Samurai School - RISE!

Welcome Back! I can truly say I was happy to see the familiar faces of my fantastic people-like students. I have a great time teaching them and miss having the little ones to boss around and make their lives miserable. It makes me feel big and powerful to do this. I get the same feeling at home by eating my meals with Sofia's baby fork. I pretend I'm a giant.


Over the break we reached our 2,000th visitor to the site. In addition to our American friends, new ones from New Zealand (twice)
, Norway
, India
, Canada
, Singapore
, Brazil
and "Unknown" (twice) came on
. Can this "Unknown" be proof of life "out there"? Now I wished I would have watched "The X Files" when it was on TV.


In READING we went over their morning work, or their journal entries detailing what skills they were going to work on improving today. At least that's what they were supposed to write. Some are doing this. They are picking one area that they didn't master on the Fall Edusoft test (i.e. My goal for today is to work on "Cause & Effect"). But many are still writing vague, unmeasurable goals such as "I want to do better in reading".

But what can you do?


What you can do is keep reinforcing it and approaching it in different ways until EVERYONE has the ability to write specific and measurable goals. I brought out the test results and told them if I can take the time to know the strengths and weaknesses of every one of them, they can take the time to know each of their own strengths and weaknesses.


We went over the results of the Cause & Effect areas of the test. Out of 4 questions, only 4 students have proven themselves Samurai Masters: Serena, Esha, Kieran and ......Well knock me over with a feather, I've forgotten. I think it was Sandeep. I'll check when I get back to school.



HOMEWORK
Read "Katie's Trunk".

What You Can Do
1. Ask your child to name at least three cause and effect relationships in the story.
2. Ask them to name at least one area where they need to improve (hint...if they weren't mentioned above, they got either a 25%, 50% or 75% in this skill).
3. Ask them to "measure" their progress in this area. Are they improving? How do they know? Were they able to identify 3 cause & effect relationships? Yes? Then they know they're getting better.



MATH!
When I picked them up at lunch I handed them the results of their Unit 3 Reassessment Test. I graded it on their answers (40% of the final grade) as well as their reasoning, or justification for their answers (which was 60% of their final grade). This took so much extra time to do I can't promise a reassessment will be available for Unit 4, which we're now on. The results were mixed, with half the class showing remarkable scores and/or improvements and the other half showing negligible gains or even dropping scores, indicating little intellectual wealth has been acquired.

But what can you do?

What you can do is focus on the positive instead of the negative.

An old adage says
"Twice I did good,
That I heard never.
Once I did bad,
That I heard ever."

So I took"The Scorpion King" movie CD out of my gym bag and played the song "Rise!" as loudly as possible without disturbing other classes.
As it was playing I typed in the names and accomplishments of the 10 students who did show great grades and/or growth from the original test. As the students saw this on the big screen, they heard these lyrics

"Our time has come
Watch us set it off

RISE! Let your spirit fly!
RISE! Stand up for yourself!
RISE! Hold your head up high!

We made it. We made it. We made it this far.

Let your spirit fly
Don't you quit. Don't you quit.
Don't you quit on me."


I'll include who these 10 were 2morrow. My grad class starts in 15 minutes. There were three students who blew the test away, showing incredible mastery of the material and great gains in intellectual wealth with 100% scores! These students were Mark, Devan, and Dallas. Congratulations!

And for all those not attaining mastery I sent a dramatic message as I picked up Sarah in her chair (who did test at a very respectable score). As I lifted her high I said I would help them rise until they learned to do it for themselves.



HOMEWORK
Study Link 4.3 & 4.4

What You Can Do
1. Check over their work
2. Ask them to create a few new problems of their own and solve them (Warning: This involves higher order thinking skills and may result in increased brain power. As parents we know what this means; trouble :-)


And a big thanks to the talented singer and partolgirl Shannon, who brings my daughter to my classroom every afternoon. Thanks Shannon!







It's my turn to be a Samurai Warrior and focus on what I don't know, and change it to what I know. As Groucho Marx said, "Wait right here until I hear from you."