Mr. Light’s Blog

It is with mixed emotions that I write this.  I have accepted a job as the grade 6 teacher at the Agnes Grey School in West Paris and am offering my resignation from MSAD # 39 after 20 wonderful years teaching in this community.

I want to give my sincere thanks to all of the members of the BHS community for the support and trust you have bestowed upon me during my years in the district.  I have been very fortunate to work with some incredibly talented colleagues over the years.  I have learned much from them.  I also appreciate the support from the school board, parents and community members.  Most of all, I want to thank the students who laughed, cried, learned and grew with me as they traversed their “middle school” years.  I will miss you!  And, Brandon, I’ll be back in June, 2011 to watch you graduate!!

Sincerely,
“Mr. Light”

You must check out this article and the accompanying interactive slide show from the New York Times.  Tell what you think about some of these creatures!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/science/22deep.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin 

A note from Gretchen!

Hey, hope you guys worked hard at your writing prompts.  I’m sure you were able to provide a few key warnings about that Crazy Caldwell Woman to the incoming seventh graders.  She doesn’t even know how to pluck a pigeon!  I’m sure you’re taking good care of Mrs. Tolman, but don’t forget Mrs. McCafferty…I know she’s under a little stress right now, without me to siphon off some of the pressure of that other loony 7th grade teacher.  We took in a Toronto Blue Jays game at Rogers Stadium tonight and the rookie pitcher, Jesse Litsch, pitched his first major league game, AND Won!  I think he’s from our neck of the woods.  Will someone please check it out and let me know if indeed, he’s from New Hampshire?  Tomorrow night, we’re going to the IMAX theater to see Spiderman III on the BIG screen in surround sound!  It’s going to be awesome!  In between all the really fun stuff I’m learning lots of good ways to teach reading and writing.  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading The Lottery and are taking the time to discuss and write what you think so that I won’t feel like I’ve missed everything that’s happened.  You’ll have to let me know if I did a decent job with the Noteshare lesson.   Please take care of each other until I get back.  I miss you ALL (8th graders too, and even Mrs. Caldwell:-)    Love, Gretchen

First of all, here are some caption contest pictures. Write a caption for one or all of these photos! We’ll pick a winner.

Photo #1:

Photo #2

Photo #3

Actually, to understand this one, realize that it is on a glass floor on top of the CN Tower. This is the view straight down. The green is the tower base, to the left is the wall of the tower. The small white rectangles are either train cars or big busses.

Here’s one more for a caption - #4

Thanks to all of you who write! It’s fun to hearwhat’s happening at school.

As you see in the photos above, we all went to the CN tower last night. It’s high. Mr. Reiter thought of applying for the window washing job at the tower, but decided not to.

About that Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. I want to know if any of you can find out any other sources of information about it and tell me more about what’s going on with it. Maybe I’ll be able to bring you the two pigeon dinner for a prize to the sleuth who can get to the bottom of this issue!

My sessions today weren’t as good as yesterdays, but I did get to meet with the Technology and Literacy Special Interest Group. I hope to have more to do with them.

The Osborne Children’s Literature Collection:

Yesterday I learned of and visited this collection. Unfortunately, they do not allow photographs of the collection. You can see a little of it at the link to the collection above the photo.

• I saw a 14th century Aesops’ Fables book. It is written on parchment. (Why might some think this is yucky?)
• The smallest book in the world (until recently). It was about 3/4 inch tall by 1/2 inch wide and 20 or so pages small and I couldn’t read a word of it. (Maybe you guys could do it, or I could with a magnifying glass.) The librarian then showed me the smallest book now which is almost microscopic and also has 20-30 pages, but is not yet certified by guiness book.
• Some old and awesome pop-up books.
• and lots more!

This afternoon , after my sessions, I went to Little India, one of the neighborhoods. I ate at an Indian restaurant. The food was awesome. Some of it, including the nan bread, is cooked in tandori ovens. The round opening in the counter in front of the man in this picture is the door to his oven. He took off the cover so he could put the bread in it. I also bought a singing bowl. (What do you think that is??)

Tonight, Mr. Reiter, Gretchen, and Mrs. Bates decided to go to the Blue Jay’s game. Fortunately, it’s a covered stadium as there was quite the thunderstorm a little bit ago. I decided to for go that and explore more of the city (Little India) and to catch up with my writing to you all.

Here I am, busy blogging tonight:

I just read about the Milky Way colliding with Andromeda Galaxy in the National Public Radio Newsblog. You could check it out and even write your own comment. If you do, don’t use your last name and please be careful with your conventions!!

Hope you are having a good week. I’m looking forward to Funtown Friday! Has anybody checked on the weather?

Mr. Light

Today was another busy and full day!  We all went to some excellent sessions.  I’m sorry but I didn’t get a chance to download any of my photos today and it’s too late and I am too tired to do it now.  I’ll try to post some photos tomorrow.
At the end of the afternoon, Mrs. Bates and Gretchen found out they were at the same workshop.  It was about a research project to find out if focused writing instruction could help students improve their reading.  The researchers found that in many schools, students who needed help with their reading were spending a lot of their day with reading.  The experiment was to find out if focused writing instruction (much like what you get in middle school) would help kids do better in reading.  What do you think the results of the experiment were?

I went to 3 workshops on technology and  literacy.  The last one was about  learning to read the internet effectively.  The researchers in this session were trying to find out how kids find and evaluate information on the internet.  An interesting example they gave was having kids read about saving the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.  Read about it here and see if you can find out whether it is related to salamanders. http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

We went up the CN tower this evening.  Tomorrow I’ll write more and try toinclude some of my photographs.  (There’s a cute one of a buffalo kissing Gretchen!)

We all send you our greetings!

Mr. Light

Hey, Guys. Gretchen, Mr. Reiter, Mrs. Bates and I are all at the International Reading Association conference in Toronto this week. I went to an excellent institute on literacy and technology today. Some excellent presenters and I learned a lot. I even won a “Platinum” account on PB blogs.org and a Tee shirt. I’ll be using that blog with you soon!

We were fed lunch and there were about 20 lunches left over. They were getting ready to throw them out, so I asked if I could take them to a food bank or homeless shelter. The folks said to go for it so I carried the box of food up 3 escalators, over a skywalk and down 3 more to an information desk to ask for a phone book. When the guy found out what I was looking for he showed me a map and told me the neighborhood I wanted to go to. It was a 20 minute walk, and then I asked directions from a fellow to the Salvation Army. He didn’t know where it was, but did direct me to Goodwill. I told them what I was trying to do and they told me about a shelter named “Brothers” about 5 more blocks. When the guy realized I was walking, he said he would take care of the food for me.

We’re staying at a hotel across from the old city hall. Here’s a picture of the old city hall. I’ll have to take a picture of the new one tomorrow, it’s quite a contrast. Quite a contrast with tthe glass building behind it, too.

Toronto is a city of contrasts. Gretchen and I went for a walk at 7am this morning and saw several homeless people sleeping over vents from the subway (it’s warmer there) next to our fancy hotel. There are also a lot of new buildings and some nice old ones.

I thought this wall was interesting, too.

I convinced the Buckfield contingent to try a Vietnamese restaurant that was recommended by a Vietnamese woman at the registration area. We made it to Chinatown, but I forgot the name of the restaurant.

Fortunately, I knew it when I saw the name. We ventured in.

Gretchen ordered #55, with Lotus Roots.

While we waited, this dog rode by.

Finally, the food came. Gretchen and Mrs. Bates didn’t know what to think.

Turns out it had cilantro, so I traded with Gretchen. I thought it was great.

Mr. Reiter had a tasty meal, too!

We enjoyed a view of Toronto’s needle (tallest man-made structure in the world) as the sun set.

A fun evening adventure!!

Hope you have a great week. I’ll see you Friday at Funtown!!

Mr. Light

Spring Fling will be April 7th. It will run from 2:30-9:00. We will have afternoon activities, supper, and a Buckfield Idol Competition followed by a dance.

We are looking for ideas of activities. Tell us what you would like to do in the afternoon. Some ideas from my BASICS group were:

3-on-3 Basketball, Flag Football, Sideline Soccer, Water Balloon Toss, Pitching Competition, Video Games, DDR (Cassie has this), Foos Ball (Nate has a table).

We have tried blogging in my class a few times now. I want to know how it is working for you. What do you think about blogging in class? What are good things about it? Are there any problems? How can we encourage thoughtful discussion?

We came up with some guidelines for commenting on blogs. Here are our ideas:

Blogging Guidelines

1. Be polite!

2. Make sure other people can understand your comment!

Be specific and clear about what you are saying.

If you are answering a question, copy and paste it into your comment so people know what it is.

You can also copy and paste part of someone elses comment into yours if you are talking about it.

If you use someone else’s words, let us know!

3. Don’t repeat other people

4. Stay on topic.

5. If you are giving an opinion (“it’s cool”, etc.), tell why you think that.

6. Ask questions that make people think.

7. Say things that make people think!