All Parents Welcomed To Join Our Holiday Party

All parents are welcomed to attend our holiday party tomorrow at 2:00 pm.Before the party our school will have lights dimmed as we walk around the school voting for the door decorating contest. We will also be having a school sing along in the morning. Should be a fun day!

I also want to thank all of you kids for being absolutely wonderful while I was gone Thursday and Friday. I received an emergency phone call Thursday around 10:30 requiring me to be out of town. We learned that my wife’s sisters became very sick and is on life support. I came back for these two days, but on Tuesday Nadia and I are going back down to be with my wife and her family.

Today when I came to school I was greeted with the greatest door decorating I have ever had. While I was gone you kids must have worked quite hard on it. All three of my doors were decorated in a collage of silly and beautiful art work. In my dim mood from this weekend I stood there for about 10 minutes taking in every little bit of your work. All I could do was smile. Your creativity and humor warmed my heart so much that saying thanks doesn’t quite do my thanks justice. Thought I would share a picture with all of you of our beautiful doors. Click the image to see it larger.

The Marchionda Minutes Episode 7 – Merry Merry Everybody

Podcast HeadphonesI want to start today’s post off by saying thanks for being such a well behaved class walking over to the PAC, watching the winter program, and walking back over to school. You made this kind of a day such a fun one!

We also had time to squeeeeeze in a podcast. Read below:

Episode 7 – Today we talked with Merry. Merry is a student with diabetes and took the time to explain a bit about what diabetes is, and how it affects her life. We learn what it is like to have a simple birthday cupcake. Oh, yeah, and today is her birthday, so we learn about what Merry wants and what she is going to do over winter break!

Here is the work for the day:

Homework-20091216

I'm Back And So Is The SMARTBoard!

newspaperYesterday I was at an all district inservice with many to most of the other third and fourth grade teachers in our district. We were being instructed on different methods of teaching mathematical concepts. It was interesting, and I was able to pick up a few things to integrate into what we are doing in class, but . . . I am very happy to be back with all you kids!

Also, as you know, on Friday I got my new hard drive (750gigs!) and installed it Friday night. After seven hours, all went perfectly and our SMARTBoard is back up and running well (as is the rest of my computer!).

note coffeeLastly, I would like to remind all of you that we have our trip over to the PAC tomorrow afternoon to view our school’s winter program. There are only four parent permission forms left to collect. I sent another copy home with those kids this morning. Please make sure to send them back. If you would like to know f0r sure if you sent in your permission slip, check out the online grade book. At the very bottom I have a section called “Permission Forms”.

Here is the work for the day:

Homework20091215

Report Cards Came Home Tonight

Sorry about the late post. This morning at school, before the kids came, my hard drive began to fritz out. So, I shut down and ordered a new one along with the tools to migrate all my data over. That meant that I had to teach with chalk and markers – strange thing. I take for granted tools like Photoshop, Notebook, the internet and web browsers, and my tablet. We managed and had a fun day doing so.

Report cards came home today. Be sure to look them over. I apologize for not sending home graphs of your child’s progress like I had said at conferences. With this new system, I am still figuring out how to translate the data to meaningful graphs.

Have a great night, everyone! :)

Report Cards Come Home Tomorrow

knotesJust to let you know all report cards will be coming home tomorrow. I am not able to send graphs home with them like I had mentioned at parent/teacher conferences. This is because of a change in the way that I am taking grades. If I figure out a reliable way to do this, I will let you know. Please feel free to log in to the online grade book and check grades at any point.

Also, if there is no school tomorrow due to the inclement weather approaching, I will definitely let you know here on this site as soon as I know. From the bed to the blog on those days!!

Here is the work for the day:

Homework-20091208

New Photo Gallery Added to Our Gallery Page

what personParents and Students,

I have added all the pictures from our field trip to Hartford in our photo gallery page, or head on over here to see the page directly. Thanks, kids, for your wonderful behavior and super representation of our classroom and school on our field trip. You were a great joy to be around, and I am always proud to be your teacher!

~Mr. M

Oh, and here they are too: