Today we had our first trip to the library. In many ways, this is probably the most important activity of the week. Research shows that read, independent reading is the best single predictor of success in school. Students who read for pleasure, even if they are not the most diligent about doing classwork or homework, invariably develop the knowledge and skills needed for high school and university work. That's one of the reasons why we will stress daily reading in room 19 as a part of our Independent Work Time. More on that next week. Anyhow, Mrs. Koneff gave us a great review of library policies and procedures and we had ample time to look about and select books.
The other major activity today was music. We are beginning our study of music with a unit on rhythm. Right now we are developing the idea of beat and meter. We did a short project to help with this. Students were assigned to groups. Each group was asked to choose a meter (groups of 3 or 4 beats) and to choose a gesture and a sound for the first beat. One student would keep the steady beat on a hand drum. They were supposed to do this 3 times loudly, 3 times softly, and again 3 times loudly. Some groups, as you can see in the video link above, did this almost perfectly and others could have used a bit more practice. But everybody started to get the idea of meter even if the composition was not perfectly realized.
Homework: Two math assignments, both of which should be pretty easy. Students had a chance to start on these after the math test. (1) Do "Add and Subtract 4 Digit Numbers," page 41, #2-26 and (2) "Estimate or Find Exact Answers," page 29, #1-9.
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