Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Tuesday, Short and Sweet

Another uneventful but very pleasant day. We did Reader's Workshop, as usual, to start the day, and I am pleased with how aware our students are of the different reading strategies, and how they use a wide-range of strategies to enhance their reading of the books they choose for themselves. We reviewed the Word Knowledge and Vocabulary from Context assignments they did for homework. Particularly with the the Vocabulary, I prod them to see what clues in the sentence help reveals the meaning of the word. Admittedly, my occasional incompetence typing does not help here. They were stumped by the sentence about the groom carrying his "bridge" across the threshold. My bad, as they say....

We reviewed the basic assignment for paragraphs one, two, and three of the "I Search" paper. I then assigned the students to groups where they had an opportunity to read their papers aloud and get some feedback from their peers. Teachers call these "read around groups", or "RAGs" for short. Sometimes they work really well. Today it seemed a bit perfunctory. Anyhow, students will be working on second drafts as part of their homework.

After recess we finished watching Ramona. For such a sentimental old movie, its amazing how it affects the kids. I heard one girls say, "I started to cry at the end." Maybe I'll start a new generation of TCM or AMC watchers. I hope so!

After lunch, I introduced them to another division strategy, repeated subtraction. Like drawing pictures, this is another really slow and annoying way to solve a division problem but it shows that students truly understand what division is, and not just how to manipulate numbers through an algorithm.

Home Studies: (1) Do the second draft of the beginning of the "I Search" paper as discussed above and in yesterday's blog entry. (2) Do page 245 in the math book. Problems 1 -10 must be done using the repeated substraction strategy. (3) Complete and organize the booklet for unit two of History, "Newcomers to California."

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