Williams Crew,

We have had a fantastic start to the school year.  I wanted to update you on the activities in our crew and some notes about upcoming fieldwork.

Math: The students seem to be enjoying the new math curriculum and it is forcing them to think a little differently about math.  I hope the homework is going well at home.  I apologize  for the homework on Monday night (I assigned the wrong problems so a couple problems didn’t make sense).  If your child is having any problems please let me know.

Who am I?/ Mentor Project: I just passed out the description of the Mentor project to the students today.  I am hopeful that by Monday the students will know who their mentor will be for the year.  The students will have until the end of October to schedule a time to meet with their mentor to interview them.  I have attached the information about the mentor project to this email.

Expedition: We have begun our navigation lessons including compass practice, map reading, and using surroundings to help find direction.  We will continue to practice navigation an map making in preparation of our fieldwork.

Grouse Ridge Fieldwork: We are starting to get ready for the Grouse Ridge fieldwork.  Ashley Holm will be sending an email in the next couple days to organize who will be chaperoning, shopping for food and packing the food and supplies.  The students have an information letter/packing list and a permission slip that needs to be turned in by Monday September 15th.

Sailing in the Bay in October: I have not told the crew about this yet, but we will be going to the San Francisco Bay to go sailing October 29-30.  It is a 2 day, 1 night trip,  we will drive to the bay, sail from fisherman’s wharf in the afternoon, spend the night, drive to UC Davis in the morning, do a navigation activity on the UC Davis campus, and return to SELS before school gets out on the 30th.  I understand that this is a busy week with Halloween/bear walk the next day, but this was the only day the sailing organization had available.  It is obviously more than a month away, but I wanted to give potential chaperones as early notice as I could.  I will be briefly telling the students about it tomorrow.

Important Dates:
September 23: Picture Day
September 24-26: Grouse Ridge Fieldwork
September 29: No School (In-service)
October 13-17: Conferences, Minimum day all week

As always if you have any questions let me know,

Zach