Patriot Day

I can't hardly believe that we've come to the end of three weeks already!  We've been busy establishing routines, assessing prior knowledge, and getting to know each other.

Thank you so much to the parents who were able to attend Back To School Night yesterday evening!   I felt that it was a HUGE success - thank you also for your positive, helpful feedback.  Please remember that if you should ever have any questions to just send me an email, and I will answer as best I can!  To those of you who were unable to attend, a packet of information should have come home today with your child.  It will include various items including, but not limited to: daily schedule, UES Behavior Matrix, Spelling Activity Cards, Super Speed Math Schedule, and a Classroom Directory. 

Thank you to those of you who were able to contribute to the poll this week!  Majority votes for a packet sent home at the beginning of the week.  I'll start sending that out next week!  Please be advised that there may be some assignments that will need to come back to school before the end of the week - I will be sure to either write these dates on the specific pages, or have the students write the date in their agenda books.  

Speaking of agenda books...thank you very much for be sure to sign the pages!  Some students were still missing a few components of their assignments.  I highlighted what was missing in the agenda book to bring it to their attention so it may be corrected.  My goal with this is to establish organizational skills as early as possible.  Thank you for your support!

As you are aware, today, September 11, is Patriot Day.  A book I love to share with the students is The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein.  It's a Caldecott Award-Winning book showing an illustrated version of the story of Philippe Petit - a French street performer who walked a tightrope across the gap of the Twin Towers in August of 1974.  True story!  This, naturally, served as quite the spring board for discussion about Mr. Petit, as well as about the September 11th attacks.  There were many "why..." questions - as I'm sure you can imagine. 

I did my best to keep the explanations as honest, yet generic as possible.  We discussed how planes crashed the towers in New York City, The Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania.  We discussed how the people who did this were not mentally well.  We discussed how maybe the reasons why the attackers did this was because they were jealous of the tall buildings, or they just wanted more space. 

Addtionally, on a more positive side, we discussed how airport security has changed drastically since the attacks (which led to many stories of sunblock, medicine, bugspray, etc. getting thrown out at the airport).  Also, how even though it was sad that the the Towers and Pentagon were destroyed, at least they left other places alone.

There was also an interest in wanting to see pictures of what happened.  I DID NOT share any, as I think that something this graphic should be left up to your decision as a parent. 

There was an additional interest to see photographs/videos of Philippe Petit as well.  I'm almost positive that something could be found on YouTube - the site is blocked by FCPS, and I couldn't really find anything anywhere else but a few photos. I have attached links of photos of Philippe Petit, and some pictures of tall buildings from around the world.

Also, we earned our first 25 Soaring With Pride stickers!  We will be having a popsicle party on Monday :)  Yippee!

Thank you so much for your continued support - have a wonderful weekend!

Petit  Petit1Petit 2



World's Tallest Buildings
CN Tower

Please see our Classroom Meeting Notes for this week attached in the email with the link for the blog :) 

Great job Kiddos!