A Sudden Knock

We begin each day, as I have often mentioned, with journal writing. The students get a prompt each day, and these are related to the writing trait that we are stressing. Right now we are focusing on writing structures, and we're beginning with narratives. So yesterday to give them a chance to write any kind of story they wanted I gave them an opening sentence and left them to develop a story with a problem and a solution. The opening line was "There was a sudden knock on the door." There were lots of good responses, but this one delighted the whole class.

There was a sudden know at the door. Mr. Manon was scared. He slowly opened the door. Nobody was there. A short while later, there was a knock at the back door. He got his club ready. He was ready to knock someone out when he saw them. Nobody was there. About a second later, there was a knock at the front door again. He thought it was just some teenagers doing ding-dong-ditch. So he got ready to yell at some boys. But when he opened the door, five walking dead were there! He screamed! He had to do something. H e took his  club and hit each of the five walking dead in the head. They each did get hurt but not injured. They stepped inside. They cornered Mr. Manon. Mr. Manon tried to fight back with his club, but the dead were too much for him. The walking dead had a nice meal. Mr. Manon joined the walking dead with no choice because, after all, he was obviously dead. 


You can probably guess that it was a boy who wrote that one! We had no zombies knocking on our door today in room 19, but we had a pleasant and productive day.

We read a story in the Treasures about Rosa Parks. This is a typical pattern in this reading series:  partner two selections with very similar themes so that the students can be more aware of the genre and literary structure. The students finished the time before recess by working on their trait of organization poster.

After recess, I worked with the students from room 18 on their food chain mobiles. I don't think I posted pictures of the marvelous ones that our students did last week. Here are a few.

After lunch, we read another chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins. I gave the students some questions over the reading selections to help them review vocabulary and important concepts. Most were pretty well finished before mixing began.

At mixing, I've mentioned that my emphasis this week has been teaching broad jump. Students did quite well with this skill. To get a "4", they had to jump at least a yard and most of them did that easily.

Homework:  (1) Do "Using Rounding to Estimate" on pages 94-95 in the math book and do Who's Here? on the back of the answers sheet. (2) Do the Investigation 3 crossword puzzle. (3) Do Two Digit Multiplication (4) Do the spelling word search.

Also, finish the "Brother Martin" reading questions and study for the Social Studies test tomorrow.