Wednesday, November 15

Update

Dear Families,
Sorry for being a little behind the scenes lately. It's been a busy time. Last Wednesday I went to Wolf Lake Fish Hatchery in Mattawan to pick up the salmon eggs. They are in the tank. The kids have observed them and we learned about the life cycle of salmon. Stop by outside the office if you can and check them out. In a week or so they will begin hatch and become alevins. We'll keep you posted.
 
Last Thursday and Friday I went to the "Place-Based Education" conference. Educators from all over the country, but mostly the Great Lakes region, gathered at this biannual conference to share and develop strategies for this pedagogy. To my surprise, Sylvia's mother, Laura Meisler was there, too. She is the education coordinator for St. Joseph Hospital's The Farm. We will be working together to plan a trip to The Farm for the class.
 
The kids had another good time with Rick Hall, but he had an unexpected situation on Friday so I called Kito McKenny to sub for Friday. This Thursday and Friday I will be attending the Intel Math conference and EMU, so I called Rick and Kito again.
 
Because I will not be in class Thursday and Friday, we are postponing the I-Search presentations to next week (because I don't want to miss them!!) A few I-Searches will be rescheduled to Monday, November 27. So far we learned about Pets, Greek Mythology and Ancient Egypt.
 
This week we selected our Multicultural Fair topic of study. Through a process of brainstorming and mutual decision making, the class chose United Kingdom for our topic.
 
This Monday was our last day of PLTW, just in time to put our energies into learning about the many cultures in the United Kingdom!
 
I've also been working on report cards, which will come home next Tuesday.

Ta ta,
Bette