child’s book bag.  Find and sign any permission slips, student planners, binders, or notes from the teacher as soon as you see them.  Repack them for return to school on the next day.  At times, money is requested to cover certain expenses (field trips, special activities, etc.).

·      Stay informed about school activities.  Maintain contact with the teacher.  Attend family events.  Check theschool website, your teacher’s website (if applicable) and local media.  Join Cecil Floyd’s Facebook page.  Contact the teacher at school if you have questions or need clarification on an issue.

Even with a cat on the cover, this book wasn't half bad.  This is not a book I would have chosen, on my own, to read:  it is one of this year's Mark Twain Award nominees for the state of Missouri.  I had my doubts, with talk of the title character's mother being an illegal immigrant and her dad being pretty hands-off.  I wasn't sure which way the story would take me.  Would Gaby's mother sneak back over the border after being deported?  Would her dad make her move away from home?  A deep connection with the local animal shelter, and a deeper relationship with her best friend's family had the potential to make this one end in disappointment.

Go to the author's website to see a good trailer about this book.

One of my least favorite things to do is administer tests.  That's why this week was fraught with less-than-exciting class times for the Hoggatteers.  I try very hard to keep our energy brimming with high energy, but mandated, long assessments like this often put a damper on that kind of teaching.  It's also hard to get that energy back in the afternoon, after a morning full of assessments.

We started, last Friday, and continued on Tuesday and Thursday, with the new assessment adopted and paid for by our school district.  The test is hosted by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), and it is supposed to assess current levels in Reading, Language, and Math.

After difficulties with the technology, each day's 45-minute test ended up taking about 2 hours.  Hopefully the tests will return some useful information about my students' abilities and needs.

Students will be given the NWEA test two more times, this year, and I am hopeful that they will demonstrate that students will have grown in ability each time.

Yesterday was the 14th anniversary of the terror attacks in New York and DC, and the failed attack that took a plane down in Pennsylvania.  As parents and teachers, the protective caregivers of precious youths, days like September 11, 2001 really stick out as important, infamous days.  We often find ourselves distraught with everyday obstacles in our lives, but on this day our thoughts were spent on other things.

We worried about our children, their emotional state, and their exposure to life that often crumbles around us.

We worried about our civilization, being reminded of the fragile world.  We were introduced to the idea that even our great nation could fall given the circumstances.

We worried about our faith in humanity, our faith in ourselves, and our faith (or lack of faith) in a Deity.

We worried about our lifestyles, realizing that our fuel supply might have been in danger and our monetary system could be disrupted.

So many questions surrounded that day, 14 years ago, and too many of them remain unanswered.

All we can do, as teachers and parents, is raise our children, positively affect our children, and love our children with all of our hearts.  We are preparing them not only for tackling district and state tests, but for their futures in an uncertain world.  Is is possible that we don't know what the world will look like in 10 or 20 years?  Absolutely.  We, and our children, must be prepared to be smart in the face of uncertain times.

That does not mean we will live in fear!  Preparation is our defense against such.  Improving ourselves and learning more about the world we've been given is all too important to leave it to chance.  That's one reason I do the things I do.  It's why I am the person I am.  It gives me purpose.

How about you?  Are you contributing to the future of your children and grandchildren?  If not, why not?  It's not too late to start.  That's the great thing about life - that we can start over any time we choose.  It may not be easy, but it can be done.

Our crystals really developed over the three-day weekend.  Last Friday, after discussion of the Rock Cycle and in anticipation of our mineral investigations, students quickly prepared solutions involving table salt and epsom salt. Within just a few hours, the table salt crystals are cube-shaped, and the epsom salt crystals are needle-shaped.

These will be combined as a portion of our speleology project which will begin soon.

Actually, last Thursday, Hoggatteers were faced with a challenge - the challenge to demonstrate excellent "tracking". Tracking is the learned ability of turning the eyes and head to face anyone who is speaking. When two people are having a conversation, heads almost whip back and forth like it's a tennis match (not quite, but that's the illustration).  Observers should practically feel the wind from the movement.

And that's what happened.  Another class visited ours to sit around the perimeter of the room and observe our tracking, which was excellent.

As two teachers spoke to the class, conversation-style, from differing positions in the classroom, Hoggatteer heads whipped, left and right, to track the conversation.  With laser precision, they kept their eyes on each speaker.  The other class watched our demonstration of respectful attention.  While in the room, they also got to hear my students respond with resounding "yes, sir" and "no, sir" as appropriate.

After our recent demonstration of describing evidence in detail (See our post of a couple of days ago.), it was the students' turn to write the observations.  I fully believe in cross-curricular units, so here we went, once again, using science to improve writing skills.  I encouraged students to write robust descriptions of each of their 12 rock specimens.  They did a much better job this time than before our evidence collection.

I asked students to enter a page of their new notes into their Seesaw files.  They scanned their QR codes and took pictures of the pages with the iPads.  Parents who sign up can also view their children's Seesaw portfolios.  Did you receive your code when I sent it home?  If you still need instructions, please contact me.

In another attempt to keep the highway of communication open between parents and teachers, ClassDojo has launched its latest feature.  Users of social media will recognize the concept, but ClassDojo has taken the feature a step further. Unlike Twitter, Instagram, and other services, only connected parents are able to see the shared posts.

ClassDojo's announcement to program mentors mentioned, "Teachers will know when parents have seen their posts with read receipts, plus they’ll feel the love when parents 'like' their posts."

Normally, I like to give reports directly to our website, but our class wall will allow a quicker snippet to be shared more immediately.  Parents will be alerted on their smart phones or other devices when a new post has been made, and I can direct them to our website for a more complete report.

Parents, this year looks to be one in which we are more technologically equipped than ever!  Please make a point to stay connected with us.

To make your own tessellations at home (or wherever you might have the supplies), begin with a small square. We used a three-inch by three-inch square (which happens to have an area of nine square inches).  The square, of course, has four sides which we called the left, the right, the top, and the bottom.

With scissors, cut a non-straight line from the bottom to the top without cutting any pieces off.  You will be left with two pieces that fit together like a puzzle.

Now, keeping the pieces oriented as they are when the puzzle fits together (In other words, do not flip or rotatethem.), slide the right piece over the left, so that the straight sides are touching.  Tape the straight sides together.

Beginning in the upper left corner of a full sheet of construction paper, line up the straight top of the taped shape with the top of the paper.  Trace the shape.  Sliding it to the right so that the left side of the shape fits within the right side of the tracing, keep tracing the shape.  When you have made it across the page, slide it down to make a second row.  Do the same until the larger paper is covered with the tessellated shape.  Trace over the pencil outline with a black marker.

Finally, alternating colors, use your crayons to neatly decorate the tessellated masterpiece.  Display it with pride; you have just tessellated!

In our continued attempt to find patterns in the evidence before us, the class took to the great outdoors in search of things that repeat.  There were too many to count.  Patterns are everywhere, but you won't find them if you don't look for the details.  That's true in history, science, math, reading, and crime scenes.

When students came to school, last Wednesday, they probably didn't count on the experience of investigating a murder and collecting evidence.  It's all part of our Evidence Deeper Learning Project, which is designed to show a correlation between reading, science, and history.