Places to Love

Sorry for no post yesterday. I was feeling quite sick and just went home after the meeting and went to bed.

This was one of those days when I was not sick enough to stay home, but not well enough to really want to be at school. Fortunately, Wednesday is a pretty easy day and our students in room 19 are incredibly cooperative.

Today was Stull, part two. As you may remember from last week, a “Stull” is the biennial teacher evaluation process. Last week we did a reading lesson. This week was a writing lesson. I picked a writing exercise developed by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in Portland, Oregon. I am giving them credit because it was a pretty cool lesson.

I began with some calm and soothing music (Old and Lost Rivers by the American composer Tobias Picker) and I asked the students to imagine a place that was really special for them. They closed their eyes and I told them to imagine what they would see, hear, and even feel or smell at this special place. After a couple minutes of reverie, we listed what some of our special places were on the board. I read a book to the students call All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan. We discussed the story and the places each character loved in this picture book. The students then took more time to imagine all the details of their place, and after a few minutes of silent imagination they shared their ideas with a partner. After this, the students made a thinking map (or two) to help focus their thoughts and they started to write rough drafts about their “place to love.”

The rest of the day was easy for me. The students went to Dance class and then went to recess. In Tech Center they worked on creating before and after pictures in Tux Paint. After lunch, I gave them more time to complete their rough drafts. We went to PE where we did rotations after our usual warmups and laps. Finally, we talked about mixed numbers and improper fractions.

Homework:  (1) Do the study questions over “Susan LaFlesch Picotte”. This is a handout. (2) Do “Mixed Numbers,” Math, pages 330-333.

I gave the students a “KenKen” puzzles as extra credit. This is similar to Sudoku, but involves some arithmetic.