Kiss & Toast

Today was a day of "goodbyes" and "hellos." It was a day of wrap-ups and possibilities...

This morning we kissed the fall semester goodbye (with Hershey's Kisses and gift wrapping up our fall journals), and this afternoon we made a toast to change for the spring semester (complete with plastic champagne glasses and Martinelli's sparkling cider).

We began moving forward in our exploration of Ancient Greece and also worked on winding up our Thera action/disaster movie posters.

We went over the changes taking place in our class:

1) Homework assignments must be written down every class period instead of waiting until the end of the day (usually they are kept up on the board all day, now they are erased after each subject).

2) Every day an assignment is late, five (5) points will be deducted from the assignment; Late assignments will not be accepted after five (5) days.

3) Independent Reading Projects will now be given letter grades and have much more stringent requirements (please ask your student to show you their guidelines sheet if you would like to see what the requirements entail).

4) Finally it's Friday grouping will be changed and Finally it's Fridays will take place once a month.

5) We will be beginning "The Extra Mile" Club next week (more info. will be on tomorrow's blog post)

And we talked (well - I sort of lectured and the student's listened) about getting quieter quicker and giving all of our focus to our classwork while in class - more so than last semester.

I think we are off to a really good start.

Happy 2009!

Cheers,
Ms. Pitman