Thursday, April 14, 2005

Another pleasant day

We started today by doing an art assignment combined with a writing assignment. One of the key standards for third grade is writing a good descriptive paragraph, and it occurred to me that if they drew and colored a picture FIRST they might be more attuned to fine details as they were writing their descriptions. So students did a "rough draft" of the picture on newsprint and then used oil pastel on black paper to create a special glow to their pictures. I'll post a couple great examples tomorrow. They then wrote rough drafts which we will revise and complete tomorrow.

We read the story "Alexander who Used to be Rich" in Open Court as we continued our look at the Money theme. Students correctly identified it as an example of realistic fiction and we enjoyed keeping a kind of checkbook as we watched poor Alexander squander the dollar that his grandparents gave him. This story introduces the third big question of the unit, "What is the proper use of money?" It's one adults can ponder as well as children.

We finished filming the wonderful music and drama that the students presented at Open House. I will edit this and include it on the DVD. We also started a look at the idea of the physical properties of matter today.

Homework: (1) Science questions, page C13. Please copy the questions as well as answering in complete sentences. (2) Math, pages 486-487, all problems. This introduces the idea of fractions of a set.

No comments: