Monday, October 31, 2011

Corks

We've mentioned "Mixing" on this blog many times this year. This is when the students of all four fourth grade classes are combined and divided so that they can get to know each other and so the teachers can get to work with all the students on the grade level. Mrs Meldrum, the long-term substitute while Mrs Choi is on maternity leave, has been doing art with the students. Lately she's been helping them understand the difference between positive and negative space in art. Here are a couple examples of an activity:



Halloween is not a great day to introduce a lot of new concepts. The students are  little too spacey for that. This is one of those days when teaching elementary school is like trying to keep 30 corks under water at the same time. It can be done - sort of - but it's exhausting!

Our only really new idea for the day was in math where we introduced the ideas of variables and expressions. The students seemed to catch on pretty quickly to this.

Today I worked hard to give the students as much "study hall" time as possible so that they could avoid having homework tonight. I gave them the entire period from 1:00 to 2:30 to get started on some pretty reasonable assignments.

Homework:  (1) Do pages 118-119 in the math book. (2) Do Larger numbers 1. (3) Do the spelling jumble.


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