Mr. Hubbard's Class: Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Happy Tuesday!

Tomorrow is the big day for our Wax Museum presentations. We begin at 10:45 and go through 11:30.

You “technically” could show up between 11:30-Noon, however that is the time when we are also allowing the DES 5th grade students to go around and tour the other 5th grade presentations therefore there is a 50% chance you could miss your son/daughter perform.

Please check in with the office and sign in prior to coming to the Wax Museum.

Once again -- your family did not or does not have to go and spend copious amounts of $$$ on a costume. At a minimum have your son or daughter dress appropriately for a performance.

You do not need to stay for the entire time. You can photograph or video record your own child and take off if you want.

Every child will be performing every 1 minute or until someone walks by to hit their “red button.” Therefore your child in theory/statistically speaking could be performing their 1 minute presentation 80+ times.

Today a small group of our students were able to go and support our special needs students at the Special Olympic event that was held at Pleasanton Middle School. The six girls have & continue to chosen to spend their morning recesses with the special day students. Therefore today they were able to go root on and spend time with their friends as they competed.

Students have been given time to look at their Engrade accounts and analyze what areas do they need to focus on to improve their scores for the end of the trimester and prior to our Thursday “party.” Not really a party rather students with “M’s” will have 75 minutes to work on missing work while others will have the opportunity to do special art projects or do some team building/exercises outside.

Friday is “read-in” day for the entire school. Since we had our big read-in day during the reada-thon where students wore PJ’s and brought in pillows & stuff - we are going to keep it pretty mellow on Friday. We will still have our Friday spelling and vocab tests and a short Scootpad math test. We do have Dr. Greir showing up on Friday morning though. He sometimes reads something to the 5th graders and then he takes some of their questions about Wells Middle School.

We took an important research and writing exercise this week regarding hurricanes. Students read two articles and watched a National Geographic video all concerning hurricanes. They then answered questions and did a two-part write up on hurricanes. From quickly looking over their work, I am pretty excited.

We did a big team building exercise on Friday afternoon. Students first completed a survival analyst sheet independently, then in a random group of three, then a random group of six and finally in a large group of twelve students. In each of the four scenarios they had nine minutes to decide and prioritize which fifteen tools/devices they would bring if they had only moments to decide before jumping onto a life-boat. The class as a whole has not been exhibiting great listening skills recently. Therefore I felt this team building exercise was necessary and students would find it edifying. At a very superficial level I will tell you the teams of three and teams of six worked pretty well. There was a challenge with one team of six and we had a long discussion about what happened and what could change. However when the teams were expanded to twelve team members -- it became like an episode on a cable-news network where people just start talking over each other, yelling, and no one was listening and no one was convincing anyone to change their minds.

We did do a follow up discussion regarding the six and twelve team experiences on Monday morning. We discussed what went well, went went no so great and what could happen in the future. If you have time, ask your son/daughter what they got out of the experience and what they learned.

What I can tell you is that we had our best listened and best respectful circle time as a classroom in ages. Students seemed committed to learning and listening to each other and they were not trying to talk over each other. It was great to not hear the same four or five voices piping in throughout the circle time and others students were able to share their thoughts and feelings.

Speaking of circle time, one of our students and his soccer team earned this super large trophy for a state cup victory on Sunday!!

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard

“Stop and Listen. The first steps in teaching. Relationships THEN content.”

Jeff Charbonneau- 2014 teacher of the year

Homework for the week:

Bring costume or dress nicely for your wax museum presentations. You will have time during recess to change.

Wednesday is eat lunch in Mr. Hubbard’s class. Students get a reprieve once a week during lunch time to eat in a quieter environment.

Math:

2/24/2015	Due on Wednesday	117-118	9-24 all original problem -estimated numbers & answer/ solve for the real answer (do at least 5 guess check or stacking)	5	5
2/25/2015	Due on Thursday	141-142	9-30 all -- estimate to help you solve this problem/follow directions in book	6	4
2/26/2015	Due on Friday	56-57	1-17 all -- show your work	2	chapter review