Aren’t the weeks going by fast already? I can’t believe it is already October. Back in Alberta, we would already be looking forward to snow. Here, my wife is still pulling tomatoes out of the garden.

We had a good day at school today. The students are enjoying learning to outline stories. Some students even took the outlines and created brand new stories orally without writing them down. That was amazing. We will soon be taking those outlines and using them to create new stories on paper. From there, we will add in new vocabulary, and words that create a better picture in the reader’s mind. For now, however, we are just working on getting the format of the outline down. I am being very strict and picky about their outlines so we should get some very good results.

On Wednesday, students will be having their letter writing test. Students have been practicing all September so it should be fairly easy for them. Some may need a little review on the formating of the letter. Just so you know, here is how I have formatted the letter:

Date

Dear John,

Hello! How are you? I am fine. (First idea with three sentences about the idea.)

(Second idea with three sentences.)

(Third idea with three sentences.)

Sincerely,

Mr. Hancock

We are nearing the end of our Oobleck unit. Today we discussed how the work the students have done exploring oobleck and designing their machines is the same procedure real scientists went through designing the Mars Rover. Scientists at NASA had no idea what the surface of Mars was like except for images from satellites. However, they had to design a vehicle that could deal with any terrain, just as the students did with designing their vehicles for oobleck. Tomorrow, we’ll watch a powerpoint on the creation of the Mars Rover and how they dealt with all these uncertainties. Here is a little preview about the Mars Rover:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/uzFVFHVq2PM" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]