Wow, not to boast but I know I do good stuff but rarely does anyone thank me so your note means a lot. The new Balliet book is the Calder Game. I don't know how old your students are but our latest literary find for 5th and 6th is Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games, the sequel just came out. I got it in the mail yesterday, Another fav was The Mysterious Benedict Society. One class read the first one in 4th, the second one in 5th and NOW are dying to read the third installment in 6th. IMHO, the first was better than the second--but for some reason my class raved about both.

Take care, thanks again and have a good year. Maybe we could think of some collaboration--does your class blog?

We don't often collaborate with other classes but we do on collaborative project a year with a gifted ed class in New Jersey. It's called the Pringle Project. The instructions are here http://connections.smsd.org/robots/pringles%20project.htm--after the Pringle packages have arrived to have a video conference with the class while we all open the packages to see how the Pringle survivied the trip. I would never be concerned about posting things online as long as I had parent permission forms on file. Later N