Thursday, February 8th, 2007 (from Cambridge, Mass., USA)

Dear Grade 8 students,

The first semester ended very well in both Language Arts and Physical Education. I am scheduling a follow up meeting with each one of you to write in your grades for Language Arts and PE on your report cards together. I also want to follow up the meeting we each had together after the first quarter to review our "note" to see what progress you have made so far, and to discuss how to make even more progress in the second semester.
Therefore- your report cared will NOT have grades on it for the 2nd quarter and First Semester for our two classes: Language Arts and Physical Education. I do have the PE grades, but I want to discuss those with you face to face at the same time we review the Language Arts grade. You will get your grades on February 19/20th.
I do depend on and trust you to translate this note for your parents. You are old enough to do this without school supervision, and they should already be used to this from the end of the first quarter.
I have looked at your Blogs, and I must say that we are doing a very good job overall. I do think that as a group we need to use the laboratory better when we are there, and to help us do so, I have asked Mr. Pozar and Mr. Rossol to make sure that the internet connection for IST is as fast as we can make it. We need this to help us when we start our class "Wiki" with the Masterman School in Philadelphia. We will use the Wiki in the second semester to teach the Philadelphia kids about our school and about Trieste and Italy.
Have a great Ski Week vacation, and make sure to take a good book with you to read for fun while you are not at school. I will see you on Monday the 19th.
Sincerely,
Mr. Pastore