newsletter

Peregrine Press

March 16-20

 

        

 

Schedule

Monday: Running Club, Buddy Lunch with High School then All School Meeting at 1:00 in the Rogers Room at the Library

Tuesday: No Out and About

Wednesday:  Buddy reading with preschool kids at the Early Learning Center at Pacific University (My student teacher from last year is the teacher of the class we will buddy with.); PE at Pacific

Thursday: Art

Friday: Out and About to Tom McCall Forest-Laura will lead Leave No Trace activities

 

Last Week

We had a great week!  The students spent three days researching for their Independent Projects and began to organize all their notes and research.  I was very pleased with the majority of the class really using time wisely and finishing their research in the time provided.  Many students have chosen to do additional research at home which is a great idea.

 

We started literacy circles again with a few modifications from last round.  So far it appears that most groups are somewhat pleased with the books they were assigned.  They focused on synonyms and antonyms and summarizing events and the main character in their book so far.

Our Out and About to Beal Pond was a bit frustrating for one main reason.  It was very cold, and many students were not properly dressed.  I asked them several times in the morning if they had enough warm layers on and they all said "yes" then when we got there, there was constant complaining about how cold it was.  I had planned to be there for at least an hour and we had to cut it short because so many students were not doing the work because they were so cold.  It was not as meaningful to have to talk about wetlands back in the classroom, which is what we had to do in the end.  I didn't want the kids to be miserable but it was very frustrating to have so many kids complain when they knew what it was going to be like.  Please help me by reminding your kids on Out and About days to dress properly, even though we are getting into spring, the mornings can be very cold, so gloves and a hat are encouraged.

 

For Running Club we went through all our data from the beginning of the year and started to calculate how many miles the class ran each week as a whole.  We will continue to analyze the data and plan a trip to "run" somewhere hypothetically.  On average we have been running 32 miles each Running Club, so we could go pretty far by the end of the year!  (Again, this is all hypothetical and we will not actually run to Eugene or CaliforniaJ )

 

On Friday we operated a clock with potatoes and lemons!  We experimented with the scientific method by trying to see if doing jumping jacks affected our ability to balance.  We will continue to work with the scientific method in the next month, doing small experiments each week.

 

 

This Week

This week the students will have 4 days to work on their Independent Projects.  The rough draft of the essay is due on Friday, but if students can get them turned in earlier that would be great because I leave for Hawaii on Thursday and could start looking through some of them while I am gone.  (That is not necessary, just an option.)  They will also have Literacy Circles Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Wednesday we will start a Buddy program with the ELC at Pacific University.  This will be a great opportunity for students to practice their reading fluency and expression by reading easier kids books to preschoolers.  My hope is that this will be an ongoing activity that we will do for the rest of the year on Wednesdays.  The class is taught by Laurel who was my student teacher last year.  She is a great teacher and the kids that knew her last year can't wait to work with her again.

On Thursday and Friday Vanessa will be subbing for me while I will be in Hawaii.  She is very excited and I think the kids are tooJ.  She will get to go on an Out and About to the Tom McCall Forest on Friday with the class and do some Leave No Trace activities.

 

*Our pencil sharpener is getting repaired and we will not have it for a few weeks, so if you feel like getting some of those pencil sharpeners that can hold the shavings in them (small little handheld ones) that would be greatly appreciated.  We have one student that is letting us use his electric sharpener for the time being but I don't want it to get overused then broken.  Also, I am totally open to students using mechanical pencils as long as they provide their own led.  They can get a small zipping pencil pouch and keep those for themselves.