Wondrous Wednesday

We had a very busy and productive day today in room 19! We started out writing short persuasive piece in our journals. Our topic was “The Best Pet.” Students had to present arguments for what animal makes the best pet. As you can imagine, many of our students made some unusual choices. But they wrote fantastic short essays.We went on to read a short poem by Maya Angelou and to evaluate a piece of writing as part of our 6+1 Traits of Writing program.

After that, we did some art. Usually art is a Thursday activity, but we are expecting that we may be doing some special science Thursday or Friday, so we moved this up. We focused some more today on contour lines, and our project for the day was doing a still life. I picked a photograph of a bowl of fruit for the students. We discussed where the contour lines were and they drew them carefully.

Late in the day, while I was at an IEP meeting, they added color to their pictures using oil pastel.

After recess, we made “runways.” These are not for supermodels, but for darkling beetles and isopods. We will be working with these insects later this week and adding them ultimately to our terrariums.

During mixing today, students at PE had a couple great skill activities. Some concentrated on hand-eye coordination using a tennis racket and a ball.

Others concentrated on foot-eye coordination.

We ended the day by exploring algebra by using the Hands-on Equations program. This is a fun way for students to learn by basics of manipulating equations by manipulating small pieces and cubes on a balance.

Our students did amazingly well with this. They’re only in fourth grade and already successfully solving problems with x on both sides of an equation! I didn’t do things like that until eighth grade.

We were also quite delighted today to have Ms. Tova Zauderer, a teacher from one of our nearby Jewish schools, as an observer and a helper in our classroom today. She is working on her Master’s in doing observations as a part of this.

Homework:  (1) Do spelling words 11-15. Write each word ten times and write a sentence for each. (2) Do the spelling crossword. (3) Do pages 63 and 64 in the Practice book. (5) Do the multiplication practice sheet. (6) Do pages 120-121 in the math book.