Questioning

A much calmer day. Friday I was just about ready to set my hair - well, what's left of it - on fire by 2:30, but today I was sorry to see everybody go.

We started off today with silent reading. This will be a pattern for most of the students now that the Thinking Maps project is basically finished. I worked with one student to complete the oral part of the CELDT test while the other students not only did their silent reading but completed the reading journal. You'll notice that does not appear as part of the homework tonight, though, of course, they can read some more if they have the time.

We worked on "Asking Questions" as a reading strategy. This is an important, but somewhat hard, skill for students. Fourth grade students are generally pretty passive when they read, and it never occurs to most of them to challenge a character in a story, much less the author. Yet that is just what good readers do all the time. Good readers ask, "Why the heck is the author doing this? Why did she pick this setting? Why give the character that name?" That's just what we tried to help the students do today. They read a bit of the YA classic The Great Gilly Hopkins and as they read the first chapter -- which I had photocopied for them -- they wrote questions which we shared as we went along. The questions, to be sure, could have been tougher. But just asking any questions, just challenging the text in any form, was a new experience for most of the students. We'll practice it some more on the Open Court text tomorrow.

After recess the students had a chance to look at the results of Friday's science experiment. They were surprised to discover how the elodea which had been left in the sun suddenly had so much air in the test tubes compared with the shade control. They were not completely sure why. Most felt that evaporation was the key, but others identified photosynthesis as the likely cause. Which of these two it is was less the point than the idea of making an experiment, and controlling it for only one variable.

The rest of the day was pretty routine. I read a chapter of The Witches; we identified rhythmic patterns in groups of words; we exercised and continued the kickball tournament; and finally we talked about fractions of a whole and fractions of a set.

Home Studies: (1) Complete the Science review, pages A34-35. There will be a test on Science tomorrow. (2) Do the "Natural Resources" study sheet. There will be a social studies test on Wednesday. (3) Do the "Multiplying by One Digit" worksheet. We did not discuss this in class, but it is a third grade skill. If your child has trouble with it, let me know.