Swiss Time Running Out

First off, a few notes from last week:

I want to give a big thank you to Jill Pitz, Diane Abdellah, and all of the PTO parents who sent in food for the Teacher Appreciation lunch last Friday. It was, as always, a great meal with tons of food--enough to feed an army still, and fifth grade was the last one through the line. Thank you so much!

On Friday, we had a few tests: Social Studies (that was the big one), Spelling, and Caesar's English. Some of the kids opted to take the Caesar's English test today instead, so that one is still dangling.

In the computer lab today, we also had the end of year Reading test. The kids were very cooperative with all of the computer and software malfunctions on this test, and it was left uncompleted by most of the kids. We will be trying to get that made up during the week this week.

Coming up, I believe this week, the kids will be taking a test for the end-of-year assessment for Math. This isn't something they can study for, but I just want them to do their best. We've covered a lot of new ground in Math for these kids this year, and I've been pretty darn pleased with how well they've done.

Thank you to Nick, Ethan, and Izak (from another class) who stayed after and cleaned out Barton's tank on Friday. We waited until after hours so that we could stink up the whole north half of the school in peace. Anyone who happened to still be in the building on that sunny afternoon must have thought we had some pretty bad digestive problems, let's just put it that way.

This week, we will have Track and Field Day on Friday. This tends to be the most dreaded day of the year for my teammates, but I always love it. While some of the kids can get a little overly competitive, I find that at the end of the day, a sense of unity is what it normally brings out in my class. Let's hope that this year the trend continues!

Today we will also be wrapping up The Strange Case of Origami Yoda. To honor the paper Jedi, our very own Drew Klotz brought in some origami creations of his own from home in the form of an origami R2D2 and an origami Stormtrooper. We may just have to make our own origami Yodas sometime this week to celebrate finishing this book.

Happy Monday, folks.