An ordinary, yet pleasant day

This was such an ordinary day that at first I was not sure what exactly I should write about for today. And yet it occurred to me that wonderful "ordinary" days are the essence of education.

We began today with our silent reading. In recent weeks, the students have been taking independent reading VERY SERIOUSLY, and I am pleased with the number of conferences I have each day with students to discuss the books they are reading. A couple students have accumulated so many stickers that they are literally "off the chart"! Isn't that wonderful?

We continued with Open Court reading. We began with the Blending and Dictation exercises. Many teachers at Third Street skip these, but I think that the phonics component is probably the best thing about Open Court, and a surprising number of "good" readers really are quite clueless when they are presented with a new word and context does not help them guess the sound. That includes more than a few adults I know! So I work with the children on this, even though it isn't the most fun thing for them.

Today we read a sort of sappy story called The Boy who didn't Believe in Spring. It ties in with the overall theme of "City Wildlife" and I think the children will discover that it helped them modestly to understand the topic better. It's a little hard for them at times to relate to these very urban, east coast stories, but that's as much part of education as learning about nature is. They're learning "how the other half lives" to use the classic phrase.

After recess, we practice music. I am really stressing the importance of correct singing with the children, including using the diaphram and the use of the head voice. They're a little resistant to it, to be honest, but the sound is starting to be good. We started on a Jamaican folksong, first singing it and then playing it on recorder. We'll finish it tomorrow.

It was then off to the Tech Center where they were working on creating autobiographic slide shows on Kid Pix.

After lunch, we had PE. We then returned to the classroom where they started an art project based on the Boy who Didn't Believe story. There's a couple examples of completed work above.

Homework: Study the spelling words. Complete the math sheets. They'll be corrected in class tomorrow.