Things change

Today we began our day with our annual Back-to-School Breakfast. We had a pretty good turnout from our families. If you were not able to come this morning, please ask your child for the packet we gave to the parents this morning. It has some important stuff in it, including the permission slip for this Friday’s field trip. Please get that signed so your child can go!

The field trip will be to the Page Museum by the La Brea Tar Pits. This fits in perfectly with our Science unit where we are studying habitats, animal populations, and extinction. We read about extinction in the book today, and we have a great conversation about the different causes of animals going extinct.

Speaking of how things change, our final reading selection in the Friendship unit is called “Teammates.” It’s a lot harder than the other selections, but far, far better written. It tells the story of the friendship between Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. The story is not only about friendship, but about the wrong of racial prejudice and segregation. It gives our students some really hard things to grapple with, but they are doing a good job of thinking about some really hard ideas and ugly realities. It also gives us a chance to contrast the American of the 1950’s with that of today and to see that at least in some ways, things are better now.

A big thank you to the parents who contributed to the Wish List. We took in enough to pay for all the requested musical instruments, though there are a number of items unclaimed on the PE equipment list.

Homework:  (1) Complete the study questions on Teammates. We went over all the questions in class, so it should be simply an exercise in writing complete sentence answers. Also, students had close to 40 minutes to work on this. (2) Contractions, Reading and Writing Workbook, pages 47-48. Again, they had time to start this in class and many may already have finished. (3) Math, Chapter Test and Cumulative Review, pages 128-129.