Like Something That Seeks Its Level

Okay, everybody, here is the round-up for the vital-est of vital information you will need to know for this week:

1. Thursday night is the fifth grade musical! The kids have been working hard on it for a long time now. The bits and pieces that I've seen have been pretty great, so I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing myself. It begins at 7:00, but please don't come much before that, because they won't open the doors to the fifth grade area until 6:45ish!
   
2. Speaking of which, I am looking for some brave and bold fifth grade parents to help out that night before the show. Thursday is the night on which I teach karate. I will get someone to teach my last class so that I can get to the school by 6:45 if I really hustle to get my clothes changed (lest everyone think the school is being attacked by a 210 pound ninja). What I need is a parent or two (or eight) who can come be in my room while the kids are in there in case I'm a little bit late. Don't worry; I won't leave you hanging, but I will likely need some eyes to keep the kids calm. Every year, the kids get really excited to be in the school at night (the thrill!), and tend to be running around unless there is an adult standing there. If ANY of you can help out, please do! E-mail me!
3. See the post below! They should have that done tomorrow!
4. And piggy-backing on item #2 on the list, I will be happily taking parent volunteers again starting in January! This is not a one-man show. I do have the support of the Woodbrook teachers' aids for a portion of the day, but there is much to be done. If you want to come at some point, please do. We can use you! Just a little advance notice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
5. At some point this week, students will be given another one-question writing assignment from the Reading book. The kids normally do a really great job on these, so I can't wait to see the results.
   
6. There will be another Math quiz on Friday. I told the kids that this chapter is kind of a hodgepodge of ideas for Math (and then we talked about what hodgepodge means), so I wanted to give them quizzes on the like ideas before a chapter test, which will be next week in some form. Right now we've been working on positive and negative numbers. This didn't go as smoothly as I had assumed it would. I told the Math class that I finally found their Achilles Heel! (Actually, I must not have used that exact term, because I don't recall explaining the story of Achilles being dipped in the River Styx by his heel.) We will revisit the positives and negatives tomorrow some more, but I hope that they can work their best through that page I gave them for homework.
   

Today we also got the kids' winter benchmark reading test (I was so excited that so many went way up!) and, among other things, we watched the second part of one of my favorite outer space documentaries, To the Moon. This is a two-hour Nova episode, and it's really really good. Today we saw the sad part detailing what happened to Gus Grissom and the other astronauts on the launchpad in 1967.

Here's this week's Spelling list:

1. appear
2. become
3. continue
4. convey
5. dungeon
6. encyclopedia (this one's a doozy!)
7. flicker
8. plantation
9. pressure
10. remain
11. describe
12. process
    

Hope you all have a fantastic week. See you Thursday!