Thursday, February 11, 2010

Lines and Shapes

Sorry for a couple days with no updates on our class or the homework. Earlier this week as I was walking my dogs we were attacked by a neighbor’s dog. My dogs were unscathed, but the stray took a nice bite at my left hand. It has been throbbing for the last couple days and typing has been particularly painful. It also left me feeling rather grouchy. However, the hand looks and feels a bit better now.

We had a productive day, as usual, even if I was not Mr. Charming. Our big project for the day involved the story “Sewed Up His Heart” from the Open Court reader. This is the story of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, the pioneering African-American surgeon who did the first heart surgery in the world. The title came from a newspaper article written about Dr. Dan, as the selection calls him, and it inspired us to write our own newspaper articles to work on the summarizing strategy.

First, I went over the format and parts of a newspaper and a newspaper story with the students.

They then met in small read-around groups and revised the newspaper-style summaries they had written the night before as part of their homework. The final drafts were to create the front page of the newspaper with the story about Dr. Dan on it. The results were quite varied, and most were extremely good.

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In the afternoon, we worked on the art and music project for Mr. Lawton. The students here first used the piece of music paper and made a wavy line on it. They then made exactly the same line on a piece of art paper. Once they had that line, they incorporated it into a picture. I was delighted by the variety of ways they did this. Here are only a couple of the many great pieces.

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We also did a gallery walk and shared compliments for the fine and creative work.

We skipped math today in the interests of time, and also because I had somehow managed to do the pages out of order. I think I’ve fixed my mistake.

Homework:  Nothing today except to finish any unfinished work.

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