Sorry again for the late posting, but the network problem I mentioned on Monday still has not yet been solved. The district sent out two young guys today who sported stylish haircuts and expensive laptops, but they did not seem to actually get anything done. Sigh.
After our wonderful meeting last night I confess I decided to sleep in this morning. So I arrived at school in a great mood, with little actually prepared to teach them for the day. But, ah, this is when 20 years of teaching experience comes in handy. I pulled some tried and true lessons out of the hat, and we had a great day.
We continued our study of Thinking Maps with the Flow Map. This is one of the most useful of all the Thinking Maps because it works on sequencing, an all-purpose elementary school thought process. We did two activities with the map. First, we did one of the best parts of the autobiography project, a composition about "My Perfect Day." The idea for this writing assignment is sort of a combination of Queen for a Day and 24. The students have all the money they want or need, but only 1 day, and they have to put together a morning, afternoon, and evening of perfect activities. We shared some of these, and a couple were really quite touching. After that, we revisited the "Mrs. Frisby" story from Open Court. We talked about the four basic phases of plot development - exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action - and traced these through this selection. Students than made a Flow Map of the story, making their own illustrations of each important phases.
After recess, we returned to the room where we read the next section of the social studies book about the four regions of California -- the coast, the Central Valley, the mountains, and the deserts. This is not the most stimulating stuff for the kids - other than learning that we have an active volcano somewhere in the state - but it is important for them to know the geographical context in which the history takes place. We had done some maps of these regions Tuesday, so at least the idea of the regions was a little familiar to them.
Lunch was uninspiring - who decided that ranch dressing is the perfect accompaniment for peanut butter and jelly? - but we had a lot of fun when we came back to the room. We began our study of singing today by teaching the children how to stand and how to breath. This is very important for good vocal production, but they find it pretty strange, if not downright weird. We also worked on finding the beat in some short bits of piano music I have on a CD. Students used their bodies as pendulums to show the duple-meter beats. We continued this discussion of beat, rhythm, and meter by again using the "Marco Polo" jump rope chant, this time by adding the technique of body percussion. Fourth grade students love to slap themselves, stomp their feet, and click their fingers. I also brought in a simplified system of stick figures to indicate divide and undivided beats. This will prepare them to read standard musical notation later on.
PE was much the same as Monday - warmups, laps, and activity rotations. After we returned to the classroom we took some time to work on math, doing more with our base 5, base 12 counting and also to work on a "Problem of the Day," a slightly open-ended math problem which also requires the students to explain how they came to the correct answer. These kinds of narrative explanations help me to decide who is truly advanced in their mathematics instincts.
Home Studies: (1) If your child did not complete either of the Thinking Map assignments those need to be turned in first thing on Friday. (2) Do new packet of follow-up materials for the "Frisby" story. (3) Continue work in the read math folders. We should have the self-correcting materials ready soon.
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