Week 1 of 2010 - 2011

Our first day of school....wow;

It has  been a long journey to get this far....it started for me two weeks ago where I “re” earned my GATE certification with 35 hours of class/lectures. 

Then last week I attended two full days of technology training and then prepared for training our teaching staff on Friday.  I also co-taught a ½ day class of our new teacher in the district. 

THEN I started worrying about my 55 boxes that were sitting in the middle of our brand new C-5 room. 

Enough of me whining…….onto matters that matter, your kids and our new community that started today.

We started off the day writing about ourselves.  The students need to complete the interview questions that will help me learn more about them.  It is not graded rather I’m just hoping to find out more about them.  This is due on Thursday morning.

After we began writing about ourselves, we also started making sense of all our supplies.  So we spent more time than you would expect discussing expectations regarding the supplies that they will keep and also some rules that I expect within our class.

Some expectations that I discussed, sharpening of pencils, when is a strategic time to dump garbage, how to NOT request to use the bathroom (don’t worry they can go they just need to fill out a form),  and utilizing our 10 minutes of preparatory time in the morning .

Then we took a mini-field trip around the new C-Wing and the playground area discussing rules/logistics that deal with the restroom, where you can play and where to line-up. 

After recess we recovered from the 100+ degree heat and then I gave a presentation on who I am and what things that I stand for and believe in (I’m talking scholastically and as an educator).   They then could ask me questions that they had about class and/or me. 

After that we spent time discussing our text books and workbooks.  Please have the hardcover books covered by Friday (math, language arts and science). 

We then spent significant time discussing our brand new math program and also our my math expectations.  I give open note math exams since I believe that note taking is an especially important skill to master prior to moving onto middle school.  Not only that , the students create a resource that they can use throughout the year.  It is an incentive to have students take well documented notes during the daily work while also using the notebook as an important study guide the night(s) before the exam.

We then quickly went over tonight’s math lesson.  Place value….

Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions and trillions.

State standards say a 5^th grader only needs to know up to a billion, however considering our national debt is in the trillions I feel that this is a very relevant number.  You now hear it discussed on CNN, FOX, and MSBC so I thought they should see it used. 

Standard form – basically how we typically write out a value using decimals.

Expanded form -  a standard value broken down into their individual place value.  2,346 in expanded form is 2000+300+40+6

Word form – 2,346 is written as two thousand three hundred forty six. 

Homework due tomorrow:  Page 4 of the hardcover book 1-18 all

Then student choice either 19-25 all page 5 or reteach page in the math workbook.

Finally your student should have given you a back to school letter.  Please email or write back telling me how to best communicate with you and if you want to share a little about your son/daughter. 

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

(925) 271-2370

http://mrhubbardsclass.blogspot.com/
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We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
• Maya Angelou