Thursday, April 10, 2008

Peaceful and Productive

Ah, once Open House is over teachers feel like they can breathe again. Now we can quietly get ready for testing and the end of the year stuff. Today was just that sort of day. We read "McBroom and the Big Wind," a tall tale during Open Court Reading. This is a silly story about how wildly the wind can blow in Texas during the winter. Students always enjoy details in this story like jackrabbits flying through the sky like geese.

We did an art project after this which explored "flowing rhythm". In art, rhythm refers to repetitions of lines or patterns which create a sense of unity in the work. Students were asked to think of something in nature, like wind or waves, which demonstrates this kind of flowing rhythm. They used cut paper to give the impression of the kind of rhythm they sense in these things. You can see some examples of this below. Many of these were quite good!

After recess, we corrected home. Mr Lawton introduced the concepts of relative scale and solfege after lunch. We played a quick kickball game with room 17, and then the students returned to the classroom where Mr. Lawton led them through an activity to explore symmetry in the shapes of letter.

Home Studies: (1) Write the rough draft of a tall tale. Be sure to take a realistic situation and then make it ridiculous by using exaggeration. This should be a minimum of two full pages in length. (2) Do the "Simplest Form" and "Multiplication" worksheet. (3) Transposition worksheet for Mr. Lawton.

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