One of the "hottest" ideas in education today is called constructivism. The idea here is that students do not come to school completely devoid of any knowledge, but instead have a wealth of information that they can need to add to and reflect upon as they learn. Constructivism also stressed the communal nature of knowledge, the idea that we know things in common with other people and learn from our friends and peers.
Open Court Reading contains a strong element of constructivism. I admit that I did not really appreciate this at first, and it was one of the reasons it took me a long time to warm up to Open Court. One of the principal ways that this is done in the Open Court series is through the Concept/Question Board. Here students write down what they know about the theme and what they want to learn about the theme. We regularly "visit" the board to check what we have learned so far in our theme. Students have become quite good at adding new concepts to the board and in answering questions that other students have posted on the board. In this way, we try to avoid a breathless rush from one story to the next and instead focus on the broad questions of the theme.
Homework: Practice the lullaby on recorder. Study the spelling words. LAST WEEK'S TEST WAS DISAPPOINTING! Finish the multiplication worksheet.
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