Post Discussion:

"He was so COOL!"

"I couldn’t believe he went through 11 drafts of the book!"

"I liked how he told us how he got the ideas for the book – how the characters were created"

"I couldn’t believe how much research he had to do to make the Catalina character believable – he had to find out a lot about the Philippines"

"He isn’t like you imagine writers to be – he’s FUNNY." J

So, a real live author stepped into our classroom and gave us a little insight into the ways that a book sprouts from a seed idea into a fully fleshed out story – the ideas, the drafts, the characters that started out in the story but got axed by editors and all of the personal connections. Because the topic of the book, The Revealers deals with many issues that students face, it was easy for the kids to personally connect both with the content of what Doug was sharing (bullying) and the way that he chose to communicate (writing). As a teacher, these are the moments that you just get out of the way and let the learning happen – it was informative and inspiring and well worth all of the effort to get him here. He was living proof that authors don’t sit in silent rooms magically churning out blissful pages of perfect prose. He made writing seem doable and amazing all at the same time.

On other topics:

Math: Our math groups will be wrapping up sometime next week and we will focus on Geometry as a class for the first few weeks of January. Then, we will jump into rational numbers (i.e. decimals, percents and fractions). Over the past few weeks, students have been working on becoming more fluent with multiplication and division procedures and we will continue this practice in January, however, the goal is always that students will understand the operations and when to use them, not to simply memorize steps in a procedure. However, if students are not efficiently and accurately performing the procedures, it really gets in the way of other types of mathematical calculations. I explained it to one group this way – "When we asked you, in second grade, to learn how to solve 3 x 4, we had you draw three groups of four, but eventually, we wanted you to be able to do this more efficiently. It is the same idea with multi-digit computation – you need a variety of tools at your command – including mental math strategies, estimation/rounding and procedures such as partial products, regrouping and partial quotients". And yes, they do learn long division too, eventually – but not until they understand the concept of division thoroughly.

Social Studies: Our study of Egypt will also be wrapping up (no mummy pun intended) and students will be giving their presentations this Friday, with a school wide museum on Monday. There will be a final assessment of their knowledge next week as well.

Science: We will begin a Chemistry unit in January. Students will use indicators such as iodine, indophenol blue and cabbage juice to do some basic testing of substances to see whether they contain starch (iodine), Vitamin C (indophenol blue) and whether they are acidic or basic (cabbage juice). If anyone is able to point me toward a guest speaker that uses chemistry in his/her job, please let me know. Marjorie Gale, a geologist for the state of Vermont will be visiting with us and will talk to us about the chemistry of minerals, as well as about water as a solvent. Much of the work that we will do focuses on accurate measurement and recording as well as creating organized tables and drawing reasonable conclusions.

Yankee Trading Party: Yes, they talked me into it and I agree that these CAN be fun – provided that very little money, if any is spent. I prefer that kids either make or bring in something that they no longer use to trade, but will leave that to parent discretion. Homemade pickles, pre-loved stuffed animals and plastic flamingoes have been favorites of the past so please do not feel the need to purchase anything. If your child wishes to participate, s/he should bring in a wrapped gift by Thursday, the 20th.

I truly hope you are enjoying this festive time of year with your family –

Peace,

Sara