Hello Grade Six families!
As a first-year teacher, this year will (of course) be filled with many firsts for me. I have arranged classroom furniture for the first time, made my first list of classroom supplies to order, made my first set of name tags, wrote my first letter home as a lead teacher, and (not so exciting, but important) reviewed standardized test scores from previous years for the first time.
Now I'm writing my first blog post. If you're reading this, it's likely because you received the letter I sent home. As a teacher, I believe a strong connection between school and home is essential for a child's success in school. With that in mind, I hope to maintain a good channel of communication to ensure parents are aware of what we're up to in the classroom, and have the opportunity to share anything of interest with me.
As I stated in my letter, I'm very fortunate to have worked with your children for all of last year, and I hope the familiarity we share will help get this year off to a good start.
Some students may be wondering about our traveling classroom "pets." Let me explain: At the end of the 2010-2011 school year, I introduced an activity called Geocaching to the fifth-grade class. It's a high-tech worldwide game whose concept is simple; basically someone tries to find a hidden object or container using only a GPS receiver and the object's latitude and longitude coodinates--where it's hidden on the Earth. (It also happens to be a great tool for teaching many aspects of geography...shh! They're having fun!)
As a class, we created a Geocache, hid it near the school, and shared its coordinates with the world by way of the Geocaching web site. Now anyone who participates in the activity can find our Geocache and sign the log book.
Our "pets" are little figures we placed inside our cache, which will be picked up by well-meaning Geocachers and dropped off in another cache somewhere else...hopefully somewhere far. By this method, two of our geopets are "racing" to the Pacific Ocean, hitchhiking along with people who take pictures with them to demonstrate their whereabouts and well-being.
Well... as of today, the girls' pet Oreo the Dog is heading to North Carolina, and is getting nervous about the impending Hurricane Irene. She's traveled 449 miles so far, including a tour through Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Meanwhile, the boys' Spike the Dinosaur is hanging out with some other geopets he met in West Bend, Wisconsin. He's traveled 1,211 miles in two months and five days--and even left the country! Spike met a nice couple of retired teachers on a road trip, and has been hitchhiking along with them. They brought him to Maine, Quebec, Ontario, Indiana, Michigan, and finally dropped him off in Wisconsin. So as of right now, Spike the Dinosaur is winning the race to the Pacific, but there is still much country to be crossed. Stay tuned! (If you want to learn more about Geocaching, check it out at Geocaching.com and watch the 2-minute video.)
Speaking of hurricanes, I hope our students pay close attention when the weather report is on. Just like our geopets, we'll be tracking hurricanes this fall also!
I've written enough for today. I hope everyone enjoys the last few days of summer vacation. Don't let Irene spoil it for you!
- Mr. Prior
